I didn’t want to let go of my vision of arriving by my own strength but relented. Though tracking Trinity down at Victor’s island seemed a little strange, I wasn’t about to turn back. “If you don’t mind. Yes.”
“So you better climb in my boat.”
Mrs. Worthington’s words rolled through my head: “A young lady should never get in an automobile with a young man unchaperoned.” I supposed a boat wasn’t much different.
“Besides, it’ll go better if we get the weight in one boat and pull yours empty.”
My shred of propriety floated away like a seagull feather, and as Owen held the two boats side by side, I climbed into his boat and settled on the long wooden seat beside him, without touching. The wooden steering wheel glistened from polish and the boat’s floor was spotless, without the usual refuse of empty bottles, dirty rags, buckets, and loose ropes in so many boats tied up at harbor. Two long, wooden boxes lined either wall of the boat’s interior.
“Not fish coolers,” he said. “They each hold an ice block and dairy. This is my delivery truck, of sorts.”
In no time, Owen had a rope tied to the rowboat’s bow. “Keep an eye on it while I steer.” The rowboat floated atop the frothy wake like a bobber.
“So you’re friends with Trinity, then?” he called above the Evinrude’s drone.
I didn’t know how to answer. Friends? Hardly. But what answer could I give that would satisfy him? “Sort of.”
“Y’know, Victor’s not real popular around here.” Owen raked his hand through his waves of russet hair. His eyebrows were red, too, but a lighter, sun-bleached color. “But he’s not bad. Just has different ideas, that’s all.”
“What are your ideas, Owen Jensen?” A surge of energy filled me. I enjoyed sitting nearly shoulder to shoulder. To be able to converse with someone was so freeing. Ask questions. Answer if I wished. Lightly engage with words as people do. The slate board had made me feel secure. It was a wall that kept me safe, yet it had also kept others from getting too close.
“Ha! You want to know my ideas? That’s pretty funny. ‘Better to be seen, not heard,’ my dad says. But hey, you asked.” He glanced away from the water and looked at me. “You’re serious?”
I nodded.
“First,” he said, “get the heck outta Ranier. My dad says I have to take over the creamery, but if I do, I’ll be stuck here forever. I’m saving my tips, and someday I’m taking a train outta here, going to college, and someday starting my own business.”
“To where?”
“Don’t know yet. A big city somewhere. Just not here.”
The sun was still climbing, brightening the sky into deep blues against puffs of white. Ripples of heat floated above the horizon. Birch trees dotted the shoreline.
A loon floated near, then dived and disappeared.
“What kind of business?”
“Not sure yet. I’ll keep you posted.”
A delicious wave passed through me as I ventured again beyond the confines of the Worthingtons’ home. How could I have gone so many years without getting to know others closer to my own age? I was a sailboat on its first voyage, hoisting the sail inch by inch up the mast, feeling each shudder as the wind flapped and filled the white unfolding.
We motored between two long islands, then to a cluster of pencil-thin islands, and Owen slowed his motor and glided between the familiar granite islands and into the protected dock at Falcon Island. Sun baked the orange and green lichen-covered rock on which the library building sat. Below it, the dock awaited us. Two fishing boats were tied up, and Victor’s canoe was flipped over on the dock, spine up to the grand sky.
Chapter 14
From the tiny library overlooking the dock, Trinity Baird emerged. Her hair was wet to her head, her red wool swimsuit hugged her breasts and circled her hips in a stripe of gray. When she spotted me, she smiled and waved. “Sadie Rose! You cut your hair! It’s the cat’s meow!”
Right behind her, Victor called. “Well, hello!”
“Hey,” Owen said, jumping from his boat and tying up. “Sorry if we disturbed anything!”
Heat rushed up my neck, feeling we’d intruded on something improper. Improper. I sounded just like Mrs. Worthington.
“Owen Jensen!” Victor called. “The creamery boy. What brings you to my fine shore twice in one day?”
Talk, I reminded myself. Try to act normal.
I blurted out, “How’s the water?”
“Oh, it’s divine!” Trinity exclaimed, sleeking her wet bobbed hair with her hands. More tan than usual for a woman of her social standing, Trinity perched on the high point of the granite rock wall, arched her hands over her head, and did a perfect dive into the deep water of the harbor—within feet of my rowboat, still tethered to Owen’s cruiser.
When she surfaced, she cooed. “How was that, Victor?”
“Sprightly,” he replied. Then he made his way down to the dock and began to secure my rowboat. “Now that you’re here, you two, do stay. Margaret has been busy making custard that I’m sure she’ll insist we all try.”
“Margaret?” I asked, as Victor extended his hand as a gentleman to help me from Owen’s boat.
“My mother,” he answered. “Came in yesterday from Red Wing.”
Trinity pulled herself up onto the dock. “That’s why we’re wearing suits,” she whispered, then laughed like a wind chime.
Victor shrugged. “Speak for yourself, Trinity. Some of us like to hold on to a little dignity—at least for appearance’s sake.” Then he slapped Owen on his shoulder, who was taller by at least ten inches. “Thanks to your delivery, Margaret has been pleasant all morning. How can I thank you?” He winked.
Owen’s gaze kept slipping off to Trinity, who leaned back, her chest to the sky, as she squeezed water from her hair.
I felt myself fading away in her presence. I suddenly wanted to leave as much as I wanted to stay.
“Victor,” Trinity said, her hand on her hip, “what do you think? Air-dry under the sun? Or do you have a towel I might borrow?”
But Victor was already heading toward the cabin on the eastern point. “I’m going to give Margaret a heads-up on company.”
When Trinity looked at Owen and me, I smiled thinly. I understood. We’d come at the wrong time. It was clear as rainwater that Trinity had her sights set on Victor Guttenberg.
Trinity leaned into me and whispered softly in my ear, “I’m crazy about him. Does it show?”
Lying, I shook my head.
“Good!” she said aloud. “Now, before Margaret calls us in for dessert, follow me!” Without checking to see if we wanted to follow, she led us from the dock to the top of the rock wall and the tiny building with red petunias in its window box. She opened the library door, allowing half a doorway for me and Owen to squeeze past her. I figured Owen didn’t mind.
Trinity danced with her arms arched over her head and fingertips meeting, as if she were a ballerina, twirled twice, and then pulled down a hefty book titled The Great Rebellion by J. T. Headley. From the space left behind, Trinity withdrew a silver flask.
“So that’s what you two were—,” Owen said, cocking his head slightly, his arms crossed in amusement.
“Sadly, not Victor,” Trinity said with an exaggerated down-turned lip. “He says he doesn’t mind what I do, but he doesn’t care for spirits of any kind. Alas. His loss. He’s too busy being . . .” She lowered her chin. “Serious.” Then she smiled mischievously. “To rebellion!”
She twisted off the flask’s top, tipped back its contents, and made a puckering face. Then she offered the flask to Owen, who obliged. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and though he sputtered and coughed, he kept it down. “Uff da!”
“Sadie,” Trinity exclaimed, “you’re next!”
I felt caught
off guard, as if I were heading out on recently frozen ice, so thin and so fresh that you barely knew it was beneath your feet and you could break through at any second. I was scared. But I was determined not to turn away from what might be a little fun for once in my life. Accepting the flask, I weighed the metal in my hand. After the way Mr. Worthington had treated me, trying to command me to stay imprisoned in the house, I felt I had every right to drink liquor—legal or not.
I lifted the flask to my lips and closed my eyes.
“It’s whiskey,” Trinity said, “straight from a blind pig at Kettle Falls.”
As I tilted the metal flask, ever so slowly, my mind filled with the image of my mother’s lifeless body. Propped in the corner. As her frozen fingers thawed, the whiskey bottle slipped from her grasp and lay broken on the floor. Over the years I’d heard Mrs. Worthington explain her death in hushed whispers, “Drank herself to death. So many do, you know.”
“We don’t have all day,” Trinity said, with teasing friendliness.
I pushed the flask away and tried to dispel the haunting memory with a shake of my head. “Sorry,” I said. “I just—not now.”
My throat was on fire, with wanting to explain. But how could I explain what I barely knew myself. That my mother had been found in the snow with an empty bottle of whiskey? That she’d been stood up in the council chambers as someone’s idea of a joke? That I’d been there, apart from my body, watching?
“Not to worry,” Trinity said. “It’s okay. You’re still young, Sadie. Just please don’t tell on us.”
I flinched. “Of course I won’t tell on you. I’m not a snitch.”
A bell rang out. Ding, ding, ding!
“That would be Margaret,” Trinity said. “We better not be late, or she’ll have our heads on platters for lunch.” She made a slashing motion across her neck and then tucked the flask back behind the book. “There. Better.”
That day, to my surprise, Owen seemed to find no reason to hurry back to his delivering job. Instead, he settled right in with us.
Together, he, Trinity, Victor, and I sat outside on a blanket and ate egg-salad sandwiches on porcelain plates and drank lemonade out of matching teacups.
“Margaret,” Victor said, waving to his mother, who was built like an icebox, her neck thick and sturdy. “This is Sadie Rose.”
I nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
Margaret Guttenberg nodded at me. “And you.”
“And you know the others,” Victor continued. “Sit and join us, Mother. For heaven’s sake, it’s okay to take a break.”
“No, you visit,” she ordered, her hair falling in a braid across her broad back as she left us near the shore. “I have catching up to do around here.”
We ate and talked, though in truth—I said the least of any of us. When I asked Victor about his father, I learned that his father had left him and his mother, and that he and his younger brother were raised with the help of a stern grandfather.
“Where’s your brother now?” I asked.
Victor looked toward the water. “He’s been gone a long time. Died when he was little—hit his head in a fall.”
“Oh. I’m sorry I asked.”
He waved away my concern. “Don’t be sorry. It was a long time ago.”
I wished for a bit of silence to acknowledge Victor’s loss, but Trinity didn’t miss a beat and jumped in with, “Did you hear about the fellow who drowned at Kettle Falls?”
Owen nodded, but I shook my head.
“He was walking the dam, drunker than a skunk.”
“That’s what I heard,” Owen said. “Fell right in and they had to wait ’til the rapids spit out his body. That’s some current there.”
“It’s a crazy place!” said Trinity. “I mean, you never know what you’ll see. It’s a whole little village out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Fishermen, fancy ladies, traders, Indians, businessmen—”
“And gamblers,” Owen added, “drinkers, and blind piggers. They hide their stills all through the woods behind the hotel. That way the federal agents can’t pin any business on the hotel itself. But everyone knows that Darla and her husband do a bustling trade. Someone’s loss is always someone else’s gain in this world.”
Trinity’s blonde hair glistened as it dried. “I love the bustle of that place, but I’ve only been there twice with my parents. Sometime I’d like to just sit in that saloon and watch.”
“It’s quite a place now,” Owen said. “They even have electricity—out in the middle of the wilderness.”
“Long as they keep their generator going,” Victor said.
“Trinity, you want to go there, you can catch a ride with me sometime. Or just take the steamer from Ranier,” Owen offered. “Leaves at 6 a.m., gets you to Kettle Falls by 1:00. You could go there every single day of the week, stay an hour, and catch the return trip back and be home by 8:30 or so in the evening. Think your parents would mind?”
“Ha,” Trinity said. “Last year I smoked and drank with artists and poets in cafés along the Seine. Cat’s pajamas! And then—then I return here for the summer and I’m treated like a child again, and held captive to my parents’ sense of decorum. I’m so tired of trying to act like a lady!” She picked up the glass, exaggerated extending her pinky finger. “Victor and Owen, you are both so lucky to be born male.”
Suddenly, with the talk of Kettle Falls and Darla, I remembered my photographs, tucked safely away in my sweater in the bow of Owen’s cruiser. I stood, my legs tingling from sitting for so long. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be right back. I want to show you all something.”
The impulse was so strong. It was as if I had this one chance and I needed to share my burden, to let them in on who I was. They might reject me, but it was a risk I had to take. I couldn’t carry this secret alone any longer.
I returned, holding the photos close to my chest, hesitating.
“Well, what’ve you got there?” Owen said.
Trinity laughed. “Are you going to show us or keep us guessing?”
Though I was embarrassed, I set the photos down in the center of the blanket.
For a few quiet moments, they studied the photographs. I waited anxiously, wondering how they would react. For all I knew, they might each turn away from me.
“Like shock therapy,” Trinity finally whispered, meeting my eyes. “The jolt shifted something in you, don’t you think?”
Victor looked at me. “This explains a few things. It helps.”
Owen lifted the picture of Mama sitting on the rock ledge, dangling her bare feet and smiling. “This one,” he said. “This was taken at Kettle Falls right near the dam. I was out to the hotel last week, delivering blue cheese for a guest. Thirty miles by boat—just for blue cheese. But that place is always hoppin’ with customers. Darla’s always asking me if I want a job out there.” He shrugged. “I’m busy enough as it is.”
The notion of going to Kettle Falls, meeting Darla, and asking for a job cropped up like new shoots of grass. With that notion and showing them the photos, a dull pain bloomed suddenly behind my eyes, and my vision began to blur. I closed my eyes, willing away the beginning of another headache.
“Sadie, sheesh, you don’t look good,” Owen said. “Maybe you better get out of the sun for a while.”
“No, I’m—”
But he was already leading me by the hand to the shade of a nearby tree. “Too much sun, that’s my diagnosis. I’ll get you a blanket to rest on and a glass of water. You’ll be good as new.”
I wanted to protest but eventually gave in and rested. Maybe it was too much sun. Or maybe it was far more complicated than that.
Chapter 15
On the picnic blanket, I raised up on my elbow, only now I was beneath the shade of trees. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed.
I sat up slowly, avoiding any sudden movements, pulled my skirt edge down, which had crawled above my knees.
“Nice legs,” he said with a nod and a smile.
It was improper, I was certain, but I liked knowing Owen appreciated them. A “thank you” might sound too forward. Better to say nothing at all.
“Sadie Rose, I’m going to have to get goin’ soon. I’ve one more delivery before my ice melts, but I wasn’t going to leave you here alone with your rowboat.”
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, dry as hardtack. I cleared my throat. “I can go anytime. But I’m so thirsty.”
“This way, Miss.” He stretched out his arm for me to take hold, and I did. Beneath his rolled-up sleeve, his arm was bony yet muscled. He led me to the stone walkway and the Guttenbergs’ pane-windowed cabin. We stepped inside.
Beside the empty hearth, Victor and Trinity sat in rocking chairs, like an old couple.
“Greetings,” Victor said, setting a photograph of moose on the floor. “I was just showing images from my last expedition. Amazing how the moose will ignore me, until they hear the click of my camera.”
Trinity tilted her head at me. “Feeling better?”
I tried to smile. Here I’d come uninvited to the island, trespassed perhaps on their time together, and then managed to get ill. Again. Mrs. Worthington always guessed my headaches—along with my lack of speech—were related to my high fevers as a child. No matter the reason, it was embarrassing.
Aware that I was missing something, I looked around the cabin lined with book-filled shelves. Off at one end, Margaret stirred something on the cookstove.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Trinity said. “I put them over there.” She pointed to the bench next to the entry door. The photographs lay neatly stacked on my red sweater.
As I collected them, Margaret turned from the kitchen, hands on her wide hips. “Victor showed them to me,” she said.
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