The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

That note, thirty-four words long, is all I get. Seven months after we parted in jail, I again return to
Maine. On the drive from the airport, I stop by the Fox Hill Lilac Nursery and purchase a large sprig of
purple lilacs. It’s my olive branch. Then I head to Hillman’s Bakery in Fairfield and buy an apple pie, a gift
for his mother.
Past lumber mills and antiques shops, bed-and-breakfasts and above-ground swimming pools. A couple
of wild turkeys strut along the road’s shoulder. There are farm eggs for sale on a folding table at the end of a
driveway, but no person there—just a box for the money. Central Maine is still on the honor system.
It takes forty seconds to drive the length of Albion’s Main Street—post office, library, gas station,
church, general store. At the store, a bulletin board has handwritten signs for diesel engine repair, yoga
classes, snow removal, and hunting guides. There are no traffic lights. At both ends of the town are clusters
of white or tan wood-sided homes set close to the road. Then it’s countryside again: a dairy farm, a place
that will butcher your deer, a vest-pocket cemetery with a few tombstones nearly two hundred years old.
The Knight house is mostly hidden behind a wall of hedges and trees. Only the second-floor windows,
with bright blue shutters, are visible from the road, two rectangular eyes peering out of the greenery. A
black mailbox says, “Joyce W. Knight” on it, beside two newspaper boxes, one for the Portland Press
Herald, one for the Morning Sentinel. A giant red maple dominates the front yard.
I pull my rental car into the short dirt drive, in front of a small garage separate from the house that has a
weather vane on top and a metal sign that says in embossed letters, “Sheldon C. Knight.” The yard is quiet.
There’s no sign of another vehicle. No one seems to be home. I sit in the car for a moment, wondering what
to do. Something about the house makes me nervous, though it’s unremarkable in every way, just a boxy
wood-sided place, painted pale yellow, with a couple of asphalt roof tiles in need of replacing. I get out of
the car, carrying the lilac sprig and the apple pie, and take a few strides toward the front door when out of
the bushes, soundlessly, steps Chris Knight.