She shouldered her camera bag.
“Yes, I’d love to come, but it’s no good for me if somebody else is taking pictures too. People get in the way, as you no doubt saw today.”
“I know—wasn’t the plan. She just turned up this morning and . . . I couldn’t say no. Rick’s boat was already gone. I can take you out again if you want, but I don’t know exactly when. The cod . . .”
His eyes wandered over to the parked cars. Lori’s throat tightened. She heard a motor start up. Reanna’s Mustang.
She folded her arms across her chest.
“I’ll go have a look at the pictures I shot today. It’s not your responsibility to keep taking me out there. I don’t want to be a pain in the neck.”
She could hardly believe that they were talking like this. It seemed to her as if the bond between them that she’d sensed until yesterday was broken.
“Oh, not at all. Not at all. Been more exciting since you’ve come.” He almost sounded befuddled.
Sure. Pretty girls from far away are exciting.
And two are more exciting than one.
Particularly when nothing much happens in Stormy Cove. You don’t want to miss any of the action.
“Thanks again,” she said and went to her car.
Was he watching her leave the way he’d watched Reanna? She fought off the temptation to look back.
She stopped at the store to pick up milk and bread. Nosy Mavis eyed her expectantly as she came in the door.
“So, did you get a lot of iceberg photographs?”
“Who told you about that?” She still couldn’t fathom how news got around Stormy Cove so fast.
“Easy. Rick’s sister was just here. Rick went out with some of the family. She drove them to the wharf.”
Mavis stretched and her bosom heaved. Two rhinestone broaches glittered on her green turtleneck sweater. Lizards again.
Lori felt like reading the weekend Globe and Mail or the Vancouver Sun or a glossy like Vanity Fair or a chic interior decorating magazine like Elle Decor. And having a real Italian espresso with it and a butter croissant fresh from the oven.
But only tabloids made it to Stormy Cove.
She picked one of them up and skimmed the headline: “Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi Finally Want a Baby.”
Mavis planted both hands on the counter.
“There’s nothing about Hollywood stars to get excited over anymore. Women can marry women and adopt kids and it’s on the front page.”
“Not only Hollywood stars,” Lori added. “I’m good friends with a lesbian couple, and they adopted two children. They go to school, and nobody gives a damn that they’ve got two mothers.”
“Yeah? Well, that would be a first in these parts. Wouldn’t go down well with some people.” She smoothed her sweater. “When Jacinta noised it around that she’d seen Robine Whalen necking with a woman, there was hell to pay.”
Lori dropped the tabloid.
“Jacinta saw what?”
“Didn’t you know? Jacinta told her parents . . . and maybe a few others that she’d seen Robine kissing another woman.”
“Who was she?”
“A woman from St. John’s, one of the archaeology gals. Only a rumor back then. You never know what to believe. Well, we’ve found out in the meantime what’s with Robine.”
“How old was she then?”
“Let me think . . . fifteen or sixteen. She started early . . . But girls here do that with boys too.”
“So how did . . . what did her family say to that?”
“Didn’t believe it, naturally. I mean, the Whalens and the Parsons—I shouldn’t gossip like this, but they aren’t exactly the best of friends. Ever since Noah’s dad drowned they—”
She cut herself off when the door opened. Greta Whalen called out.
“Hello. Can I join the coffee klatch?”
She was wearing a sweatshirt with “Newfies Rock” on the front and gray sweatpants. Her blue eyes sparkled.
“Coffee’s over there.” Mavis flapped her right elbow at a thermos on the shelf. “We were just talking about icebergs. Lori went out with Noah and a new reporter from the Cape Lone Courier.”
Greta poured coffee into a paper cup.
“What do they need new reporters for? Nothing ever happens here.”
“She’s a trainee, still learning,” Lori explained. And then to Mavis, “Any fresh bread today?”
But Mavis wasn’t finished with the subject.
“What’s a kid from Ontario doing here, I’d like to know. There are more papers there than here. And she sure don’t look like a reporter, more like a model.”
Greta sipped her coffee. “Where’s she from in Ontario?”
“Trifton,” Lori responded.
“Trifton? Is there a place anywhere that’s really called that?” Mavis frowned.
“Trifton,” Greta repeated, musing. “She told some people she’s from Timmins. Like Shania Twain. How old is she?”
“I’d say early twenties. What about that fresh bread?”
Mavis reached into a bin behind her and pulled out a rectangular loaf wrapped in plastic.
“It costs thirty cents more now—can you believe it? Because wheat’s gone up. A farmer keeps making more money, and it’s the fisherman who gets less and less.”
“But fish in the stores are more and more expensive,” Lori said. “Something’s not right. Somebody’s raking it in very nicely.”
She paid for the bread and milk and said good-bye.
When she got to her car, she heard her name called. Greta caught up with her.
“That reporter. Did she really say Trifton?”
Lori ran her fingers over the notches in her car key.
“Yes.”
She didn’t want to hear another word about Reanna Sholler.
“If you see her again, could you ask . . . could you find out a bit more about her? Her parents, what they do, what school she went to?”
Lori looked at Greta in surprise.
“I don’t actually know the woman. We only met by chance.”
“Oh, I thought you’d taken her under your wing, sort of.”
“Why should I? Will Spence is her boss, not me.”
She opened the car door and dropped the groceries on the passenger seat. Greta hadn’t moved. Lori had the feeling she wanted to ask her something, but she evidently changed her mind.
“OK, then . . . I’m curious to see what’s in the Monday paper.” And with that, she left.
Lori’s head was buzzing. She could hardly focus on anything as she drove through Stormy Cove. Robine with a woman archaeologist. And now Greta with her peculiar request. How could anyone make any sense of all the little intrigues?
Did the police hear about the rumors surrounding Robine? And could they know that Jacinta’s spying was the apparent source? Did Lloyd Weston know about it? How did Robine take the gossip? And the Whalen family?
And why the animosity between the Parsons and the Whalens? She couldn’t understand what Mavis was trying to get at.
When she thought back on her conversations, Greta’s behavior seemed odder and odder. The locals always found things out in no time flat. Why was she asking for Lori’s help? Had Noah . . . maybe roped his sister into finding out more about Reanna? But she rejected that out of hand. It wasn’t Noah’s way of doing things. She doubted that Noah confided anything about his personal affairs to his family at all. She couldn’t imagine him talking to anybody about his feelings.
Something was bugging Greta. Something she didn’t want to disclose.
She sighed. Oh, why did that reporter have to show up right now! As if things weren’t already complicated enough.
When she returned home, she saw a flashing light. The answering machine. She pushed the button.
“Hello, this is Lloyd Weston. We’re flying up to the site in a few days. I want you to come. In fact, I’d like to hire you to photograph the site! Please call me back.”
Then she e-mailed Mona Blackwood to tell her about Weston’s offer and get her opinion. Maybe there was a conflict of interest, and it was best to get these things out in the open. She didn’t want to blow it with Mona, but the dig might be valuable for the book. Next, she downloaded the iceberg pictures onto her laptop and went through them slowly. She knew that at least a few shots must have come out well, but what she found exceeded her expectations. What a haul! Of course there were some crappy ones, courtesy of Reanna, but also several that took her breath away. She was good in the studio—that, she knew—but her real love was outdoor photography. And she could explore that passion to its fullest extent in this powerful, wild, inspiring landscape.
She beavered away on cataloging and editing the photos, not stopping until it had gotten dark outside. Then her eagerness flagged, and the events of the day caught up with her. She suddenly felt tired and dejected. She stretched out on the sofa and closed her heavy eyelids. But the images wouldn’t leave her in peace. She was immediately back on the boat, cruising by icebergs. A face bulled its way into view—blond hair streaming in the wind. Lori pushed away the image, brought back the icebergs and their massive, sparkling sides, the peaks and the arches, the seabirds on their crest, like dark sprinkles atop frosting.
But then a face returned, framed in blond hair. It was not Reanna.
Katja.
In the kitchen on the Lindenhold estate.
Lori rolled over onto her side, but the memories couldn’t be kept at bay—they fought their way through with too much force.
The icebergs vanished. She found herself in the kitchen at Lindenhold, a pile of snap beans on the table in front of her for trimming. It was dark in the kitchen, but the autumn sun was shining outside. It had attracted everyone else to the garden; she had to make supper all by herself.
A door opens. Katja, asking, “You know where Volker is?”
She’s wearing a miniskirt over her shiny leggings, a low-cut blouse, and her blond, unkempt hair falls over her shoulders. The dark rings in her pale face are not as pronounced as during the first few weeks after she arrived. A young woman, from one of the finest families, who had drifted into drug addiction and was looking for a cure and stability in Lindenhold.
Drifted. Volker’s word. As if somebody had forced cocaine on Katja. So where does an addict’s responsibility kick in, Lori had argued. The word “responsibility” hadn’t sat well with him. He’d lectured her that Katja was to be treated as somebody who is recuperating, like from a long illness. Lori tears off the thin threads from the bean pods with her knife. She doesn’t look up as she says in her halting German, “He doesn’t have any time right now. What’s the matter?”
“I’ve got to talk to him. Where is he?”
Now Lori looks up.
“He’s with Andrew.”
“Can he come down for a moment? I’ve got to talk to him.”
Lori shakes her head.
“He’s playing with Andrew. He has a family. He has a child. Do you understand? Andrew wants to be with his daddy too.”
“He can still do that,” Katja shouts impatiently, flinging back her unruly hair. “I just have to have a quick word with him.”
She moves toward the door to the attic steps, to where she thinks Volker and Andrew are. But Lori is quicker. She stands in front of the door, knife in hand.
Now only English comes out of her mouth. She knows Katja learned English in school.
“Leave Volker alone! You’ve monopolized him enough. He’s not your therapist. He has a little child who needs him. Andrew needs his dad, and you’re not going up there. You have no business being in our room. I’ve had enough of you taking advantage of his good nature. He can’t just be there for you whenever you want. Enough is enough. You only think about yourself. How about you trim these beans and contribute something to the community. Make yourself useful for once.”
She stands her ground, clutching the paring knife.
Katja stares at her, flabbergasted. Then she looks wildly around the kitchen. Until her eyes settle on something. She moves toward it in slow motion. She opens the drawer and takes out a knife.
Lori thinks, She’s going to attack me!
She breaks out in a cold sweat.
But Katja runs out of the kitchen, the knife still in her hand.
Lori’s first thought is of Andrew. She races up the attic stairs and almost breaks down the door. Nothing. Volker and Andrew are nowhere to be seen. She yells their names and charges downstairs, through the empty kitchen and the corridor and outside.
“Volker! Andrew!” she screams in desperation. She sees Rosemarie standing by the rabbit shed.
“Where’s Volker?”
Rosemarie comes over.
“What’s the matter, Lori? What’s happened?”
Lori’s almost out of her mind.
“Where’s Volker?”
“Down at the pond. Lori, what’s up?” Rosemarie’s face is tense with worry.
“She’s got a knife! She’s got a knife!”
Lori runs down to the pond. She sees Volker and Andrew feeding ducks and screams their names again.
Volker turns around and stays rooted to the spot. Then he takes Andrew’s hand. The boy looks at her in confusion.
When she reaches them, she can hardly speak.
“She’s got a knife,” is all she can manage.
Volker grabs her by the shoulder.
“Who’s got a knife?”
“Katja. She . . . she took a knife out of the kitchen drawer and . . . and ran out of the kitchen!”
Volker frowns.
“You’ve got a knife, too, Lori. What happened?”
She is panting.
“I . . . I thought she wanted to help me with the beans, but . . . she got a knife out of the drawer and just . . . took off.”
“But that’s no reason to scare us like this, we—”
“Volker, we must find Katja immediately,” a voice behind them says. Rosemarie’s determined tone brooks no contradiction. “I’ll go get Franz. You stay with Lori.”
Lori had never heard Rosemarie speak so decisively.
Katja couldn’t be found that night. The police arrived the following morning. They discovered Katja at a friend’s place in town. She’d overdosed. The kitchen knife was discovered later in the shed at Lindenhold, where Katja had stolen a motorbike to go into town. But the investigators never found out about it.
Volker, Franz, and Rosemarie kept Lori out of the police investigation as much as they could. It was in their own interest as well. They wanted the community for recovering addicts to keep operating. Lori was surprised that the “incident,” as she called it, didn’t make bigger waves. Katja’s parents seemed to adjust quickly. It was also possible that Lori wasn’t being told everything. Just the way she never told Volker the whole truth. He never really pursued it. She had the impression that this was the first time he’d questioned whether it was good to raise Andrew in this unusual community. It occurred to her later that this was the reason he didn’t object to Andrew’s going to Canada with her. For years afterward, Lori used her child’s safety to justify her stubborn refusal to admit her share of the blame for Katja’s death. But it cost her a lot of energy to relegate this ghost to the cellar of her unconscious.
Somebody ought to warn Reanna, she thought, as she made a nightcap in the kitchen.
Somebody ought to warn her about me.
CHAPTER 28
The wind blew so hard the next day the fishermen didn’t even think about going out on the turbulent sea.
Lori decided to take a walk around the bay with Rusty and her camera. She had an exposed spot in her sights, a spot where the wind was so powerful that all the few gnarled firs there could do was to bend with it and grow almost horizontally to the ground. The symbolic value of the image was obvious. A
life pulled between submission, resistance, and adaptation—a fine balance between mistakes and triumphs. Except that mistakes here could rapidly be fatal.
That was a nice way to put it. She made a mental note to add it to her travel diary later.
She kept to the lee side at first, but after reaching the high plateau, she had to brace herself against gusts of wind with all her strength. She was amazed at how the little frame houses were able to brave constant onslaughts year after year. Rusty kept pulling his rope vigorously; he was clearly irritated by her leisurely pace and frequent stops and would have gone a hundred times farther by now without her. But when she squatted down near the cliffs in order not to be whisked off by the wind, he sat patiently beside her, picking up scents from every direction. While she was taking pictures, she had to tie the leash around her waist, which the dog liked even less. She’d read somewhere that huskies can run for eight hours nonstop. But here in the Canadian North, most of them spent their lives on a short leash. Lori found the mere thought unbearable and untied the rope around her waist. She could show him places that he’d never see otherwise—and vice versa. She ventured farther afield with Rusty than if she’d been walking alone.
They returned to the village at noon, and with a heavy heart, she chained Rusty in front of his doghouse. She decided to have lunch and then go read up on cod fishing in the library. She’d had it with Internet research and longed to run her fingertips over printed paper.
Aurelia was busy shelving books when Lori came in. Her face lit up.
“So nice to see you, Lori! I often think of you when I see a book you might be interested in. Have you discovered anything more about poor Marguerite?”
Lori shook her head.
“She’ll probably remain a mystery, but I haven’t given up hope of getting back to the Isle of Demons someday.”
“You certainly will! Somebody will take you there, I’m sure. And then you absolutely must tell me what it’s like.”
“You can count on it. But today I want to read up on cod.”
“Cod, sure, that’s easy. Take a look at this big book here; came out recently.”
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