Chapter 15: Closed Road

By eight the next morning, two vans were parked at the end of Cormorant Lane.

The chain across the road was still there, and the men were standing on the wrong side of it.

One of them held a camera on his shoulder.

The other held a clipboard and a smile.

"Ms. Warburton?" the one with the clipboard called. "We're from the channel."

"Bree sent us for some welcome-home footage," he said. "Just the cottage, the water, the little one's room."

"Her room," I said.

"Only the window. Nothing identifiable."

Poppy was at the table behind me eating toast, and I put my body between her and the open door.

"My daughter's face is under a court order," I said. "The window is her face."

"We'll keep her blurred."

"You'll keep her out."

He sighed and lifted the camera.

Then the three men from the yard came up the lane.

They walked, not fast, in work boots, and the one with nine fingers had a coil of rope over his shoulder.

Behind them came the woman from the grocery and her husband.

After them came a man I only knew as the one who sold crab off a truck.

Within two minutes a dozen people were standing in the road.

Nobody said a word.

They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the chain.

The man with the camera looked at them, and then at me.

"Is there a problem?" the clipboard man asked.

"You're on private land," said the old man with nine fingers. "That's the problem."

"The lane is a public road."

"Not since Tuesday," Elliot said, coming down from the porch. "The town council voted it closed for repairs."

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