Zack came to the rescue again. “Don’t talk the girl’s ear off. She needs her rest.” He turned to face her, want in his eyes. “If you’d like, I’ll stop by tomorrow and give you a lift to Josiah’s so you can get the rest of your things out of the car.”
Sam exercised her jaw to keep from yawning again. “Tracey said you were a teacher. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“Extended weekend—unused snow days.”
Aaron took off his cap and threw it on the counter. “We shouldn’t keep you standing here all day. I’ll give you the quick tour, then show you to your room so Zack can go home.”
“That’s OK. I’ll leave now. I’m supposed to meet Jonathan this afternoon. I’ll pick you up about nine?”
“Sounds good.”
When the door thudded behind Zack, familiar loneliness encased her.
Haven might be the bait, or maybe she was the lure. Something beyond her control landed her in Small Town, USA. In fact, Haven was the smallest town she’d ever been in. Curiosity compelled her to ask. “What’s the population here?”
Aaron lifted his hat and scratched his nearly bald head. “Last census said 1,500, half the size of Whitehall. Haven is an eclectic community—retirees, farmers, campers, mostly. Some independently wealthy folks live on the outskirts…”
Great, her temporary landlord liked to talk. At least, she didn’t have to worry about carrying on a conversation. Ask any open-ended question, and he’d likely spew for the next five or ten minutes, or longer. Maybe if she kept him talking long enough, she could size him up to prepare for her defense.
When Aaron paused for breath, she popped a question. “What time is court?”
“I hold court on Thursday afternoon, when I get back from fishing. Doc and I fish most mornings on Mirror Lake at Dawn’s Hope.”
“Sorry?”
“Dawn’s Hope—that’s Jonathan Gladstone’s place—where we found you.”
“I don’t remember you coming to my car. I’m glad you happened by, though. Who knows how long I might have been stuck in the ravine, otherwise. You probably saved my life.”
Aaron clicked. “Funny how it all worked out. Doc left at noon, but I stayed on a little longer. I took the access road to shave off a few minutes so I could get back to help Sadie with supper. You were passed out, and I couldn’t get the door open. I checked for any leaking gas. Quicker for me to hike up to the main house than drive the long way around.
“I appreciate your efforts.”
“I like to think the Good Lord watches out for us, helping us even though we don’t see His hand in things.”
Another involuntary yawn erupted. This was not the time for a theological debate on whether God watched out for fools and fishermen. “I suppose that’s true. You fish on private property?” She hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory, but what else did this justice do to stretch the law like a rubber band until it snapped?
“Jonathan has a cabin he lets us use, and he keeps the lake stocked with bass.”
“And he lets anybody on his property?”
“Not anybody. The property’s posted…absolutely no strangers. Let me introduce you around.” Aaron pointed toward two men bent over a shuffleboard table. Aaron’s voice echoed from beam to beam. “Everyone, this is Samantha Knowles.”
“Sam.” She hurled her name to a detached audience.
“My apologies,” Aaron said. “Sam Knowles. She’ll be renting a room upstairs for a few days.”
A rail thin man, late seventies, dressed in khakis and a camouflaged vest decorated with an assortment of hooks and bobbers, waved a greeting. If he and Aaron stood side by side, she’d have a photo op for Field and Stream.
“That’s Doc Hensen. He takes his shuffleboard as seriously as he does his medicine, retired now though…from medicine…not shuffleboard. That’s Murray standing next to Doc—Shuffleboard Champion four years running.
Murray hitched his backpacked oxygen tank to one side as he studied the board.
Doc rubbed white powder on his hands, picked up a blue disc, poised himself, then shot it across the board, pinching his lips together as it glided toward his target and hit the red disc with sufficient force to knock it into the dusty gutter. “Got ya, Murray!” Doc kept his eyes trained on the shuffleboard. “So this is the moose killer you told us about?”
Sam offered a smile, then retracted it when she saw Doc’s stoic face, an unreadable, not-even-Abe-could-decipher pose.
Aaron nodded in his fashion-twin’s direction. “When Doc isn’t fishing, he’s up here playing shuffleboard. Most days, he doesn’t go home until about six at night…says his wife doesn’t like him hanging around the house.”
Doc turned to face them. “Heard that Aaron. See, Miss Knowles—”
“Sam.”
“See, Sam, my wife wasn’t used to me being around all that much. So when I retired, I found a way to keep things normal. In the summer, I occupy my days by fishing. In the winter, I volunteer medical services at the city homeless shelters. The wife shops and sits on every charity board in Haven. Staying out of each other’s hair keeps the marriage happy, and we both have something to bring to the supper table.”
Perhaps Doc should moonlight as a couples’ therapist. She studied the Lighthouse’s décor.
Windows spread across two sides of the Lighthouse, each affording a view of the canal, while a fireplace took up most of the street-side wall. A series of doors aligned along the fourth wall, one she assumed led to a kitchen. Sam counted twenty lantern-adorned tables in seeming haphazard locations.
Aaron pointed toward white scripting on the crossbeams. “Those are Bible verses and prayers for the seafaring. Sadie did most of the painting and artwork …she likes to theme things. We found some of the first photographs taken of the place, so we’re trying to restore it according to the original layout when it was built in 1849.”
He led her to a card table where four very elderly ladies, old enough to be Methuselah’s sisters, played bridge. Their gazes met hers, then returned to their cards, dismissing her like a minor disruption.
“Don’t pay any attention to the gals, Sam. They’re pretty serious about their Bridge Club. Mazie, that’s Sadie’s mother, entertains her friends every forenoon come rain or shine.”
Sam turned back to the shuffleboard table as a red disc bumped Doc’s blue one off the playing surface, followed by an enthusiastic, “Touché!”
Murray re-adjusted his oxygen tank then picked up another disc.
Sam glanced toward the bar where two hefty men drank coffee and sprawled over four bar stools. Maybe Aaron knew her brain couldn’t handle a lot of names, and thankfully, he offered their first names only. Rusty, was Haven’s only plumber while Myron was helping Aaron install the new drywall in Sadie’s expanding gift shop.
Aaron walked behind the bar and filled a glass with tap water. “Dennis told me to make sure you drink lots of water. So here.”
Like an obedient child, Sam took the offering and gulped it down.
Aaron put his hat back on. “Ready? Follow me. Something I want to show you.” He led her behind the bar through patio doors that opened on to a wooden deck. He leaned over the rail as he pointed down river. “This end of the canal connects to the Hudson River and Lake Champlain.” He rattled off a series of fort names, a litany of landmarks he said were important during colonial times.
Some vague recollections of Mr. Gillette’s seventh grade social studies class skittered through Sam’s mind. Regrettably, the year was mostly a blur.
Aaron filled in the knowledge gap. “Ft. Ticonderoga’s up the road a piece. Folks around here are proud of their heritage. Whitehall, our neighboring town, is the birthplace of the American Navy. I’m not a New York native. Born and raised in Middlebury, Vermont. I retired a few years back, and then the wife and I moved here. I’ll tell you, Sam, I love this town as if I lived here my whole life.”
If she hadn’t yawned and nearly dropped her hobo collection cram
med into a thirty-gallon garbage bag, Aaron might have rambled geography and history lessons the rest of the day. “Poor girl. You’re probably exhausted. I’ll bring you to your room, now. Have you had any lunch yet?”
“I had a few crackers at the hospital.”
“That’s not a lunch. Sadie will send up some pea soup and grilled cheese.”
“She needn’t bother. I don’t eat much.”
“My wife will consider that a challenge. She’ll put some meat on those bones, or die trying.”
Aaron led Sam up a series of steps, each stair set off by hand-painted grapevines and labeled with two cities separated by a number. “What do these numbers stand for?”
Pride etched on Aaron’s brow. “These are the nautical miles from here to distant locations. Town legend says this bar was an inn for sailors making their way to the St. Lawrence River. Did you know that you can get most any place in the world by water?”
She figured she could have lived a lifetime without that piece of information, but didn’t want to alienate the judge. “No. I didn’t know that.”
Aaron led the way up another set of steps, but these spiraled and narrowed at the top. At the landing, he pointed to a closed door. “This first room is Leon’s. He was a high school English teacher in Albany. A philosopher, too, of sorts, I’m told. He wrote a lot of essays—never widely published, though, mostly a few literary journals. Leon’s ninety-four years old. You’d never guess it by the looks of him—takes the steps like a twenty-year-old and still walks a couple of miles every day, too. Out walking now, matter of fact.”
Aaron opened the door at the end of the hall, and Sam gasped at the Arthurian theme. Faux stone adorned the walls, and a circular, five-foot chandelier berthed the ceiling. In the midst of Camelot, four framed landscapes of a glassy lake surrounded by hyacinths caught her attention, anachronisms in a three-dimensional storybook.
Aaron answered before she asked. “That’s Mirror Lake in the middle of Dawn’s Hope, where Doc and I fish.”
A pungent, floral scent filled the room, and her eyes watered.
“You OK?”
“Fine.” She reached for a tissue from a canoe-like holder. “I get these olfactory hallucinations from time to time, where I think I smell hyacinths—probably a reaction to the landscapes.”
Aaron laughed. “No. You’re not hallucinating. Look over there on the side table. Zack brought these over this morning before he went to church.”
This kind of male attention she could get used to. “Zack mentioned Dawn’s Hope had hyacinths growing in the wild. Highly unusual.”
“Lord Gladstone, Haven’s founding father, planted gardens all around his estate and brought over a variety of plants from England, including the hyacinths. Unfortunately, Dawn’s Hope has had a century of troubles, and the gardens have fallen into disrepair, but the hyacinths, a hearty plant I’m told, survived. The groundskeepers manage beds throughout the estate at Jonathan’s insistence. However, most of Dawn’s Hope has reverted to the wild, except where the house stands.”
Sam’s eyes locked on the landscapes. “Did Jonathan Gladstone paint these?”
“I believe so. Gifted artist don’t you think? At least that’s what Sadie tells everyone. She’s his biggest fan.”
Serenity pulled her into their scenes. “I’d like to buy a landscape like these. Where can I find one?”
“These aren’t for sale, but Sadie has a few in her store.”
“Soups on!” The high-pitched voice wailed like a noon-day whistle. Soon, a pudgy, slightly-past-middle-age woman carrying a loaded tray appeared in the doorway. “I figured you might be a mite hungry…that hospital food ain’t fit for human consumption. I threw a couple of chocolate chip cookies on your tray, too. Leon’s favorite.”
An elderly man with a wispy voice bounded up the steps. “Now, Sadie, don’t go blaming me for making those cookies. I’m not the only one who’s partial to them.”
The woman turned. “Hello, Leon. Didn’t hear you come in.” Sam remembered the squeaky front door. How could anyone not hear someone come in?
Aaron kissed the woman on the cheek. “Sam, this is my wife, Sadie. And this crotchety fellow rents the room next to yours.”
Sadie turned toward Sam again. “I’ll put the tray in your room, dear. Now go on in and eat, while it’s warm. Then you can settle in. We’ll talk business later. This door doesn’t have an exterior lock but you can bolt the door from the inside for privacy.”
Leon stood in the hall, a gangly assortment of misshapen features—a nose too long for the face and protruding ears. “I usually take my meals downstairs. I came up to get my wallet. The boys challenged me to a game of shuffleboard soon as I came in the door.” He cupped his hands over his mouth and lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Beat ’em every time, I’ll have you know.” He opened his door, but from where she stood, she couldn’t see inside, and she wondered if Leon’s room had a theme, too. “Nice to meet you, Sam. I hope you’ll join us for shuffleboard when you’re feeling better.” He offered a flirtatious wink, hardly offensive; at ninety-four, probably all for show.
Sam winked back. “Hope so, too.”
“Get your stuff, get back downstairs, and leave the girl alone,” Aaron said, giving Leon a nudge. “She just got here.”
Leon laughed, went into his room and came out stuffing something in his pocket, presumably his wallet.
Sadie lingered in the room. “Need anything, dear?”
“No. Tracey thought of everything.”
“There’s a phone on the bedside table. Bert’s Tackle and Bait carries cellular phones, but the reception’s almost nil around here.”
“I’m not one for gadgets, except my computer. I only carried a cell for emergencies, and it didn’t do me any good when I finally had one.”
Sadie laughed. “The library has an Internet connection for the public and one of the cafés has that service, oh what do you call it?”
“Wi-Fi?”
“That’s it. Don’t use a computer myself. I do my bookkeeping the old fashioned way with pen and ledger.”
Sam shook her head with disbelief. Had she landed in a 1950’s sitcom?
“Holler down if you need anything. We practically live in the lounge.”
Sam’s spaghetti legs wobbled from exhaustion. She sat in a velvet-covered bedside chair, a queen’s throne, while Sadie lit the cast iron candelabra centered on the bureau. “I’ll bring up a snack around three, and supper about six o’clock. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be able to join us in the lounge for your meals.” She opened the armoire doors. “There’s the television. Make yourself to home. You can put your tray outside the door so we won’t have to disturb you.” With that, she left.
Sam managed to down half the soup, a few bites of the sandwich and one cookie. She put the tray into the hall as instructed, returned to the room and bolted the door, smiling as she traced the delicate carvings of the antique knife, forged and reshaped to function as a door handle, similar to the one she noticed on the street entrance.
She dumped out the bag containing borrowed clothes and a plastic tote with hospital-issue toiletries. She stored Tracey’s kind assortment in the top drawer, kicked off the sandals, then closed her eyes as she stretched out on the bed.
The late morning sun warmed the room, and visions of dancing hyacinths by a quiet lakefront filled Sam’s senses. What a wonderful place she’d happened into. Or, maybe she hadn’t been rescued as she thought. Maybe she died in that accident, and this was the heaven she didn’t deserve.
6
Zack cast his fishing line into the deeper water to his left while Jonathan kept his line in the shallows to their right. “Glad you finally changed your mind about fishing with me. Seems like old times, doesn’t it, you and me out here by the lake. Where did those teenagers disappear to, do you suppose?”
“You’re still that kid. As for me? Don’t know. Don’t know where I am half the time.”
“Hold that th
ought…I got a bite.” Zack reeled in the bass and measured it. “Twenty inches…a keeper.”
“Depends on whose chart you’re following. How much does it weigh?”
Zack placed the fish on his homespun scale. “Eight pounds, give or take a few ounces.”
“No game wardens here. Keep it. I’ll never tell.”
“This baby will make my mother happy. Mom loves freshwater fish.” Zack reached in for a worm, baited his hook, and recast to the same location. “Looks like I found a good spot. How’s your line coming?”
“Not a thing. That’s OK. Never got the thrill from fishing that you get. I thought I should try it one last time, though. But, whenever I’m near this spot, I wonder if I wouldn’t be better off if I joined Angelica.”
Did Jonathan intend to walk into the lake like Angelica, and a few of his ancestors? Suicide ran too rampant in the Gladstone legacy to ignore a statement like that, although Aunt Sadie would call Zack an alarmist. Let her. He refused to be one of those friends who skirted around the symptoms.
“Is that a threat, Jonathan?”
“No threat. I’m leaving for Paris soon. Maybe I won’t bother to come back.”
“You had me concerned there for a moment. I really wish you’d see a doctor about your depressed moods. Given your family history…”
“I’m not depressed, Zack. Just some days, I’m tired of living.”
Zack grabbed a can of coke, snapped open the tab, and guzzled it down. “Paris, huh? A bit of a jump, isn’t it? You hardly ever leave Dawn’s Hope. Why Paris?”
“To study.”
“Study what? Your landscapes have made you famous. What would Paris teach you?”
“Something other than landscapes.”
“Is that why you called me yesterday? You don’t need my permission, you know. Go if that’s what you’re itching to do.”
“Not that simple, Zack. Father’s will…it’s complicated. That’s why I’m looking for some legal help. Whoa…got a bite.”
The Other Side of Darkness Page 5