More Than Words Can Say

by Robert Barclay

  Chapter 8

  On reaching the end of Brooke’s first entry, Chelsea looked out over the waves of Lake Evergreen, thinking. She wanted to read more, but after checking her watch she realized that Brandon would arrive soon.

  Although her hand hurt a bit, she set the dining table and fed Dolly. At last she poured a glass of Margot’s wine and returned to sit on the porch and await Brandon. Soon Chelsea’s thoughts went back to the carefully written words of her late grandmother, which had finally returned to the light of day after nearly sixty years.

  Chelsea had found Brooke’s first journal entry heartwarming yet also a bit unsettling. Heartwarming in that it seemed wonderful to “hear” Brooke speak again, and to “see” her going about her life as a much younger woman—a woman whom Chelsea had of course never known. But it had been unsettling, too, because of how much Brooke missed her husband. And also because of how hard and lonely those times were for women like her, whose men were off fighting the war. Perhaps most important, Chelsea was coming to sympathize with Brooke’s plight during a time in her grandmother’s life about which she had heretofore known so little. Sighing lightly, she took her first sip of the excellent wine that the Fabiennes had brought.

  And I have a feeling that this journal has much more to tell me, she thought. But what will those things be?

  Just then Chelsea heard someone shout, causing her to gaze down the shoreline. Brandon and Jeeves were racing down the length of their dock and heading toward the lake. Brandon wore only swim trunks, and when he and Jeeves reached the dock’s end they both leaped into the water. Brandon had taken a bar of soap with him, and he began washing himself with it. While Jeeves swam happily around in little circles, Brandon submerged for a few moments, then he surfaced again, laughingly rubbing his face.

  A bit later they scampered back to their cottage. As Chelsea watched Brandon go, she felt an unexpected tug on her heart. Although the feeling surprised her, she found it pleasant.

  A man and his dog . . . , she thought. Some things in this world never change . . .

  But what she had just seen was more than a simple case of “a man and his dog,” she soon realized. It was another example of Brandon living the way he wanted. Here, she was starting to understand, the rules were oftentimes whatever one made them.

  She then cast her gaze out across the waves again. The sun had nearly finished setting against the opposite side of the lake, giving one the impression that it was being literally engulfed by the waves. It was a beautiful thing, making Chelsea wonder how many times Brooke had also sat here and enjoyed this same spectacle.

  It seemed to her that whenever Brooke visited Lake Evergreen, she had been whole and happy, with most of her life still ahead of her. Then Chelsea sighed again as she compared this lovely image to the other day at her mother’s house, where she had sat alone on a different porch, staring glumly at her grandmother’s abandoned things.

  Chelsea again felt for the necklace beneath her shirt and the little silver-plated key that now hung from it. She guessed that it was here at Lake Evergreen where Brooke had always been her most vibrant, her freest, and her happiest. And during the few short hours she had been here, Chelsea could already sense those same feelings starting to overcome her, too. As she took another sip of wine and her jazz CD played pleasantly, her thoughts again turned to Brandon.

  In his own rugged way he was certainly handsome; even the mysterious scar on his cheek seemed to somehow suit him. And he was intelligent, obviously. He wore no wedding ring, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved with someone. From what little Chelsea knew about him, he seemed honest and caring.

  But appearances can be deceiving, she reminded herself. And the best men are usually taken, anyway. Harvard Medical School, no less . . . Impressive . . . How does a Harvard-educated doctor end up in Serendipity, New York, making house calls from a floatplane? I’ll bet that’s an interesting story . . .

  Just then Dolly let go a soft growl. When a brisk knock came on the screen door, Chelsea jumped a little.

  “Permission to come aboard?” someone asked.

  Relieved to see Brandon, Chelsea smiled. “Permission granted,” she answered.

  “Can Jeeves come in too?”

  “Sure,” Chelsea said. “What kind of dinner party would it be without the Jeeves ’n’ Dolly show?”

  As Jeeves and Dolly approached one another, yet more tense and inappropriate sniffing ensued before they finally settled down.

  “They’ll get over that in a few days,” Brandon said.

  Chelsea snorted a little. “That would be nice. It’s pretty indiscreet!”

  Brandon was wearing worn jeans, a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and old boat shoes. Although his thick, damp hair had been brushed back, it was already starting to drift down over his forehead again. Chelsea also noticed that he had brought along a six-pack of Canadian ale and a pair of beer bottle cozies.

  “Thanks, but you didn’t have to do that,” she said. “We’ve got the Fabiennes’ wine, remember?”

  “I know,” Brandon answered as he carried the beer into the kitchen and loaded it into the refrigerator. “Just being neighborly.”

  When Brandon didn’t soon return to the porch, Chelsea began to wonder what was taking him so long. Just as she was about to call out to him, she heard him laugh uproariously. She turned and looked into the kitchen to find Brandon leaning against the counter and reading Brooke’s old cookbook. When she unpacked, Chelsea had left it on one of the countertops.

  “What’s so funny?” she called out.

  Still laughing, Brandon brought the cookbook and some wine out onto the porch, and he sat down.

  “God,” he said. “Your grandmother certainly was a card, wasn’t she?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You mean to say that you don’t know?” he asked. “You’ve read this, right?”

  Chelsea shook her head. “Actually, no,” she answered. “I’ve owned it for only a few days, and I haven’t had the chance to look at it yet. What’s so funny?”

  Brandon handed the cookbook to her. “Take a look,” he said. “Brooke must have written it while she was up here during the summer of 1942.”

  Her curiosity piqued, Chelsea opened the old book. On the first page, Brooke had written:

  Brooke Bartlett’s Wartime Recipes for Total Victory!

  Summer 1942

  Lake Evergreen, New York

  Chelsea turned the page to find a list of original recipes and the corresponding page number where each one could be found. Again, everything was handwritten in black fountain ink. As Chelsea scanned the list she too couldn’t help but laugh, while also suddenly remembering the homemade pie that Brooke had described in her first journal entry.

  The notebook included such other original creations as Patton’s Pork Chops, Eisenhower’s Eggs Benedict, Roosevelt’s Roast, and MacArthuroni and Cheese, to name but a few. Chelsea then turned to the page for something called Montgomery’s Mutton to find that a recipe for it actually existed and that it sounded quite good. At last she set the old book down on the table between her and Brandon.

  “See what I mean?” Brandon asked.

  “Is this the sort of thing that happens to your mind if you stay here long enough?” Chelsea asked laughingly.

  Brandon smiled. “I don’t know,” he answered. “But I can tell you two things, for sure.”

  “And what are they?” Chelsea asked.

  “Your grandmother was certainly someone I would have enjoyed knowing,” he said.

  “And the other?” Chelsea asked.

  “The MacArthuroni and Cheese sounds incredible,” he said.

  While the quiet reigned once more, they sipped their wine as the waves lapped at the shore, and the sun continued its nightly vanishing act. Some stars started blinking through heaven’s increasingly dark canopy, and the night creatures began their nocturnal warblings. As far as Chelsea was concerned, the rest of the world no
longer existed. Then she remembered Brandon’s earlier comment that day, when they had first come out here. He had cryptically mentioned thinking of someone and how it sometimes happened to him.

  “Someone” and “sometimes,” Chelsea thought. Who is that person, I wonder? After considering it for a few more moments, she decided to leave it alone for now. Maybe later, she thought, after we know one another better. But there is something that I’m dying to know . . .

  She turned and looked at him. “Forgive me if I’m being forward,” she asked. “But I presume that you’re not married, right?”

  To Chelsea’s mild surprise, Brandon’s expression darkened a little. “That’s right,” he finally answered. “Never have been.”

  Despite his slight melancholy, Chelsea decided to risk asking another question. “Anybody special in your life right now?” she inquired gently.

  After shaking his head, Brandon took another sip of wine. “No,” he answered. As if unsure, he paused for a moment. “And what about you?” he asked. “Is there anybody special in your life?”

  One corner of Chelsea’s mouth turned up into a little smile. Turnabout is fair play, she thought.

  “No, there isn’t,” she answered. “So tell me,” she said, deciding that it was a good time to switch the subject, “how long have you owned your cottage?”

  “For ten years now,” he answered. “I bought it from an old, lifelong bachelor who had become too ill to enjoy it anymore. He was a portraitist, I’m told. Because he was dying and had no heirs, he sold the cottage furnished. Most of the stuff was too beat-up to keep, but I did hold on to some of the nicer things. And from what the Fabiennes told me, your great-grandfather built this cottage way back in the thirties, right?”

  Chelsea nodded. “He was a Syracuse newspaperman who died young,” she answered. “This was supposed to be his place to get away from everything, but he was a workaholic, and he never got up here much. Then the war started and as you can imagine, it was even more impossible for him to leave. As best I know, Brooke spent at least one of her wartime summers here alone.”

  “I’m sure that I would have enjoyed knowing her,” Brandon said.

  Chelsea nodded. “Everyone did,” she answered. “Soon after her husband, Bill, shipped out for England, Brooke gave birth to my mother, Lucy. But six months after Lucy’s birth, Brooke’s car was viciously struck by a drunk driver, pinning both her legs beneath the dashboard. Blessedly, Lucy was not with her. The other driver died immediately, and Brooke was condemned to live out the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Despite Brooke’s misfortune, not once did I ever hear her complain or rail against God for having done such a terrible thing to her. Instead, she decided to concentrate on what she could do, rather than what she could not.”

  Pausing for a moment, Chelsea took another sip of wine and gathered her thoughts.

  “As best I know,” she said, “with her mother’s help, Brooke then focused all of her attention on raising my mother. She also began to paint and cook. Later in life, she became something of a force in Syracuse’s various social circles. But to everyone’s surprise, after her accident she never revisited this cottage. No one knew why and she never said, which made her attitude all the more odd, because with help she could have surely returned. And although she refused to revisit the cottage, she also refused to sell it.”

  “She sounds like she was something of a dynamo,” Brandon said, “despite having been in a wheelchair.”

  “Yes,” Chelsea answered softly, remembering. “That she was.”

  Brandon was easy to talk to, she was learning. There was something calm and confident about his behavior, his speech, the way he moved. And he never seemed pushy or self-absorbed, like some other men who had been overly eager to impress her. He seemed to live on a timetable of his own choosing, with priorities to match. And the more she saw of him, the more endearing he became.

  “So shall we eat?” she asked. “I don’t know about you, but the smells coming from the kitchen are driving me crazy.”

  Brandon quickly grinned at her. It was good to see him smile again, she realized.

  “Sure,” he answered. “But I’ll take care of things. You rest that hand of yours.”

  As they went into the kitchen, the dogs followed and hunkered down hopefully near the potbellied stove. Brandon took Margot’s dish from the oven and placed it on a trivet. When he removed the lid, the enticing aromas fully escaped at last, causing the dogs to take full and proper notice. He then cut the bread and plated the coq au vin.

  As Chelsea took her first bite, her face lit up. “Oh . . . my . . . God . . . ,” she said softly. “It’s amazing. The best I’ve ever had.”

  “Yes,” Brandon answered. “Just like the two people who brought it.”

  Chelsea took another sip of wine to find that it went perfectly with the chicken. “So what’s their story?” she asked. “I know that my great-grandfather hired them sometime after Brooke’s accident, but that’s about it.”

  Brandon wiped his mouth with his napkin. “They were both born and raised in France,” he said. “After they married, they emigrated to Quebec and finally settled in Serendipity. Jacques started doing odd jobs, and he answered the caretaker ad that Brooke’s father had placed in the paper. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  After a time, Chelsea finished her meal and sat back in her chair. The rich French wine was starting to take effect, emboldening her a little. After such a long and momentous day the sensation was welcome, but her injured hand had begun throbbing again.

  “So tell me,” Chelsea said, “what’s Dr. Brandon Yale really like?”

  Brandon smiled. “Well,” he said, “he’s not perfect, certainly, but most folks seem to think he’s a pretty good guy. He likes bourbon, hunting and fishing, flying around in his plane, and watching old movies. And he likes to try to help people when he can, such as opening up old cottages for new neighbors.”

  Chelsea smiled to herself. And so a picture starts to emerge . . . , she thought.

  “May I ask you another question?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  Chelsea placed one elbow atop the table and rested her chin in her uninjured palm. “How’d you get that scar?” she asked.

  Brandon shook his head and snorted slightly. “Before college, I joined the army and became a ranger,” he answered. “My folks weren’t well-off, and it helped to pay the tuition. That’s also where I learned to fly. Anyway, I wish I could say that I got this scar from some special ops mission, but I can’t.”

  “So how did you get it?” she asked again.

  Brandon let go a rather chagrined smile. “I got drunk one night, while on leave in Wyoming,” he answered. “On my way out of the bar, I stumbled straight into one of the saloon’s swinging doors. Knocked me right on my butt. Pretty embarrassing for a ranger.”

  Chelsea couldn’t help but laugh. “Well,” she said, “at least you’re honest.”

  Brandon laughed a little. “My friends had to pick me up and load me into my car. No man left behind, as we rangers say!”

  “We seem to be quite out into the boondocks here,” Chelsea said. “Is there anyplace nearby where I could pick up a few things, without having to drive all the way into Serendipity?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Brandon answered. “There’s a combination diner and sundry shop about two miles west of here on Schuyler Road. A lady friend of mine named Jenny Beauregard owns it. Some of the retired locals gather there every morning for coffee and gossip. The store part doesn’t carry a lot of things, just the necessities. But the food and coffee are good, and the place might save you a longer trip one day. Sometimes I stop there and get a cup to go while I’m on the way to the hospital.”

  “Thanks,” Chelsea answered. “I’ll remember that.”

  Chelsea sat back in her chair and looked at him. She was beginning to like this man, she realized. Just then Chelsea’s injured hand bit her again, and she winced slightly.

&nb
sp; “You go back onto the porch and sit down,” Brandon said. “I’ll clean up the mess.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Yeah. In fact, it’ll be kind of a treat for me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this cottage of yours is quite possibly the only one on all of Lake Evergreen that has an actual, working dishwasher, that’s why,” he answered.

  After Brandon had cleaned things up, he again joined her on the porch, as did the dogs. Night had fallen in earnest, and Chelsea was becoming tired. But at the same time she was enjoying his company, and she wasn’t eager to see him leave.

  “I should go home,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” she asked rather quickly. Then she caught herself, wondering if she had sounded too forward, too interested. The wine, she realized.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “And besides, you look like you could use some rest.”

  Just as Brandon was about to leave, he realized that he had nearly forgotten something.

  “Before I go,” he said, “do you remember the beer that I brought? Well, I actually had an ulterior motive. Watch this!”

  Before Chelsea could ask what he was talking about, Brandon looked down from his chair and shouted, “Jeeves! Fetch!”

  “Huh?” Chelsea asked.

  Brandon winked at her. “Check this out,” he answered.

  To Chelsea’s amazement, Jeeves immediately bounded up from the floor and scurried into the kitchen, where he skidded to a stop on the linoleum floor directly before the refrigerator. From where they sat, Brandon and Chelsea could easily turn and see. Although Chelsea hadn’t noticed before, at some point during the evening, Brandon had apparently tied a kitchen towel to the refrigerator door handle. Jeeves promptly bit into the end of the dangling towel. Then he squatted down on his haunches and yanked the refrigerator door open, the various items in the door shelves rattling noisily.

  My God . . . , Chelsea thought. I must be seeing things . . .