He offered me his arm, escorted me down the stairs and held my hand properly as he guided me onto the seat. Then he walked around the buggy, sat next to me, grasped the reins and gave them a snap. We were off.
“I’m impressed. Is this a new trick you’ve learned, or have you been keeping this from me all these years?”
“George has been teaching me.”
If you’ve never gotten dressed up and had someone you’re in love with take you for a horse and buggy ride, I’d suggest you do so as soon as possible, very romantic.
We traveled on Shoreline Drive to downtown and left Tasha and the buggy at the Island Livery Stables. From the stables we walked to the marina. There we boarded a yacht that took us and about twenty other people on a tour of seven islands and seven lighthouses that were off the coast of St. Gabriel Island. A candlelit dinner was served on the deck as the sun set, and a string quartet played from the bow, also very romantic.
It was dark by the time we were back in the buggy. Race drove up Fort Hill, past Grayson’s Meadow, and up a narrow trail to the highest point on the island where he pulled up to the edge of a bluff. We could see the lights at the Fort, the street lamps that lined Main Street, and the lights on the boats at the marina.
“How did you find this place?” I asked him.
“George told me about it.”
Race reached under the seat and handed me my birthday gift from him. I pulled the bow, set the ribbon on the seat, and asked, “Open it now?”
“Yes, now,” he said.
I tore the paper off the box and lifted the lid. Inside was a picture frame made of birch branches with an intricate pattern of tiny birch twigs on the face of the frame. It held a photo of Race and me standing in front of the lodge. Janie had taken it.
“Race, it’s perfect. The frame is beautiful. Where did you get it?”
“I made it.”
“You did not.”
“I did. I’m not just another pretty face you know.”
“Honestly, Race, you really did?”
“I did, with George’s help.”
“This has been a great day, Race Coleman. The best birthday I’ve ever had. Thank you.”
His eyes filled with tears and he looked at me in that devoted way. When did he start looking at me that way again?
“I wanted to make up for the one I missed.” Some tears spilled onto Race’s cheeks but he was smiling. He slid his hand across the side of my neck to the back of my head. His fingers laced in my hair, and he kissed me. “I’ve always loved you, Cammy. Since the moment I first laid eyes on you, I’ve loved you. I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you the way I have and that the hurt will always be there. I pray for the day you can forgive me and that you’ll trust me and feel safe. I want you to feel safe, Cammy.”
Although it wasn’t the last time that Race apologized for what he had done, that night I felt the need for him to do it melt away. I had forgiven Race but I had been afraid to let him know that I had. In my mind his knowing would let him off the hook somehow. And if he knew I had forgiven him for what he had done, I felt it might diminish the magnitude of it in his thinking. Sounds silly I know.
That night when I realized I wanted Race to know that I had forgiven him, I knew that I trusted him again. Not quite the way I had before, but that was because I realized life is not a neat little package, there were no guarantees. I still wanted life to be rosy, but I knew it wasn’t always going to be and I needed to be prepared.
“I forgive you, Race, and I adore you. Always have, always will. No one has ever made me feel loved or safe the way you do. I’m so thankful you’re here with me.”
The morning after my birthday, Race found me in the bedroom standing in front of the dresser mirror.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Looking at my forty-nine-year-old self.”
Race wrapped his arms around me, looked over my shoulder, and said, “I’d like to look too.”
I hadn’t been to a hairdresser since we moved. I fingered my hair, which was starting to look like a small child’s who got a hold of a pair of scissors during naptime.
“Do you want me to let my hair grow long again?”
“That’s up to you.”
“I know it is, but I want to know what you’d prefer.”
“When it’s long you’re sexy and when it’s short you’re sexy. I win either way.”
“Race, I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
I gave him the Please be serious look.
“Cammy, you know I loved your long hair. If you grew it out, I’d love it again, but I want you to do what makes you happy. And I promise you, short or long, I find you exceedingly beautiful, adorable, and incredibly sexy. Scout’s honor.”
Naïve maybe, but I believed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
July
The frame Race made me for my birthday was just the beginning of his new hobby of woodworking. He had no prior experience or interest that I had ever seen but that didn’t seem to daunt him. He dug right in measuring, cutting, and nailing. Birch branches were his preferred medium. He collected them from around the property and stacked them behind the tool shed where he had organized his workspace.
I found Race on the back porch of the lodge one day, and he was putting the final touches on something that I couldn’t quite recognize.
He lit up when he saw me. “You’re just in time to see my unveiling.” Before he turned the piece over, he made a few quick taps with his hammer.
I tilted my head to match the angle of what looked somewhat like a chair. When Race gave it a push and it did a kind of wobbly rock, I had my clue, Aha, a rocking chair.
“It’s crooked,” he observed disappointedly.
“Well, a little.”
“Don’t patronize me, Camellia Coleman.”
“You keep calling me Camellia and I’ll make patronizing you my new hobby.”
Race tried to reposition the chair for better balance, took a frustrated breath and said, “I saw birch branch rocking chairs sitting on the porches in some of the old photographs. I thought you might like to have a few to put out there again.”
“I love that idea, but maybe you should start with something a little simpler. Like a box.” And then I laughed.
Race responded by tickling me, which I hate.
After his initial attempt at furniture making, Race asked me to give him a list of things I would like made for the lodge from birch branches. It was a long list but I organized it by difficulty, beginning to advanced—more frames for hanging the old photographs and paintings found in the attic, serving trays, flower boxes to line the edge of the porches in front of the railings, end tables, night stands, and coffee tables, head and footboards for queen-sized beds, garden benches and arbors. Rocking chairs were at the bottom of the list.
The July 4th weekend arrived and it was one for the record books, due for the most part to the unusual nature of the parade, but more on that later.
Friday night Race and I laid out blankets and pillows on the grass in St. Gabriel Park. Flat on our backs, our arms entwined, we watched a fireworks display that was better than the year before. Afterward, we stopped by the bakery to get Sara who does not like fireworks. She convulses with every boom. We all rode to the center of the island where Larry Meaks and his family were having a late-night Independence Day get together.
Island Center is a community where many of the locals live and it’s a tight-knit group. The little bit of socializing Gabies do during the season is usually after nine at night when the businesses close down. They work hard during the summer season to earn all they can to get through the winter.
Barbara and June were at the party. After having seen them at our Community Development slash Historical Society inquisition, I had assumed they might be part of the Hill Crowd. Silly me, their wardrobe should have been a dead giveaway. I have since learned that protecting island property is one of the few times the Hill Crow
d and the Gabies join forces.
Mother and daughter were in full 4th of July fashion—red cotton slacks, denim shirts with little flag buttons and large flags appliquéd on the back. Star and streamer earrings dangled from their lobes.
Sherry Oliver and her husband Mike, the proprietors of Tate’s Market, were there with their twelve-year-old son Cameron, and Sherry’s parents Trudy and Leon Harper, of Harper’s Antiques.
Betty, from the St. Gabriel Information Office, sat in a folding chair most of the night. Her husband Harry, who is quite the life of the party, never sat down once that I saw.
We met the island’s entire police department that night—Mitch, Emile, and Scotty, all young go-getters, and Vernon, the police chief and their laid-back leader. In shifts, they patrolled Main Street and took turns joining in on the festivities.
It was the first time I had seen Lucy without her flowers. All of our renovation crew that lived on the island was on hand—the Cummings family, Lisle and Kurt, Joel Morrison and his wife and their three girls. George was even there for a while.
Larry and his parents kept four grills going to feed the masses. Larry Meaks Sr. had such a perpetual crowd around him that I felt as if I was waiting to jump into a Double Dutch to have a conversation with him. I wanted to hear his stories about the lodge, but he was booked all night.
The Island Jamboree, which had main billing at the Trillium Playhouse for the previous fourteen seasons, played their version of bluegrass-swing. Race was Lucy’s favorite dance partner and three-year-old Benji Cummings was mine. That boy could boogie. We all ate and danced until after midnight.
The next morning we slept the sleep of the partied-out, and I had to do some talking to get Race back into town to watch the parade that afternoon. We were glad we didn’t miss it.
Apparently, both of the individuals who had been asked to be Grand Marshals of the parade had dug in their heels and would not relinquish their title or duties. They both insisted the front of the parade was the only place they would agree to be positioned in the procession.
The parade committee, not wanting to offend, brainstormed. They decided to split the parade in two and have it come from opposite directions. The idea being that the two parades would wind up the sides streets and hit Main Street at different times. That was the idea. What happened, as you have probably already guessed, is that there was an overlap.
Just as Grand Marshal number-one led the St. Gabriel High School ten-member marching band and the rest of his parade around the corner from Fort Hill to Main Street, Grand Marshal number-two led the Dancing Grannies and his parade onto Main Street from Shoreline Drive. Could it have been the Grand Marshals were racing to see who would get to Main Street first?
It was right in front of the Island House Restaurant that things went terribly awry. The wide-bodied Boatman’s Club float was pushing parts of the oncoming parade onto the sidewalk with the spectators, and had a near miss with the Dancing Grannies. The Grannies, who were impressively agile, scrambled and ended up on the top of the float where they continued to heel-toe through their routine. It was a true display of the show must go on.
I gave the parade a ten for the sheer daring of the committee to think outside the box. After the parade, as Race and I moved with the dispersing crowd down the sidewalk, my giddiness over seeing such a spectacle was doused when I looked up at James’ balcony, and it was empty.
That July the lodge was at the worse before it gets better stage. We could see through a lot of the walls where the plaster had been removed to get to the plumbing and electrical, and the framing of the bathrooms made the second floor look like a maze.
Scattered all over the ground outside, were broken off pieces of old shingles that hadn’t made it onto the tarps that the roofers had spread under the eaves. I thought I would be picking up that mess for the rest of my life, and I still find a small piece, on occasion, as far away from the lodge as the orchard.
A bright spot was the mason who worked like an artist, carefully chipping out the old stones and replacing each one like a puzzle piece.
By the end of the month, most of the tear-out was finished. Race and George loaded the dray and made trips to the Island Disposal Center almost daily.
More guests stayed in Rhubarb Cottage. Four sisters came to celebrate their annual sisters’ vacation during the Cherry Festival. Two couples came for their honeymoon and that was fun. And an odd older couple showed up with some equipment that we think might have been for ghost hunting. We didn’t encourage them. Rhubarb Cottage was rented for nine weeks that summer.
Since my hopes of having guests in the lodge that first season had gone by the wayside, the new goal was to have most of the renovation finished before winter. Then, when it was too cold to work outside, I could work on prepping the lodge for painting in the spring.
Race and I had reluctantly decided we wouldn’t plan to do any traveling that first winter. We were watching our money, and there was still a lot to do if we were to be ready to open the lodge at the beginning of the next season.
Race spent time writing every morning, and then he would disappear into the tool shed. Using birch branches and recycled and scrap lumber from the renovation, he started with my list of frames, moved on to the flower boxes for the porch, and made serving trays by the box full until I said, “I think that’s enough.”
Someday, when we had a gift shop, we would have an inventory of Birchwood serving trays to sell, Race Coleman originals. With each piece his work improved, and he became quite the craftsman. I am sorry to admit this, but I didn’t think he had it in him. It just goes to show we’re all endowed with the spirit and ability to create.
Joel Morrison lived near Lucy’s place. He told me that she propagated red geraniums for the View Point Hotel and that she grew lots of other colors as well that she sold to residents. The next time I saw her downtown, I asked, “Lucy, Joel told me you sell geraniums too. I want some white ones. Do you grow white ones?”
“Yes.” She smiled and nodded enthusiastically.
“Can I buy some from you?”
“Yes.”
“When can I come to look at what you have?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What time?”
“Any time.”
The next day Race drove me to Lucy’s in the dray. The narrow dirt road that leads to Lucy’s house is cut through a heavily wooded forest that blocks out the sun’s rays. All at once, it opens up to a cleared couple of acres and a blast of color and sunshine. Lucy’s home sits in the middle of the clearing where her white clapboard-sided house, a little bigger than Rhubarb Cottage, is surrounded by flowers. It’s a scene that’s as cheerful as she is.
Lucy was kneeling in the flower beds. When she saw the dray, she jumped to her feet and ran out to meet us. I got out and she grabbed me by the hand and pulled me toward the house.
“Lucy, this is so beautiful,” I told her as we wove our way in and out of black-eyed Susans, zinnias, Shasta daisies, peonies, liatris, and phlox.
Lucy didn’t say anything. She just smiled big. At the side of the house were four old picnic tables covered with potted plants and more were lined up in neat rows on the ground. She pointed to the far table and I saw pots of white geraniums, fifteen healthy plants in full bloom. I bought them all.
I asked if Race and I could have a tour of the gardens and her greenhouse. A Victorian-style greenhouse sat next to Lucy’s cottage. A rock foundation held panels of white wood-framed glass accented with gingerbread detail, which lined the pitch of the roof. It was a charming old style with all of the modern ventilation, heating and cooling. Lucy had blooms all year.
The greenhouse was overflowing with dozens of seedlings and geranium starts that were all meticulously labeled with Popsicle sticks. Lucy even took us inside her house, which was draped with colorful fabrics and neat as a pin. In addition to the white geraniums, before we left Race and I had picked out two dozen more potted plants. The back of the dray was full.
When we got home, I took cuttings from Lucy’s geraniums and planted them in old baking pans that I had filled with a mixture of coarse sand and vermiculite. I watered the trays well, covered them with plastic, and set them on the back porch of the lodge.
I would nurse the cuttings along until fall, transplant them into small pots once they had rooted, and then move them to the laundry room for the winter. All of the cuttings would be repotted one more time in the early spring.
Hopefully, we would have geraniums to fill the flower boxes Race had made and they’d be blooming when the summer season arrived. Just like in the old photographs and in the postcards I had purchased at Harper’s Antiques, the porches would be lined with white blossoms.
By the end of July, the vegetable garden was producing abundantly and some of the fruit was ripening and ready to pick. I was setting up the lodge kitchen to do some canning to keep up with the harvest. Race was helping me carry jars from the cellar, and we were just stepping onto the lower stairs when we heard something and both froze.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
I could see by Race’s face that he had.
“Did you?” I asked again.
“Yes.”
“What was it?” My heart was pounding. “What did you hear?”
“Just the wind, probably,” Race answered.
“In the cellar? It didn’t sound like wind to me. It sounded like laughing.”
“Yes it did, a little bit.”
“Like children laughing.”
“Maybe.”
“Race, the voice I heard, I’ve always thought it was a girl, more than a woman. Our ghosts are children.”
Race went up to the kitchen and set the box of jars he was carrying on the counter and then went back down to the cellar. I followed. He pushed things around on the shelves and walked around the room. I shuffled behind him, his shirt bunched up in my fists, and the two of us listened. Paul and Janie would have loved it.
“Do you hear anything?” I asked.
“No.”
Race took me by the hand and led me up the stairs. When we were back in the kitchen, he suggested, “Wind can make odd noises.”
My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series) Page 21