“My father used to say the same thing,” Estella said, and she remembered how he’d always wanted to travel in his own car.
While Nicholas went to switch the cars instead of leaving his on the street, Estella called Mercy and said she had found a ride to Lake Claire for a few days, and that she hoped Lonny would have fun at his summer camp.
Of course Mercy wanted to know who she was getting a ride with, but Estella was vague and said, “Oh, just some regulars.”
When she saw Nicholas pull up in front of the house in her car, she went to retrieve her house keys from her purse, and realized she had left it upstairs. Then Nicholas came in and said he perhaps ought to call Marie.
“Why?” Hannah said, but then she didn’t wait for an answer and went outside. Through the screen, Estella saw her sit on the porch swing.
Estella lingered at the foot of the stairs so she could hear what Nicholas was saying to his wife. He left a message.
“It’s me,” he said. “I guess Hannah told you what she did, but everything’s fine. I’ll bring her back in a couple of days. My phone quit working if you’ve been trying to reach me. I’ll buy a new one today. Okay, so, don’t worry. Hannah is in a surprisingly good mood.” There was a pause, and then Estella thought she heard him say, “No thanks to you, you cheating bitch. Yeah, that’s right, I know about the sequel.” Then he hung up. She wondered if she’d been mistaken about the last part, because the rest of the message had been so ordinary.
When she got upstairs, she found her purse on top of the clothes hamper in the bathroom. Her cane was there too, and she supposed she ought to take it, although pride was tempting her to leave it behind.
She heard Nicholas call up the stairs, “Estella? Ready to go?”
“Be right down,” she called, and as she turned away from the mirror, she happened to look out the bedroom window and saw Kayla in the yard next door, and she remembered the apple tree and Kayla’s suggestion to trim its branches. It certainly didn’t look from there as if it needed a trim. What was Kayla up to? Estella had so many valuable things in her house. It would be easy enough for Kayla to figure out how to get into the house. Or that daughter. Or the boyfriend.
Estella picked up her jewellery box, planning to take it downstairs with her and put it in her suitcase, but then she remembered the suitcase was jammed full, so instead of carrying the whole jewellery box with her, she opened the lid and took out the velvet bag with the antique clay beads in it, the ones that her father had given her. The beads were valuable, something she’d learned only recently when she’d had her things appraised for the insurance agent. Over a thousand dollars, they’d said, since they were rare and thought to be created by a designer who had become quite famous a hundred years ago. She tucked the velvet bag into her purse, safely away from the light-fingered Kayla and her delinquent daughter, and then she made her way downstairs, carrying her cane, because good sense won out over vanity.
Nicholas was waiting on the steps with her suitcase in his hand. Hannah was already in the car. Estella was about to lock up when she decided she should call Emyflor and ask her to look in on the house while she was gone. She couldn’t remember what she’d told her. She reached her voice mail and left a message with the Fosters number, or Marigolds, as it was called now, in case she needed to get in touch.
She locked the house and walked out to the car. Hannah was in the front seat and Nicholas suggested that she give Estella the front, but Estella told Hannah to stay where she was, she should have the best view since it was her first trip to Lake Claire. They were barely out of the city before Estella was dozing in the back seat.
THEY WERE TALKING about the Diamonds again, those same voices, strangers, saying things that weren’t true, spreading rumours about Oliver and the Texan, and about her, how she cheated her brothers, and they were talking about her mother this time, too—her mother, who had never done a wrong thing in her life—saying that Beatrice thought she was really something just because she was married to Oliver, and what an easy ride she had, and never had to lift a finger.
And she calls her living room a parlour. Who does she think she is?
Estella woke with a yelp when her cane slipped from where she had propped it and wacked her in the shins. She wasn’t sure where she was at first, but then it came back. She was in her own car, and Jack was driving her to Lake Claire.
She’d been dreaming. A relief to know that, she thought, because she wasn’t always so certain.
“What happened?”
It was Jack speaking, trying to see in the rear-view mirror if everything was all right in the back seat. But who was the girl who had her head cranked right around and was staring at her?
Not Jack. Jack had been gone for years.
Nicholas and his daughter Hannah.
She scrambled to get her thoughts straight. “My cane slipped,” she said.
“Are you all right?” Nicholas asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. It was nothing.”
“Should I stop?” He was already pulling onto the shoulder and slowing down.
“No need.”
“Are you sure?”
“Didn’t I say I was sure?” she snapped.
An uncomfortable silence.
Estella heard the echo of her own voice. Irritable. Self-centred.
“Sorry,” Nicholas said, “it’s just . . .” His voice trailed off as he sped up again and steered back onto the highway.
She ought to apologize, but that was something she had never been good at.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, trying to sound contrite. “You won’t have much fun if you’re worrying about me the whole time.”
“Just let us know if you need anything,” he said, and he looked away from the mirror.
She hated it when her mind was not right. Whenever she was confused, she wanted only to be at home, where everything was known to her and the only surprises were in her head. She didn’t want to be on the road with people she didn’t know. What if she was mixed up all the while she was away? What if she got lost, or talked nonsense the whole time and made a fool of herself? The fields and sloughs and farmhouses flashing by were familiar, and she knew this was the right road, the road to Lake Claire, the one she had travelled countless times, but all she wanted was for Nicholas Diamond and his daughter to turn the car around and take her home.
Then Nicholas spoke again, and she could tell he was trying to put her at ease. He was talking about family, the Diamonds, his Uncle Don, how Don was the one with the Lake Claire memories. Don spoke of a time when his father was still alive and all the cousins were there, and they went to the beach every day and barbecued every night, and he didn’t remember a single day of bad weather, although there must have been some. Nicholas said Don was planning to retire in another year, and he often spoke of making a trip back to Lake Claire when he had more time. He and his partner were planning to spend the winters in Florida.
Had Estella tried that, he asked, winter holidays, snowbirding off to places like Myrtle Beach or Palm Springs in California?
She said no, she’d never taken a winter holiday. Perhaps she had missed out.
The girl began to speak then, about the time they had gone to Disney World in Florida one winter. Remember this, remember that, the Animal Kingdom and the Epcot Center.
The panic began to abate.
She opened her purse to find the roll of mints she knew was in there, and as she rooted around she saw that she had managed to upend the jewellery bag, and the beads were now at the bottom of her purse with her wallet and her dark glasses on top of them. The cloth they’d once been wrapped in seemed to be missing so she slipped them back into the velvet bag without it. As she did so, she discovered an enamelled pin in the bag, a loon. She could not remember where it had come from, or why it was there. It was just a little souvenir pin, but it was attractive. It must have been her mother’s. She pinned it to her jacket.
Why had she brought the beads with he
r? They were too valuable and all she was going to do was worry about them. She removed the beads once more and wrapped them in several tissues before retying the bag, tightly this time.
“There,” she said, snapping her purse shut. “That’s better.”
Nicholas glanced in the rear-view.
“All’s well back here,” she said.
THE BUMPS ON the lake access road woke Estella up again. She’d slept off and on most of the way with the sun shining in on her. She saw the familiar black-and-yellow signs in the ditch—don’t feed the bears, moose on the loose, deer crossing—and she knew exactly where they were, not far now from the village. Sometimes Peter Boone came this way if he was out for a longer run. He was over seventy, but he still ran every day, unless that had changed in the last year. She watched for him in his nylon shorts, his skinny calves in white tube socks that came almost to his knees. Today there were neither animals nor Peter Boone on the road, just traffic, cottagers and campers heading for the lake. A sign she hadn’t seen before appeared in the ditch, a hand-painted sign that said “Marigold Bungalows Ahead.” Estella was about to remark on it when another sign came into view: “You Are on Treaty 6 Traditional Land. Visitors, Please Enjoy Your Stay.” That was new, too. Then the village of Lake Claire came into sight, and she forgot about the new signs and directed Nicholas down the main street with its usual holiday crowd, past the shops and the public beach, until they were through the village and the traffic thinned.
As they approached the three-way stop, Nicholas asked her which way to go. She told him straight ahead; the road to the right led to a campground. He stopped at the sign and then proceeded just as another car approached from the right and entered the intersection without stopping. Hannah yelled, “Dad, car!” as it came toward them. Nicholas slammed on the brakes, and the other driver did the same. Still, the other car’s front bumper nosed up to them on the passenger’s side, and they held their breaths and waited, but all that came was a little bump, barely perceptible. The other driver immediately backed away and drove off as though nothing had happened. They watched as his car disappeared down the road to the village. Estella thought he looked familiar.
Nicholas asked if everyone was all right, and then he got out to check Estella’s car to make sure there was no damage. When he returned he reported that there was a small dent in the fender.
“It’s not much,” he said, “but it’s there. I’m so sorry, Estella.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “It was the other driver who didn’t stop.”
She was wondering who he was and why he had looked so familiar, and then it came to her: he was the weatherman on one of the local cable TV channels.
“I know who that driver is,” she said, and she told them, and said perhaps they should report it to the police. You weren’t supposed to leave like that, were you? At the very least he should have given them his licence number. She looked around for witnesses but didn’t see any.
At that moment they saw another vehicle approaching the intersection, and so Nicholas put the car in gear and carried on. He would have a closer look at the dent when they arrived, he said. He wasn’t sure it was a matter for the police.
Then the lake appeared through the trees ahead, and the cottage compound, and in no time they were there, pulling up to the office. It looked the same as always except for a new sign: “Marigold Family Bungalows.” There were red clay flowerpots on both sides of the steps with bright-orange marigolds blooming in them. There must have been a dozen.
Estella opened her purse and found her lipstick and comb, and gave herself a quick touch-up. “You wait here and I’ll get our key,” she said.
Just then, Peter Boone stepped from the office door. He was still not much bigger than a jockey, and his thick head of hair was now white. He’d grown a moustache since she’d last seen him. As far as she knew, he was still living at The Travellers. He’d stayed on in his mother’s suite after she died several years ago. He came right to Estella’s door and helped her out of the car. The new owner—a middle-aged man with freckles and a bald head—came outside and introduced himself as Gavin Caige, and a great fuss was made over Estella and her long history with the place, and the fact that the cottage bricks had been produced at her father’s factory.
“Our pleasure to have you back for another year,” said Gavin Caige.
She introduced Nicholas and Hannah, and Peter looked surprised to see two Diamonds that he’d never met before. She explained that Nicholas was Jack’s grandson. She couldn’t take her eyes off all the marigolds. Gavin saw her looking at the flowers and explained that his wife’s name was Marigold.
“I’ve always told her she should have a country named after her,” he said. “She’s just that kind of woman.”
Estella thought a country named Marigold would have a hard time being taken seriously.
When she got inside the office, she was relieved to see many things were the same as when Allen Foster had been behind the counter: the mounted lake trout on the wall, the laminated map of Lake Claire showing all its bays and islands, the 1955 Norman Rockwell calendar from the business’s first summer. And then she began to notice a few things that were different: the big-screen TV, the sign on the counter that said “We don’t accept cheques . . . cash or credit card, please,” another laminated sign beside it that said, “I delight in insult and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. II Corinthians 12:9–11.” Either Marigold and Gavin Caige had a bizarre sense of humour or they were of the evangelical bent. Perhaps both.
She turned her attention back to the sign that said no cheques. She was thinking that, according to the terms of her father’s deal with Allen Foster, she would have to pay for a cottage this year since the business had been sold. Gavin saw her looking at the sign and said, “Don’t worry, a cheque from you is fine. God is telling me to trust you,” and she had the answer to her question.
Gavin retrieved the key to Emily Carr from the drawer under the counter, attached to the same old maroon plastic key ring.
“I’m sure you know the ropes,” he said. “I’m still learning them, with a bit of help from Saint Peter here.”
Biblical humour at every turn, Estella thought.
At that moment a woman whom Estella assumed to be Marigold stuck her head through the entrance to the living quarters and asked Gavin whether he wanted his plate in the office or was he was coming to the table. She was a small woman with a curly hairdo pretty close to the colour of the flowers that were everywhere outside.
He said he would be right there, that Estella was his last check-in for the day.
On her way out of the office, Estella noticed that the news channel was talking about forest fires in British Columbia. The Interior was dry as tinder. She asked Peter if it was dry there as well, and he said no, everything was fine, they were not prohibiting open fires in the campground, which was always the marker of fire hazard.
Once they were away from the office, though, she began to get the real news, and it did not sound as though everything was fine. As Hannah and Nicholas walked down to the lake for a quick look, Peter unlocked Emily Carr and carried Estella’s bag inside. He told her that the Caiges had been notified soon after they’d taken possession of the place that they would be unable to renew their lease when it was up in two years. The First Nation that owned the land wanted it back, and they had their own plan to tear down the cottages and build a year-round hotel and convention centre, or at least that was the rumour. The Caiges were saying they wouldn’t have bought the property had they known, and they were blaming it on Allen Foster’s son, who had taken over the business from his father and then sold it to the Caiges. He was saying he had not known about the lease being terminated, and that the Caiges had failed to do their due diligence by consulting directly with the First Nation. Everyone was suing everyone, including the real estate agent, and no one knew what the end result would be.
And there was more. The old Beach Café had
been torn down over the winter and replaced by a seafood restaurant, and by seafood they didn’t mean jackfish. They had an aquarium with live lobster from the East Coast, and they shipped in salmon and shrimp and halibut from the West. They’d served lake trout in the spring during trout season, but that was the only nod to anything local. The fishermen, they said, wouldn’t pay good money for what they could catch themselves and cook for shore lunch in a frying pan.
And to top it all off, the Claire de la Lune had been declared unsafe and had been retired, because the repairs would cost more than she was worth. She was still moored at the marina, and every night Peter went down and turned on the patio lanterns and played Roy Orbison through the speakers, but she was no longer licensed and her days of crossing the bay at sunset with a boatload of campers and cottagers were over. She was listed for sale on the Internet as an antique, but Peter figured she was worth not much more than a few hundred dollars for scrap. Someone was supposed to be coming to look at her in the next day or so. If he came hauling a flatbed trailer, Peter said, it would be goodbye to the paddlewheeler.
Estella wondered how all this could have happened in just one year. At least Emily Carr, aside from a bit of crumbling mortar and an organic-looking buildup of moss on the shingles, looked more or less the same as always.
Peter’s cellphone rang just then and he was summoned to deal with a guest who had locked himself out.
Nicholas and Hannah came back from the lake and they carried their bags in and took the room with the twin beds. Estella took her parents’ old room. She tried all the taps and light switches and everything was in working order, and the window screens were all patched to keep the mosquitoes out. She noticed there was a mousetrap under the sink and another behind the couch, which Hannah took exception to, saying they were cruel, so Estella agreed they didn’t have to bait them.
There was a little convenience store attached to the office, but it carried mainly last-minute necessities like milk and sunscreen and toilet paper, so Nicholas suggested that he and Hannah walk along the shore into the village and get a few groceries. After they left, Estella sat on the cottage deck, and she couldn’t help but picture the grassy common filled up with generations of noisy Diamonds. This was where her father had sat looking out on the action that last year he was alive, smoking his cigars, the disapproving caregiver Lorette his ever-present shadow. In her father’s time, there would have been an Oldsmobile instead of a navy Ford Taurus parked next to the cabin. Her new Mustang had been the one exception. That car had been her fifteen minutes of fame, she supposed. Paul had made sure it lasted not much longer than that. She’d replaced it with another Falcon.
The Diamond House Page 28