“Sensible.” Mrs. Calderwood nodded to herself.
“Never?” Alex’s question was directed at Elly. “Really?”
Elly shrugged. “I don’t think so. It’s just so…I don’t know…dangerous.”
Alex sighed and took up the bottle of whisky, pouring a dollop into the bottom of her teacup before she poured in the tea.
“You take tea the way my husband did,” Mrs. Calderwood observed.
“It’s the best way.” Alex took a sip. “Especially after a long ride.” Her gaze flicked up to Elly’s, and she winked.
“You came all the way from Calgary today?”
“We did stop a couple of times,” Elly said. “But it was a long ride. Not nearly as comfortable as a car.” She poured her own cup of tea to cover her embarrassment, hoping that Mrs. Calderwood wouldn’t recognize Alex’s double entendre.
“You don’t speed, do you?” Mrs. Calderwood looked at Alex.
“No, I don’t,” she replied. “Not with a passenger.”
“So you do, then, sometimes?” Elly couldn’t resist asking. It had been a blatant lie, but to Mrs. Calderwood, the truth would have been a bad thing.
“On occasion. But it’s perfectly safe.”
Mrs. Calderwood tsked. “Not much to protect you from the road, or other cars. Or”—she shuddered—“trucks.”
“I’m a skilled rider,” Alex said, sounding defensive. “I’ve taken all the courses, and I pay attention to the road.” She looked at Elly, but Elly didn’t know what to say. Did Alex expect her to back her up? Several times that afternoon, she’d thought Alex had been going way over the speed limit, but she couldn’t be sure. Being on the bike made almost every speed seem too fast.
“You’d be better off without the bike,” Mrs. Calderwood proclaimed. Elly cringed, seeing Alex stiffen. It was just Mrs. Calderwood’s way, but she had no way of explaining it to Alex, not while the widow was still there.
Alex rose. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I need to make sure the bike is tucked out of the weather, in case it rains tonight.” She left the kitchen, her tea only half-drunk.
“I hope you’re not riding with her all the time,” Mrs. Calderwood said, turning to Elly and sipping her tea. “It’s just so dangerous. What would your parents think?”
“I don’t know what they’d think,” Elly said, her throat tight. “It was never a subject that came up.”
“I’m sorry to mention them, dear,” Mrs. Calderwood said, patting her hand. “I know you must miss them desperately. A year isn’t very long at all.”
Elly nodded, looking down into her teacup, pressing her lips together. A year wasn’t very long, hardly any time at all. And being away from the farm made it worse, especially now that she was back. Her apartment in the city had no reminders of them, and it wasn’t home.
“Oh, Elly.” Mrs. Calderwood’s voice was soft, and Elly looked up. The widow was teary-eyed, and at the sight, Elly had to swallow and blink hard in order to keep her own tears at bay. Mrs. Calderwood patted her hand again. “I should go. You need a bit of time, I’m sure.”
She rose from the table and Elly rose with her, walking her to the door. “I’m glad you came over,” she said. “Don’t mind Alex, though. She doesn’t mean to be standoffish.”
“Not a worry. That one’s used to having her own way, I can tell. Reminds me of me, back then. Now, if you need anything, you call me, you hear?”
“I will.”
Elly walked Mrs. Calderwood to her car. Alex and the bike were nowhere to be seen, but Elly knew she hadn’t gone far. She’d have heard the engine, after all.
Mrs. Calderwood pulled out of the driveway and drove slowly down the road, giving Elly a wave as she went. Only once the car had disappeared over the hill did Alex reappear, coming around the side of the house.
“So she’s gone?” Alex asked, coming to stand beside her.
“She is,” Elly confirmed. “I wish you’d stayed. She’s actually quite nice, you know.”
Alex shrugged. “That type is never really nice. My own grandmother is like that, a busybody, nosy sort. You couldn’t do a damn thing without her finding out and scolding you for it.”
“Still, Mrs. Calderwood is a friend.”
“Some friend.” Alex turned toward the house.
Elly trailed her back inside, frowning. “I know she’s not always the nicest of people, but she means well.” She tried to explain, but her words felt hollow.
“Don’t worry about me, El. I’ll be fine.” Alex pulled off her boots and headed back into the kitchen. “Are you sure we should stay overnight? If we left now, we could be back not too late.”
“That’s a long ride for an evening,” Elly said. “And we just got here. I don’t want to go back yet.”
Alex sat down at the table and took a sip of her tea. She rose again and took her cup to the sink, dumping the cold tea and whisky. She filled her cup from the pot and retraced her steps. “Just a thought,” she said, adding a dollop of whisky to her cup.
Elly took up her own cup and refilled it. “You don’t like it here much, do you?” She had to ask.
“It’s all right,” Alex said. “I’m just not used to it. I like the city. Love it. And being without my phone is driving me nuts.” She touched her phone where it lay on the table, spinning it on the faded gray surface. “I keep wanting to check for messages, then remember I can’t.”
“We can do other things,” Elly said. “Do you like board games? Or we could talk, or read, or…” She couldn’t think of anything else. Well, besides that.
“Board games?” Alex’s doubtful tone startled her.
“Yeah. They can be fun, you know. Didn’t you ever play Monopoly? It can get pretty cutthroat.”
“I figured there wasn’t much else to do in the evenings but shag,” Alex remarked. “I bet that’s why farmers always had lots of kids.”
Elly coughed, sputtering on her tea. “Not in my house. I was an only child.”
“Birth control,” Alex said wisely. “But before then, lots of kids.”
Once she’d regained her control, Elly asked, “Do you have any siblings?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t seen her in ages. I’m not even sure where she’s living.”
“You don’t even know where your sister lives?” Elly couldn’t hide her surprise. If she had a family still, she’d know where all of them were and would see them as often as she could. She couldn’t imagine not knowing.
“She was in Vancouver a while back, but she moves around a lot.” Alex shrugged. “It’s always been that way.”
“Oh.” Elly stifled the feelings of pity. Not everyone’s family was close like her own had been.
“I don’t mind,” Alex said. “She’s five years older, so we never really played together much as kids, and she left home as soon as she could. But I don’t really want to talk about family, there’s not much to say, and what there is sucks.”
Elly turned her teacup back and forth, not sure what to say to that.
Alex rose again and paced to the kitchen window. “Looks like it might rain,” she said conversationally, filling the silence.
“I like it when it rains,” Elly said. “In my bedroom, you can hear it on the roof. I used to fall asleep to it. I miss that, in the apartment. I can’t hear a thing.”
“Too bad you didn’t get a top-floor apartment,” Alex said, turning back to her.
“I could have, but it was too expensive.” Elly finished her tea and brought the cup to the sink. She glanced out the window at the sky. The clouds hung dark on the horizon, quickly getting closer.
“I put the bike in the barn out back,” Alex said, “in case you’re wondering. It was empty in there so I figured it would be all right.”
“It’ll stay dry there,” Elly replied.
“You know, for a farm, there sure aren’t any animals around.”
“We had a few, but not many. Once my father passed away, my mother couldn’t keep up with
all the work, so we sold most of them.”
“I suppose you had to muck out stalls as a kid.”
“All the time.”
“Gross. I don’t know how you could stand it.” Alex shuddered.
“It wasn’t too bad.” It had been life, and she hadn’t minded it most of the time.
“At least you don’t need to now.”
Elly wanted to be able to. That would mean she’d be able to afford the place, instead of being in a tiny apartment hearing sirens every night. She looked out the window again. No sirens here, no ambulances speeding by. Just fields.
Alex brought her cup to the sink and rinsed it out. “What shall we do now?”
“Want to see the house? The rest of it, I mean?”
“Sure. How much of it is there?”
Elly smiled to herself. “More than you might think.”
Chapter Eight
Alex followed Elly from the kitchen and back into the hall. She opened a door Alex hadn’t noticed, just below the stairs, and pulled the chain on a light. A set of wooden steps was illuminated, leading to a cement floor.
“It’s mostly storage down here,” Elly said. “But we used to play down here too, in the summertime when it was too hot to do anything else. There were lots of great hiding spots among the boxes. One time Jack climbed up into the ceiling, hiding on top of the ventilation. We wouldn’t have found him except for the noise.”
“Did he fall off?”
“Collapsed part of the tin. It made an awful racket, and my dad wasn’t pleased. Jack was too heavy to be up there.” Elly shook her head. “I’ll need to go through all the boxes, eventually.”
“Your parents kept a lot of stuff.” Alex had never seen such a collection of clutter in her life. She’d certainly never had it in her own place, or when she still lived at home.
“They didn’t want to throw anything out if it could be used again.” Elly shrugged. “Their families lived through a lot of hardship, so they learned those habits.” She peeked into a box and pulled out a photo album.
“Makes sense, but it’ll be hell to clean when you sell.”
Elly opened the album, and Alex peered over her shoulder, trying not to block the light. The pictures were old, starting to yellow, but from the looks of the clothes worn by their subjects, they were perhaps thirty or forty years old.
“Who are they?” Alex pointed to a young couple mugging for the camera. The guy had shoulder-length curly hair, and the girl was short and slim, with a pixie cut.
“Mom and Dad,” Elly said, touching the edge of the photo with a fingertip. “That was high school, 1971, I think. Maybe a bit earlier.”
“You look like her.”
“A bit.”
Alex looked more closely at the photo, and several others around it. “I can see the resemblance with both of them.”
“I got my dad’s curls,” Elly replied, her voice shaky. She closed the album and put it back in the box, sliding the lid closed. “Sorry, it hurts to look at them.”
“They weren’t very old when they died.” The gentle statement came out more like a question, though Alex hadn’t meant it to sound that way.
“Car crash, and cancer.” Elly sighed. She turned away, heading back upstairs. Alex followed, shutting the basement door.
“I’m sorry.” She knew it wasn’t much, but she had to say something.
“It’s all right,” Elly said, resting her hand on the banister. “It’s still hard sometimes, though.”
Alex rested her hand over Elly’s, wanting to do more, but not sure what to do. Her family hadn’t really been affectionate, and any funerals she’d been to had been straitlaced, stiff-upper-lip type affairs.
Elly stepped forward, and Alex found herself embracing her, the movement surprisingly natural and easy. Alex stroked slowly down Elly’s back, up and down, and she felt Elly relax against her, taking a deep breath. They stayed that way for several minutes, until Elly straightened and eased herself away.
“Thanks.” Elly paused at the front door, seeming more herself. “If you want, we can go out to the shed. That’s my favorite place. If it does start to rain, we can always run back. It’s not far.”
“Sure.” Alex sat down on the stair to pull on her boots, and Elly laced up a pair of battered old sneakers that sat next to the door. Once outside, they headed around the side of the house. Alex had seen the shed when she went to move the bike, but it had several steps up and she hadn’t wanted to shift the bike that far. Elly took a set of keys from her pocket and unlocked the door. It didn’t look like much from the outside, just a weathered gray wood building, past its prime.
“So, why do you like the shed?” Alex asked.
Elly turned on the light. There was a worktable, and tools hung along one wall, scraps of wood piled in a bin near the door, but then there were shelves—shelves filled with bric-a-brac, an antique hunter’s dream. Tons more clutter. Alex could picture at least two Dumpsters filled with the stuff Elly’s parents had accumulated.
Alex stepped around Elly and went to one of the shelves, lifting a box of washing powder that sat unopened. The label was old-fashioned, a simple typeface and basic color scheme that she’d never seen on that brand, not ever. Next to it were two sets of salt and pepper shakers, one a set of smiling tomatoes, and the other a fancier, though tarnished, silver. She picked up each of these in turn.
“See what I mean about the shed?” Elly stepped up beside her.
“What is all this stuff?”
“Family stuff, some from my grandparents, or great-grandparents, that sort of thing. My dad didn’t know what to do with it, so it ended up out here.” Elly lifted one of the tomatoes. “These were my great-grandmother’s. She bought them at the store in town, way back when. The silver ones are from her grandmother, but she never liked them as much, as she thought they were too fancy for everyday. She told my mother that she wouldn’t have anyone thinking they were too good.”
“Do you know stories like that for everything here?” Alex swept an arm toward the shelves, piled as they were with various odds and ends.
“Pretty much.” Elly moved to a shelf on the other wall, rising up on her toes to grab a box from a higher shelf. A wave of dust covered her when the box tilted down, and she sneezed, twice, then again. She turned and set the box on the worktable and lifted the lid. Alex peered in, but all she could see was plastic.
“What is it?”
Elly sneezed again and rubbed her nose. “Teacups.” She lifted the plastic carefully and revealed a mass of crumpled paper inside the bag. Setting it on the worktable, she drew out one of the lumps of paper, unwrapping it slowly to reveal a delicate china cup with a gold rim and painted with tiny pink roses. “My mother always worried that they’d be broken if we used them or kept them in the kitchen, so she wrapped them up and stuck them out here. A shame, really. They’re so pretty.”
Alex didn’t quite see the fascination. A teacup was a teacup; she was sure she’d seen many similar ones at thrift shops and the like, but she didn’t want to say as much to Elly, who handled the cup with the care one might give to a Ming vase.
“My great-great-grandmother brought these with her from Germany,” Elly explained, carefully wrapping up the teacup once more.
“You should bring them into the house,” Alex said. “Use them.”
“I don’t know.” Elly bit her lip, putting the wrapped cup back into the bag and placing the bag carefully in the box.
“Good Lord, El. No one will scold you,” Alex said, giving her a gentle nudge. “And we can have tea in them in the morning, like old-fashioned ladies.”
Elly chuckled. “You, old-fashioned?” she teased.
“I can pretend. If you can look past the jeans.”
“I’m sure I can.” Elly put the lid back on the box. She glanced around the shed. “I don’t think there’s anything new since I was last in here.”
“You should take the salt and pepper shakers with you back to Calgary,” A
lex suggested. “They’re small enough to fit in the saddlebag.”
“I should.” Elly went to the shelf and picked up the two tomatoes. She handed them to Alex. “Let’s go back to the house.” She picked up the box and went to the door, peering out.
“Raining yet?” Alex came up behind her. She held a tomato in each hand and felt rather silly.
“Not yet, but it will be. Can you get the light?”
Alex pulled the chain, plunging the shed into darkness. They stepped outside and Elly locked the door. Alex felt a spatter of rain hit her cheek.
“Hurry,” she urged, nudging Elly in the back. They scrambled across the grass, now damp, and toward the house. As they reached the covered porch, the sky broke open and rain spilled down, pattering heavily on the gravel drive, pinging off the eaves troughs.
“That was close,” Elly said. Alex pushed the door open.
The rain struck the kitchen window as they brought their finds into the kitchen, placing them on the table. The tomato salt and pepper shakers were bright against the dull gray of the Formica, but they looked as if they belonged. Alex pushed them to the center of the table, bracketing the napkin holder that sat there.
Elly opened the box again and lifted out the bag. She slowly unwrapped the teacups, all six of them, and placed them carefully in their saucers. Three were patterned with the roses they’d seen earlier, and the other three were patterned with delicate purple violets. “I think there were four of each, originally,” Elly said, fingering the gilt rim of one cup. “Do you think we could fit these in the saddlebags too?”
Alex calculated their size. “We should be able to, but not in the box. Wrapped in paper and plastic they should be safe enough. I think.”
“Good.” Elly’s smile, absent since the conclusion of Mrs. Calderwood’s visit, returned.
Elly did seem in her element here, relaxed and moving about, puttering in the kitchen, and finally sitting on the worn sofa in the living room. Far different from the tension that seemed to fill her when they’d been at the bar, or even anywhere in the city. Maybe that was what home was like, and security, the certainty of family. Alex didn’t know, but a flicker of envy and worry shot through her.
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