“Hope we didn’t wake you up last night?” he asked.
She wiped some bacon drippings off her chin.
“I did hear something once. Voices. Was that you?”
“Emma came in and kicked up a fuss. Nate’s wife. My sister-in-law. She wanted me to take Mother in. Nate went and got her because of the storm. But Emma and Mother can’t stand each other.” He sipped his tea, loudly and a little sloppily. “Mother isn’t an easy woman. Used to calling the shots. And she cusses. I think you’d be kinda shocked.”
Lori’s breakfast tasted better now.
“Look, I should go home. Then you could have your mom here.”
“She doesn’t want to come. My kitchen’s not good enough for her. Emma always wanted a new kitchen. So she has to put up with Mother.” He sounded amused.
“My mom hardly cooks at all,” said Lori. “She eats out or gets delivery. She just works too much.”
“What’s she do?”
“She’s a defense attorney.”
“A lawyer?”
Lori nodded. He kept eating in silence.
“Why, is that a bad thing?”
He took his time answering.
“The less you’ve got to do with lawyers, the better.”
“Well, I’ve got no choice, she’s my mom.”
“Yep,” he said and fell silent.
She thought it best to drop it.
But he suddenly announced, “You can ask me anything you want. Just ask, I’ll answer.”
“Oh,” she responded, “what do you want me to ask?”
“Dunno . . . it’s up to you.” He cleared his throat.
Did he expect her to do the same for him? But she couldn’t. There were things she had to keep to herself.
Lori had learned that Noah didn’t ask many questions anyway. People in Stormy Cove generally weren’t forthcoming with questions for her. She had the impression they were curious but at a loss as to what to ask this outsider whose life was so different from their own. They had no frame of reference for Lori’s world, no connection to it.
Noah broke the silence.
“Next week there’s a mummers’ competition at the Hardy Sailor Lounge you shouldn’t miss.”
“What are mummers?” she asked, grateful for a new subject.
“It’s an old custom, from our Irish ancestors, I think. At Christmastime, people dress up in old bed sheets and masks and go from house to house and dance a jig in the kitchen and are given something to drink. Booze, of course.” He winked at her. “Went a lot when I was younger. But I can’t dance. And I always threw up because they gave you all kinds of booze: rum and whisky and vodka and homebrew—awful.”
“But it’s not Christmas! Why the competition?”
“Oh, Vince’s idea, to lure more customers into his pub, I suppose.”
“Will you go in costume?”
“Me? No. And you won’t get me to dance either.”
She folded her arms and leaned back.
“So who says I want to dance with you?”
“Every woman wants to go dancing. I just look stupid. I’m sure you’re a lot better than me. They’ll ask you to dance, look out.”
She laughed.
“I’ll be too busy taking pictures.” She put down her knife and fork. “Really, Noah, many, many thanks for your hospitality.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I’ll take you home so you can have some peace and quiet.”
When they were putting on their snowmobile suits downstairs, she noticed a picture of a ship on the wall.
“Is that your boat?”
He glanced at it.
“Was my boat.”
“Is it the one that caught on fire?”
“Yes. Who told you that?”
“Can’t remember. Somebody in the pub? Is it true that it was arson?”
“You’ve been talking to the wrong people.”
He put on his helmet and opened the door.
So much for all those questions he said he’d answer, she thought to herself.
She slipped out the door, and the icy wind hit her like a punch in the face.
CHAPTER 17
The first thing she did when she got home was to follow Noah’s advice and turn on the tap. After some initial splutters, water squirted out—the pipes weren’t frozen. The fridge hummed, and a buzzing sound told her the phone was working. Lori took a deep breath. She turned up the heat and set all the flashing clocks to the correct time. She yearned for a state of normalcy. Outside, the storm was still blowing.
She went down to the basement and took the laundry out of the dryer. As she was wiping down the outside of the washing machine, the rag fell between the two appliances. When she picked it up, she felt something hard between her fingers. It was a thumb-sized object shaped like a primitive bird. Somehow it looked familiar. Where had she seen something like that before? It was a bone carving in a rather spare style. A talisman or key-chain fob? She stuck it in her pocket and hung up the rag.
Back in the kitchen, she made some strong coffee and opened her e-mail.
Mona Blackwood had written back, about a dozen words. Great pictures. My compliments. Can you get me the names of the people ice fishing?
Lori puffed out her cheeks. What an odd request. Why was her employer interested in that particular picture?
At least Mona was happy with the photos. So she was on the right track.
Her mother had written too. There was a report on TV about a blizzard in Newfoundland. I tried to call you, couldn’t get through. Is everything OK?
Lori looked at her watch. It was seven in the morning in Vancouver. She went to the phone.
“I’m so happy to hear your voice, my dear girl. I tried calling all night but nobody answered.”
Lisa Finning’s voice sounded a little rougher than usual. Her mother didn’t often show that she worried about her; she’d once told Lori, “I don’t want you to feel you’re not free to go wherever you want.” Maybe her mother was afraid of clinging to the only child she had left after Clifford’s death.
Lori’s friend Danielle talked with her mother on the phone almost every day. She thought it odd, as if Danielle hadn’t cut the umbilical cord. Lori knew her mother didn’t expect daily phone calls or even want them. She’d tried to raise her daughter as an independent, self-sufficient woman like herself. When Lori fell into an unhealthy dependency on her German husband, her mother had blamed herself and felt she had to rescue Lori to atone for her supposed failure.
Lori reasoned later that it was probably inevitable for her to look for a man to be dependent on—fallout from the trauma of losing her father and brother. But she’d never discussed it with her mother for fear it’d make her feel guilty. After divorcing Volker, Lori had a few casual relationships, but she never again moved in with a man. She often wondered if she was trying to prove to her mother that she could, in fact, be an independent, self-sufficient woman.
“Lori?” a voice at the other end asked.
Lori hurried to tell her about the events of the past twenty-four hours. Seemed more like a week.
“A man took you to his place?” asked her mother, seizing the bull by the horns, as always. “Why would he want to help you?”
“Everybody helps everybody else here. It’s just that he was the first person to come check on me since he knew my neighbors were away.”
“You do realize that people will take it that you belong to him now?”
“A single woman probably can’t avoid that in a small village,” Lori replied as nonchalantly as she could. “How’s the trial going?”
Her mother’s client was a female teacher accused of seducing a thirteen-year-old student.
“I’m confident I can keep her out of prison. Luckily, she hadn’t written him any e-mails or love letters.”
“If the accused were a man, would you lose?”
“No, those days are over, my darling. Women aren’t assume
d to be innocent little lambs anymore, and that’s good. How’s your work going?”
“Surprisingly well. Just imagine: people here want their picture taken. I don’t get any resistance. And there are subjects everywhere I turn. People here live like it was fifty years ago . . . except they have electricity now, and paved streets, and the Internet.”
“An idyllic world, huh?” she asked, her voice dripping with irony. Lisa Finning had seen more than her professional share of ugliness.
Lori couldn’t resist mentioning Cletus Gould’s death by suffocation and his predilection for hard-core porn.
“Did his wife know?” her mother wondered.
“No idea, but she apparently left him. Why?”
“In every case I’ve seen, women are totally shocked when they find out. And they usually don’t want to believe it.”
“Mom, have you ever heard anything about the Jacinta Parsons murder?”
“Jacinta Parsons . . . yes, sounds familiar. The girl in that strange grave, right? Do you mean that murder took place up where you are?”
“Yes. What do you know about it?”
“Let me think for a moment . . . What I mostly remember is how secretive the Newfoundland police were. They somehow . . . didn’t seem aboveboard. I remember we discussed it at the office. We thought the way they were going about the investigation meant that nothing would come of it. I think they were trying to put the finger on the people working on the excavations. But nobody was going to swallow that. The poor girl. They still haven’t caught the killer.”
“I know. And I’ve got a feeling that people here know it wasn’t an outsider—even if they don’t come right out and say it. That’s my impression anyway.”
“Remind me when it happened?”
“Almost exactly twenty years ago. If you’ve got time to find out more, I’d be very interested.”
“Pretty name, Jacinta. Maybe I should think about paying you a visit up at the North Pole.”
“Not sure that’s a good idea, Mom. They don’t treat dogs particularly well around here.”
Her mother had a soft spot for abused animals and was on the board of the province’s SPCA.
“Oh, no! What do they do to them?”
“They chain them up and never walk them. Chained outside even in the coldest weather.”
“But that’s awful. You’ve got to light a fire under them, dear one. You’ve got to tell them that dogs are social creatures and need to move around.”
“They’d just see it as meddling . . . criticism from an outsider. They grew up like this—used to have sled dogs that were working dogs and not pets, and they were tied up all summer . . .”
“Sled dogs ought to be treated decently as well,” her mother cut in.
Lori was sorry she’d brought it up, afraid her mom would try to turn her into the standard-bearer for animal rights in Stormy Cove.
But her mother just said, “At least take one of the dogs for an occasional walk. But not in a blizzard.”
Lori promised to, even if she didn’t know how she’d manage something like that.
“It’s a tough balancing act, Mom. I don’t want to suck up to them, but I also can’t be judgmental. I want to be myself. I want to portray the people the way they are, with all their strengths and weaknesses.”
She heard her mother heave a sigh.
“My dear girl, you’re so different from me; you take after your father. I’m convinced that people like you. Remember: nobody needs to know anything about our German grandfather and submarines.”
Lori chewed on the inside of her mouth. Her mother seemed really stuck on that.
“You won’t believe this, but when I was at a lodge for the night on the way here, some kind of German baron was there. And what did he go on about? German subs off Newfoundland. Of all things!”
“A baron? What was his name?”
“Who knows? I’ve got his card somewhere.”
Her mother was suddenly in a hurry.
“I’ve got to get to court, sweetie. I’ll let you know about Jacinta. It’ll take a little time, got a lot on my plate. And don’t let that nice man from the village wrap you around his little finger. Take care.”
“I can look out for myself,” she said, but her mother had already hung up.
That’s Mom. Doesn’t pull any punches, Lori thought.
Outside her window, the wind blew large snowflakes around like fluttering rags. Lori watched the spectacle, lost in thought. Conversations with her mother often ended with a question mark. She didn’t know why. Probably because she was a lawyer and used to keeping her cards close to the vest? No point in worrying about it.
She felt a slight jab in her thigh. The talisman. She fumbled for the birdlike object in her pocket and put it on the kitchen table. Maybe she would make a key-chain fob out of it. Mona Blackwood’s question crossed her mind. She found the ice-fishing photograph on her laptop and opened it. There were at least a dozen faces, and she could only name a few of them. She didn’t want to ask Noah just then, but Patience could certainly help her. She squinted out the kitchen window and could actually make out the outline of her neighbors’ blue pickup. She printed out the photo and put on something warm. But even the short walk showed her that this storm was still merciless. She could barely keep her eyes open, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d strayed off in the wrong direction.
She struggled to open the front door with her thick gloves on, but it opened all of a sudden as if by a phantom hand that then pulled her inside.
“You shouldn’t go out in this weather, my love,” Ches said. “I thought you were at Noah’s.”
She pulled her hood back and gasped for air.
“Yes, I was there yesterday, but he brought me back today.”
“Why? It’s dangerous to be all alone. He should’ve kept you at his place. Come on in.”
Lori took off her boots and parka and followed him up to the main floor.
“Patience isn’t here?”
“No, she’s at her mom’s in Crockett Harbour. She has to stay there until the road’s open.”
“Then how did you get back?”
“I took her there and came back before the storm. Come sit down.”
Lori stayed on her feet. She couldn’t remember seeing his truck in front of the house yesterday.
“I just wanted to ask Patience something, about people’s names in some pictures, people I don’t know.”
“Maybe I can help you.”
She paused. Her instincts urged her not to be alone in the house with Ches.
“Oh, it’s nothing urgent. Really just an excuse to have tea with Patience.”
“Ah, good idea. Not many people drop in for a chat.”
“But Una must have.”
Ches folded his arms and cleared his throat.
“Una had other women friends . . . Patience would go on and on about births, and Una—I mean, maybe she didn’t want to hear about them. If you get my meaning.”
“I don’t,” Lori replied.
Ches rubbed his back against the edge of the kitchen counter and gave an embarrassed laugh.
“Una and Cletus didn’t have children.”
“Oh, I see.”
Lori wondered if Patience, as a midwife, wasn’t bound by doctor-patient confidentiality. Or whether such rules even applied in Stormy Cove. She turned to leave.
“I’ll come by when Patience is back. She wanted to show me how to make a wall hanging.”
“Well, I certainly can’t show you that. But I’ll walk you home.”
Lori protested to be polite but was actually relieved to have help getting home safely.
The power was still on. She was working on her photos and notes when the phone rang.
“Lori?” a woman asked.
She didn’t recognize Patience’s voice right away because of the static on the line.
Where had she gotten Lori’s number? From Noah? She’d never given it to anyone else
in Stormy Cove.
“I just talked to Ches, and he said you wanted something from me—some people’s names or something?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just thought you could help me identify people in my pictures.”
“Couldn’t Ches help you?”
Patience sounded tense, maybe in reaction to the nerve-racking howling of the storm.
“He offered to, but I was actually looking forward to seeing you—and it really isn’t pressing.”
“He could at least have offered you a cup of tea.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine. I’ve got a lot to do here. I was at Noah’s yesterday and had to drop everything here.”
“Noah takes good care of you, doesn’t he? He’s a good man.”
“Yes, everybody’s very kind to me,” Lori agreed diplomatically.
“People are worried about you for sure. Selina Gould saw you leaving the house. She was very concerned. You can’t go wandering in a storm like that.”
Selina Gould. Of course. Patience had gotten Lori’s phone number from her. The landlord had to contact the phone company to get a line put in. Every step she took was monitored.
“I hope you can come home soon,” Lori said. “Molly is sure to be homesick.”
Patience giggled.
“No way. Molly loves it at Granny’s. But I’ve had my fill of storms. A couple of babies are due soon. And I don’t want to miss the party at the Hardy Sailor. You’re coming, of course.”
“A party? Noah said it was a mummers competition.”
“Oh, that was postponed. No, it’s a talent show. But don’t expect much. Sometimes it’s awfully embarrassing.” Patience sounded downright jolly.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Lori promised.
“See you then,” Patience said.
Late that afternoon, when it was already dark, Lori was seized by a craving for vegetable soup. She was peeling carrots in the kitchen, when a lightbulb suddenly went on in her head.
The bird carving. She remembered where she’d seen something like it before: in the storage compartment under the seat of Noah’s snowmobile.
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