The Winter Road

by Caron Todd

  Finally she had pulled on her next least unbecoming sundress, one with muted white flowers on a creamy yellow background, straps that buttoned over the shoulder and no waistline at all. After some deliberation she’d added a bracelet, an inexpensive circle of small plastic daisies. She’d taken it off and put it on three times before leaving her room. Silly. Pointless. She touched the bracelet. Kind of fun, though.

  WHEN THEY REACHED the highway he accelerated to slightly over the speed limit. As far as he could tell, that was all right with her. He still wasn’t sure if she’d been pulling his leg about the toads.

  She was quiet for the first five miles, fingering her bracelet and looking out the window at scenery she must have seen a thousand times. Worrying about field mice trying to cross the road, maybe.

  Traffic was light. A few tractors chugged along, half on the shoulder, hauling machinery that did who knew what. Heading away from the city and Pine Point, toward the lakes, he supposed, were camper trailers, SUV’s pulling speed boats, and cars with canoes clamped on their roofs.

  “Everybody but us and a few farmers is on holiday.”

  She looked at him with mild surprise. “I’m on holiday. Aren’t you?”

  “I mean everybody else is goofing off.”

  “I knew it! You don’t like genealogy.”

  “Well, I don’t love it.”

  “You’re doing it for your parents?”

  “More for Daniel.” It was almost true. He could see she approved.

  “We could go to the beach one of these days, if you like. There’s one nearby that city people don’t know about. Even a couple of generations ago your relatives would have gone. That makes it research, doesn’t it?”

  A day at the beach with Emily. A simple, ordinary day. It was tempting. But not a good idea. Not after the way they’d reacted to each other by the creek.

  “Emily, I wanted to ask you about the man Mrs. Marsh chased away yesterday. The one you called a tourist.”

  “Only because I’ve never seen him before. We don’t really get tourists. Just people stopping in on the way somewhere else.”

  “You’re sure you don’t know him? Do you recognize everyone who lives around town?”

  She looked as if he’d asked whether she recognized everyone in her house. “In the whole municipality, probably. Although I haven’t met those honeymooners Mrs. Marsh told us about. Maybe they’ve left. Why?”

  “New people must move to the area.”

  “Sure. But they need things. Food, gas, doctor’s appointments. They don’t stay invisible long.”

  “What about bird-watchers or campers…people who hang around a while, make friends?” This wasn’t coming off as small talk. His questions were puzzling her.

  “Sometimes people come looking for lady’s slippers or morels.”

  “Lady’s slippers?”

  “A kind of orchid.”

  “Orchids, here?” And Will had talked about whales.

  “You see? There’s no reason for me to leave. We have everything.” She smiled. “We just don’t tell anybody. It would get too crowded.”

  The drive to Pine Point took twenty minutes, another thirty seconds to find the museum. He paid the admission—two dollars each—and began strolling through the exhibits. He tried to pay attention to each one—an 1890 dentist’s chair, a 1905 schoolroom, a 1920s hospital ward—but he had seen the same kind of thing in museums since he was a kid. It didn’t take long for him to make a circuit of the building. Soon they were out on the sidewalk again.

  “Ready for lunch?”

  She gave him that schoolteacher look of hers. “We haven’t earned lunch. You didn’t find out anything about your family and I wasn’t any help.”

  “You were a big help. I couldn’t have found the museum without you.”

  “You could have found it if I’d blindfolded you and spun you in circles before you left Three Creeks. I thought you’d want to spend hours here.”

  “You don’t have hours, though. I’ll come back on my own another time. Now, will you help me find a typical Pine Point lunch?”

  “In the 1880s there was no such thing as a typical Pine Point lunch, not unless your forbears hunted ducks here.”

  She was trying not to smile. Most of the time, smiling or not, her face had a low-key sparkle, warm and amused. She probably looked at everybody like that.

  “How about the bakery?” she suggested. “It’s close by, and they make great cheeseburgers. Their own buns, fresh every day, local grass-fed beef, homemade pickles.”

  “Sounds good.”

  They left the car in front of the museum and walked, staying in the shade of the boulevard trees. The buildings they passed—small stores, the post office, the courthouse, the town hall—were made of rose-colored brick or gray-white limestone that she said came from the local quarry.

  He could feel himself slowing down, his pace and his thoughts. You couldn’t walk along a street like this and stay in high gear. Emily had that effect on him, too. When he was with her he didn’t want to hurry anywhere, especially not away.

  “I thought Pine Point would be more…” He stopped, unsure what he meant.

  “Piney? And pointy?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. A frontier outpost. But it’s an old-fashioned, pretty town. Reminds me of Stratford.”

  “That’s one of my dream vacations—to stay for a week and go to the theatres every day.”

  “Then you could wander down to the river and feed the swans. You’d enjoy that. They glide up to the shore, all stately and dignified, then grab whatever food they can get.”

  “Sometimes whole flocks of swans come over Three Creeks in the fall. I’ve seen them in my uncle’s field, grazing. A hundred birds, maybe two hundred.”

  “You have a competitive streak.”

  Her cheeks went pink. “I don’t.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “There isn’t, but I don’t.”

  “Okay.” If that was what she wanted to believe. “So your mother won’t travel at all and you won’t travel without her?”

  “I don’t like to leave her alone too long.”

  “Why? She’s a little on the eccentric side, but she’s not a child.” He had spoken without thinking, something he almost never did. It was a mistake. Emily withdrew, surprise and irritation easy to read. He went on, anyway. “If for some reason she doesn’t do well on her own, what about the rest of the family? After all, there are so many Robbs in Three Creeks they’ve got their own road.”

  After half a block she still hadn’t replied. He’d have to be more careful. Chasing her away wasn’t the idea.

  IF IT HAD BEEN a longer walk she might have tried to explain, but they had reached the bakery. Emily led Matthew inside, handed him a tray and took one for herself. The girl behind the lunch counter was from Three Creeks.

  “Hi, Miss Robb!”

  “Bren, I didn’t know you were working here.”

  “It’s my first summer job! Just flipping burgers.” She grinned. “But they pay me!”

  “Good for you.” It was hard to believe someone who used to come to circle time in the library was old enough to work with hot grills.

  Bren took their orders and relayed them to the cook, then poured coffee and ice water and put a number on each tray. “I hear your aunt and uncle’s was one of the places broken into the other day.”

  “One of the places?”

  “Oh, yeah, didn’t you know? There was a whole bunch of break-ins, all the same, a mess made of desks and papers, but nothing taken, not as far as anybody could see, anyway.”

  “That’s exactly what my aunt said.”

  Bren leaned as close as the serving counter allowed. “Couple of Mounties were in yesterday and I heard them talking when I took their trays. They were saying something about an identity theft ring. Creepy, eh?”

  “What a horrible thought.” Emily opened her purse, but Matthew got ahead of her and paid for both lunche
s. Bren promised to bring their food as soon as it was ready.

  They carried their trays to a table by the window where they sat in uneasy silence, Matthew’s comments still between them. She could understand him thinking it was odd that she lived at home and was so protective of her mother. He wasn’t the only one with that opinion.

  She’d made the choice when she was thirteen. There’d been a dance at school, so she’d come home late. Even before she’d opened the door she could smell smoke. The curtains over the stove were on fire, the wall and ceiling scorched. She’d called to her mother and run for water and baking soda, afraid of what might happen if she used the wrong one. Julia had wandered in from the living room talking about a copy of Beowulf. She was excited because it had the translation and the original Old English side by side, with a glossary showing how to pronounce the words.

  Emily had doused the flames and turned off the burners, all on high, and accepted the truth that the kids at school already knew. Her mother was different. Not the way Wayne said it with a sneer and a knowing look at his friends, but clearly, Julia needed help. She lived partly in the world Emily occupied, but mostly somewhere beside it. She couldn’t be left there on her own for long.

  “My relatives are happy to look in on my mother if I need to go somewhere,” Emily said. “I don’t like asking too many favors.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. No one can look at someone else’s life from the outside and know what they should do.” Matthew stirred milk into his coffee, tasted it and added more. “You were quiet in the car. At the museum, too. Is this trip all right with you? I dropped onto your doorstep and haven’t stopped monopolizing your time since.”

  “I dropped onto your doorstep. Daniel’s, anyway.”

  “And right away became annoyed with me.”

  “No, not at all.”

  Amusement softened his face. “Yes, absolutely. Do you want to tell me why?”

  Emily decided to avoid words like grim, rude and unwelcoming. “It wasn’t anything major. You weren’t very communicative. That’s all.”

  Bren swept up to their table with two plates of cheeseburgers, then rushed away to deal with a line forming at the counter. When she was gone, Matthew said, “I suppose I approach people I don’t know with a certain amount of caution. You’re more accepting of strangers than I am. I’ve appreciated that, but it isn’t really a good idea.”

  “You’re not a stranger. You’re Daniel’s nephew.”

  “Are all his relations welcome in your house?”

  “Of course.”

  “Even the black sheep?”

  Was he finally going to tell her something about himself? No list of indiscretions came tumbling out. He continued eating his cheeseburger, making the occasional approving sound.

  “Daniel never mentioned any black sheep,” she said.

  “Every family has at least one.”

  “Not mine.” She smiled as a thought struck her. “Aunt Edith might say Alex qualifies, for keeping Sue in Alberta.”

  “The paleontologists? I’ve heard about the selfish wedding in the badlands, with only the hoodoos for witnesses. It’s not like your cousin, apparently, and the guy, this Alex, has obviously changed her for the worse.”

  “You’ve met my Aunt Edith?”

  “She came by last night with a cake.”

  “And told you her life history.”

  “Not just hers.”

  “That isn’t fair! All I know is your name. I don’t even know what work you do.”

  “It bothers you, doesn’t it? Not to know all about me, the way you know about everybody else in town.”

  “It doesn’t bother me. I’m just interested.” She waited, giving him a chance to fill her in, but again he didn’t. Maybe his job embarrassed him. It might, if it involved doing something cut-throat, like hostile take-overs. She could see him being ruthless enough for that, but nice enough to mind.

  “I’m not used to all this secrecy, Matthew. I’m going to guess your exact connection to Daniel if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Oh, good. A game. I always win games.”

  “Not this one.”

  “Not that you’re competitive.”

  She ignored him. “Let’s see…are you the nephew who loves motorcycles and always goes to the rally in Sturgis?”

  “Nope.”

  “The one whose grade eleven science project went all the way to the provincial exhibit and got a commendation from the Canadian Space Agency?”

  He shook his head, then popped the last bite of his lunch into his mouth. He took a sip of coffee and sat back with a satisfied air. “Good burger.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re the one who presses flowers?”

  “I can honestly say I’ve never pressed a single flower. It’s possible I’ve never picked one, either.”

  “Not even dandelions?”

  “Maybe those. Long, long ago.”

  So he had never picked flowers for anyone but his mother. Of course, people in the city couldn’t help themselves to flowers. They bought expensive bouquets from a florist. Emily had never been given a florist’s bouquet. They were strictly for weddings and funerals.

  “Which of Daniel’s siblings is your dad? Is he older or younger?”

  “Daniel’s actually my great-uncle.”

  That widened the field considerably. And it didn’t answer her question.

  Matthew pushed back his chair. “If you’re helping your grandmother this afternoon we’d better get you home.”

  JUST BEFORE THEY REACHED the Three Creeks sign an impulse struck her. “Turn here!”

  He didn’t ask why. He checked the rearview mirror, braked and took a left-hand turn from the highway onto a dirt track. The car’s bumper dipped down and nosed upward, into potholes and out.

  “You can pull over now.”

  “Over? There’s no over.” Matthew parked where they were, right in the middle of the path.

  Emily met him on his side of the car and led him through grass grown high and gone to seed. It reached under her skirt, tickling her bare legs. She put her foot on the bottom strand of a barbed wire fence and lifted the top so he could squeeze through, then gathered her skirt so it wouldn’t catch when he held the wires apart for her.

  “Why are we trespassing in a wheat field?”

  “It’s barley.”

  “Well then, why are we trespassing in a barley field?”

  She turned to smile at him. “You’ll see.” She kept walking between the rows of grain, expecting him to follow. At a grove of bur oaks she stopped, her eagerness fading. There was nothing to see but trees and barley.

  “I’m sorry, Matthew. It was here somewhere.”

  “The Rutherford place?”

  She nodded. “My grandmother said it was a huge yard site. I thought there’d be more left for you to see.” Stones from a foundation, traces of a fence, a covered well.

  “I’m glad you brought me, Emily. Even if there’s nothing left. If I’m going for glimpses, why not a glimpse of this?”

  It was the first time she had seen him show real interest in his family. It made her feel closer to him. “You’re standing right where your great-great-grandfather stood.”

  “Is that so? And how would you know that?”

  “It’s the nature of trees. People stand under them.”

  He nearly laughed. “Very scientific.”

  “He’d be out here working, getting hot, and he’d come into the shade of these trees to cool off. He’d take out a jar of water—”

  “A jar?”

  “They drank from sealer jars.” She kept going from where she’d left off. “So he’d take his jar of water and his lunch box and sit under these trees. His son would have been working with him, learning the ropes. While his dad rested, he would have tried to catch gophers.”

  Matthew pulled at the knees of his trousers and sat at the base of one of the oaks. Emily joined him, staying an arm’s length away, her legs fol
ded under her and her skirt tucked around them.

  “Think we’ll get ticks?” he asked.

  “Not in July.”

  They sat in silence, but this time it wasn’t uncomfortable. She liked his ability to be calmly quiet, not searching for small talk, not needing to hear himself all the time. Even so, he tended to fill the space, his presence big and solid and, at the moment, reassuring.

  “How long has it been just you and your mother?”

  Back to her again. He never wanted to focus on himself. “Forever. My dad died when I was eight.”

  “That’s very young to lose a father.”

  “I barely remember him. It’s been hard on my mother, at least I think it has. She doesn’t connect with many people.”

  “What happened?”

  “To my father? Oh, you know.” As long ago as it was and as little as it had ever seemed to have to do with her, she didn’t like going over it. “It was an accident. There’s no shortage of accidents on a farm.”

  “And your mother turned to her book collection?”

  “That started before. My grandparents gave her some boxes of books from their attic when she was still in high school. I remember her reading to my father.” It was a comforting picture, the two of them sitting by the Franklin stove on a winter evening, her mother’s voice going on and on, pages turning. “She hardly ever reads anymore.”

  “I noticed she talks about her books, but not so much about what’s in them.”

  “That’s because she wants to start at the beginning.”

  “Start reading at the beginning? You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. She wants to get all the books that matter, then read from the start.”

  Matthew leaned back, resting his head against the tree trunk. “So she doesn’t collect because of the monetary value. She’s seeing the books as a sort of map of civilization. When she’s done collecting she’ll follow the route.”

  He understood. How could he? No one else did. Emily felt as if she had fallen in love with him, right in that instant. She kept her eyes on her sandalled feet, dusty from walking through the field. She was alone too much, if gratitude felt like love.