Cathryn slapped on her hat and made for the door, but Isobel stepped into her path.
“Cathryn, those boxes… I don’t know what to say.”
“Oh, shush, Izzy. Don’t say anything, just find two glasses” — Cathryn held out her bleeding finger — “and a plaster.”
The number of customers grew from one to a few, a few to a dozen. Women ordered custom hats and the millinery made its progress, steadily but achingly slow in Isobel’s impatience. Summer would be over soon, and her best customers, the impulse buyers — tourists staying out at the resorts or summer cabins on the shores of Cypress and lakes farther north — would be gone.
When she realized that her fastest-selling hats were the more casual summer styles, she raced to make more, using lighter materials like canvas, linen, and straw. She adorned these “holiday hats” with twisted bands of red pine needles or silk flowers modified to resemble those from the forest — trillium, sweet woodruff, or bunchberry. Women tended to come in from the resorts on Saturday mornings, so Isobel, Louisa, and Cathryn worked late through Friday, trimming. Louisa padded green velvet so that it looked like moss, and Cathryn stripped thin twigs of willow, then stained and braided them into hatbands. Isobel bought a roll of canvas from the mercantile, a muted stripe of gold, red, and green intended for the slings of folding lawn chairs. That weekend, the linen bowlers she banded with this fabric sold as quickly as she put them in the front window.
As Cathryn watched the third of these hats leave the store, she chewed her pencil and then tapped it decisively on the glass display case.
“Izzy, I don’t think you should sell any more than one or two of the same hat on any Saturday.”
Isobel was tucking bills into the register. “Why not?”
“These customers are here on holiday, right? Usually for about two weeks at a stretch.”
Cathryn took her pencil to the wall calendar and ran it down the remaining weeks of summer. “You wouldn’t want them running into each other wearing identical hats.”
“She’s right, Momma.”
Louisa, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, was busily constructing a miniature turban from a scrap of silk. Isobel picked up the turban and turned it over, amazed to see it was fully lined and decorated with a cluster of tiny feathers. “You made this?”
She looked from her friend to her daughter in disbelief. “By yourself?”
Louisa shrugged. “I’ve been watching.”
“You must’ve been. This is really… ”
She laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Louisa, this is very, very well done.”
The girl beamed. “I thought so too. It’s for my doll. Can I have another scrap? I’d like to make a matching dress.”
Cathryn led them to the storage hall. “Let’s take a peek in the remnant drawers and find something.”
Isobel’s shoulders dropped. “But those drawers are such a mess!”
“No they’re not. Not anymore. Look.”
Cathryn opened drawer after drawer to reveal neatly folded piles of remnants Isobel had dismissed as too jumbled to ever sort.
“See, I’ve organized it all. These far drawers have the smallest pieces.”
She pulled out a hank of nubby red silk the size of a pillowcase. “Here, Louisa. This is just enough to make a dress.”
The girl took her scrap and skipped out the door.
“Look, Isobel. All these short lengths are stacked by color, see? Patterns on the right, solids on the left.”
She pointed to a mound of stripes behind the glass. “Using these pieces, you could make hundreds of hats, and it won’t cost you a penny.”
Isobel hardly heard her. The panes of glass shone, and behind the glass fronts, all of Victor’s supplies had been rearranged. The teetering stacks of boxes were gone, and all fabrics were folded, stocked, and tagged. The blackened floor had been stripped of ancient wax to reveal poppy-red linoleum. A dozen years of grime and disarray had been replaced by a gleaming order.
“Cathryn, when… ?”
Cathryn shrugged. “Oh, sometimes I don’t sleep that well. When you gave me the key you said I should come whenever I wanted.”
“Well, yes, but… ”
Isobel cocked her head with a frown. “Cathryn! What do you mean, you don’t sleep?”
Cathryn’s eyes were veiled. “Oh, a few restless nights now and then. I’m fine, Izzy. I’m fine now.”
Isobel folded her arms. “Izzy, don’t look at me like that! Here.”
She handed Isobel a stack of light-coloured seersucker and muslin. “Oh, and look at this!”
Cathryn rose on her toes, opened a high cupboard, and pulled out a half-bolt of black-and-beige mattress ticking. “Wouldn’t this make a novel cap?”
“Don’t change the subject, Cathryn.”
Cathryn spun. “What are you, my mother? My husband? My nurse?”
Isobel shrank at the tone. “No, of course not. I’m just concerned —”
“Has Liam put you up to watching me? I’m sick to death of being watched. I’m a grown woman. I do not need to be baby-sat!”
“Baby-sat? What are you talking about? Cathryn,… ”
But she was turning as if she hadn’t heard, her voice lowered to a mutter as she walked away. “Can’t I be left in peace for one moment? One goddamned solitary minute?”
Isobel stepped back as if pushed.
She stared at Cathryn’s retreating form and tried to blink some meaning into what had just happened. Had something happened? She stood alone in the hall for a long while, mindlessly wringing the remnant of muslin in her hand.
~ ~ ~
“You hardly mention the husband.”
Thomas sat back. “Liam, right?”
“Don’t I? Well, I didn’t see too much of him.”
“Not too many husbands around that summer, were there?”
She didn’t like his tone. “It didn’t seem so. Liam was very busy. I don’t think Cathryn saw much of him at all.”
Her voice was thin.
“What was his story?”
“Oh, goodness, Thomas, I barely remember him now.”
“Really? You seem so clear about everything else, almost as though you can barely forget.”
Isobel set her brow. “You want to know about Liam Malley? He was an Irishman, from Cork, I think. He was handsome and quiet, and awkward in company. He was a very proud man, and I think he was self-conscious about having married someone socially superior, someone rich. He didn’t care about her money. He was devoted to his wife, there was no question. She was a complex person, difficult. Moody. But he was dutiful — to a fault, really — was willing to stick by her, take care of her no matter… ”
She was tiring, her guard falling away. Her next words were tinged with grief. “No matter what. Poor Liam. He couldn’t have known what he was getting into when he took on Cathryn.”
“Well, that’s a lot of recollection for someone you barely remember.”
She shot him a glance. “That’s all speculation, Thomas.”
“Speculation? Not what you actually know?”
“How would I know? Cathryn told me very little. You don’t seem to understand something, Thomas. Personal things were not discussed in the way they are now, particularly marriage. Private lives were private. I would no sooner have asked Cathryn about her problems with Liam than I would answer if someone had asked me personal things about myself and Victor.”
Thomas crossed his arms. “So, you admit you had problems with Dad.”
She exhaled heavily, as if to breathe away all thought. “I’m done talking now, Thomas.”
~ ~ ~
In July, Liam Malley was suddenly called away to a Michigan copper mine after two men were killed in a collapsed shaft. Isobel helped Cathryn pack his kit and shirts into a valise. Through the cottage window came the metallic slam of a tailgate. Liam was loading his fishing gear.
Cathryn sighed. “I don’t know how long he’ll be gon
e.”
Isobel sat on the edge of the bed, picking at the loose threads of a pillow sham.
“You’ll come stay with us. It’s just Louisa and me, plenty of room.”
She looked back over the wide bed. “You can’t stay in this gloomy old place all by yourself, Cathryn. Besides, it’ll be fun.”
Cathryn shook her head. “That’s so sweet of you. Maybe I’ll come and spend a night or two, but I really don’t mind it out here. I rather like my time alone these days. And now that I can drive, well, there are so many interesting little back roads to explore.”
She snapped the suitcase shut. “I’ve been roaming a bit, in case you’re wondering why I’ve not been in the shop as much lately.”
She seemed to be speaking to the suitcase. “You wouldn’t believe some of the spots I’ve found.”
“Mmm?”
Isobel was barely listening. She’d risen from the edge of the bed and stood with her arms crossed at the doorway, gazing across the hall through the window overlooking the driveway.
“Isobel?”
Liam stood frozen at the driver’s-side door, his hands high on the truck’s cab, his forehead resting on the glass. As she slipped from the room, Isobel tried to make her words sound cheerful. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hey!”
When Isobel turned, Cathryn handed her the suitcase. “Take this out for me, would you? Please?”
Outside, Liam was busy again, tightening a strap on a metal box and hoisting it into the back. Isobel shook his hand and wished him a safe journey. After a glance toward the cottage he pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and quickly folded it into Isobel’s hand.
“Here’s the name of my hotel in Michigan. The telephone number for the mine office is on the back.”
As Cathryn appeared at the kitchen door, he leaned down as if to fetch something, whispering, “Call if you need me. And try to get her to stay with you if you can.”
She looked at the paper. “But she doesn’t… I don’t… ”
She thought of Cathryn’s outburst the previous week. The first day they’d met, Liam had said something then too, something about taking care with her, or of her, she couldn’t say which. Liam did want her to watch over Cathryn.
He was in the truck and turning the key, while Cathryn was at the screen door, waving and smiling in her apron, a domestic scene like a glossy page from Collier’s. Isobel looked from Cathryn to the back end of the truck bouncing down the lane.
She was not sure she even wanted to guess what might be between them.
In the end Isobel couldn’t coax Cathryn to come to the house. She assumed she’d see more of her at the shop in the weeks Liam was gone, but the opposite proved true. From her daily junkets into the countryside, Cathryn would burst into the shop, flushed and cheerful, always bringing treasures for Louisa — an agate, a curled section of birch bark, bits of driftwood twisted into elegant serpents. She would stay only a short while, reading, helping Isobel with the finer tacking or beadwork, sometimes working on Louisa’s frocks, ripping out entire sections for one mislaid stitch. She talked either a great deal or not at all. Sometimes she wrote in her small book, in the margins of her sketchbook, or even on scraps of torn paper or the backs of receipts. When Isobel asked what she was so busy with, Cathryn shrugged.
“Just words. You know, thoughts, things that come to me.”
Sweeping up one afternoon after Cathryn had gone, Isobel found a dusty scrap under the desk, the hand unmistakable.
In saline seas we are formed, born standing distinct — we don’t so much make our way as stay rooted to let life churn around us. Sky and clouds shifting above, tides stirring at our hems. Do we ever touch? Or is it merely the air and water we touch that shifts over to others, the ebbing ripples that reach them, diluted and wafting-weak. All our essence intended, but so little of our true selves divulged.
On a cursory read it didn’t sound particularly like something that might come from Cathryn, so Isobel assumed it was a quote, or copied from some book. She tucked it behind the register and promptly forgot about it.
Isobel was reading aloud from the serial novel in the paper. She got nearly to the end of the column when she realized no one was listening.
“Yoohoo, anybody?”
When there was no response, she glanced up to see Cathryn staring blindly at the wall, twisting her fingers around an imaginary object.
“Cathryn?”
She continued staring. Isobel watched for a moment and observed the almost imperceptible rocking motion of Cathryn’s upper body. She laid down her paper and crossed the room. She crouched in front of the chair and stilled Cathryn’s hands with her own.
“Cathryn. What’s wrong?”
Cathryn blinked as though trying to clear a fog from her eyes.
“Cathryn!”
She blinked again, this time focusing on Isobel’s face. She saw her hands covered by her friend’s and looked up with a faltering, puzzled smile.
“Yes? What is it, Izzy?”
Isobel watched Cathryn, waiting for the days to pass, hoping Liam’s return might calm her. On the afternoon before he was due back, Cathryn hopped nervously from table to table like a sparrow caught indoors.
Isobel sat her down, pressed a pencil into her hand, and asked her to draw and enlarge a picture of a turban she had torn from Vogue.
Cathryn laboured over the drawing, beginning, tearing up the paper, and beginning again. She was on her third sketch when her pencil snapped. As the splintered end hit the floor, both women raised their heads. Cathryn’s hands tumbled to her lap and she burst into tears.
Isobel slowly took the thimble from her finger, folded her work away, and walked over to place her hands firmly on Cathryn’s shoulders.
“Cathryn. I’m your friend. You do believe that, don’t you?”
Cathryn nodded, tears flooding eyes.
She smoothed the hair at Cathryn’s brow. “Then you must tell me what’s wrong.”
The concern in Isobel’s voice was ticked with exasperation.
Cathryn shuddered and wiped her face with the back of her hand. She nodded again.
“Izzy, there is something. I… there’s someone… ”
She turned away, unable to face Isobel.
“Someone? Someone!”
Isobel crouched down and took Cathryn’s face in her hands, turning it so that Cathryn had no choice but to meet her eye. “Oh my God, Cathryn, some man? Cathryn, look at me!”
Cathryn scrabbled in her pockets for a handkerchief.
“Don’t tell me you’re in love?”
Isobel fought not to show her shock. She pulled a stool close and fell heavily to it, sighing, “Tell me,” and truly not wanting to know.
Through the afternoon, Isobel listened. As a dry wind listlessly pushed warm air through the screens, Cathryn alternately paced and sat, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, as she described her first encounter with Jack Reese. She’d carried her secret nearly the entire time she’d known Isobel, and the relief in her voice upon telling was absolute.
CHAPTER TEN
~ ~ ~
With little to do in her first lonely days in Cypress, Cathryn had taken to wandering about on a bicycle left by some previous tenant. On one of her excursions she found a narrow road leading up to the fire tower. The tower stood on the highest point of land in the county, and the rutted road winding to it was so steep and rocky she had to get off the bicycle and push it along. It was the beginning of the warm weather, and by midmorning the temperature was near ninety. The hill ahead seemed endless, yet she felt compelled to climb to its peak. She hoped to see the town from above, but as her legs began to ache, and the perspiration trickling down her back reached the band of her skirt, she wondered if the whim was worth the effort. At the halfway point, she came to a smooth, flat rock. She stopped, thoughtlessly dropped the bicycle in the middle of the road, and made for the ledge, where she collapsed in the shade of a sprawling pine. As sh
e regained her breath, she considered the sheer drop at her feet. She grasped a branch and leaned gingerly over the cliff, guessing at the distance between herself and the canopy below. A hundred feet? A hundred-fifty?
The town’s tarred, shimmering roofs lay scattered among the treetops and steeples in the distance. The unpaved roads blurred into ribbons of sepia whenever a vehicle sliced through the grid. Cathryn laughed to herself. The whole of Cypress looked to be a child’s board game laid out in a patch of wilderness.
Her foot slipped on the mossy ledge and her stomach leapt. She scooted backward to sit against a tree. Looking out over the lake she settled her backside into a safe crevasse and wished she’d brought something to drink; the glitter of the bays and backwaters made her suddenly thirsty.
To the west was the body of the vast lake, and though she had examined the maps, looked at picture postcards, and listened to Liam’s descriptions, Cathryn was unprepared for the size and wildness of Lake Cypress. Not far from her home in Chicago, Lake Michigan had always seemed to her a mere accessory to the city, a mirror of approval as Chicago raised its skyscrapers, museums, and endless department stores.
But the wild lake below captured Cathryn’s awe. Even at such a height she couldn’t place the far shore. Directly west were many huge bays, some so peppered with islands as to seem solid land with only a line of water scrawling through. This part of the lake was called the Maze, and Liam had warned Cathryn never to row into it alone or she would most certainly become lost. Even if one was able to find the actual shoreline, it was apt to be either mosquitoinfested bog or granite cliffs too sheer to scale. Beyond the Maze, open water stretched for undetermined miles before the patterns of islands and bays began again. The lake shone black, and only near its edges did the water lighten to a bluish grey.
Cathryn traced the road at the end of town which eventually turned onto the lane that led out to her own cottage. She located Granite Point by one of the chimneys. She was just thinking it would be nice to show Liam this spot, bring him up here for a picnic, when she heard a vehicle rumbling down the hill. As it neared the curve she suddenly remembered her bicycle. Scampering up, she ran blindly into the road to retrieve it. She grabbed the handlebars as the truck came around the bend and looked up to see it barreling toward her.
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