by Lea Wait
I shook her hand, then indicated two chairs where we could sit. “Visiting Maine for the holidays, Carly?”
“In a matter of speaking,” she said. “And last week I bought six lovely mahogany dining room chairs at an auction. They have cushioned seats, but the seat covers are an ugly orange and yellow plaid. I saw a dining room set in Southern Living a few months ago that had cushioned seats embroidered with different spring flowers. Cushions like those would be perfectly elegant for my dining room. I’ve been told your business can design and embroider seat covers.”
I took a breath. “We can. But to design six seat covers and needlepoint them will take a while, and cost quite a bit. I have a machine that helps design the patterns we use, but all our Mainely Needlepoint work is stitched by hand.”
She didn’t look concerned. “I understand. Quality work is expensive. If I brought you one of the chairs so you could measure it, could you have the designs done by mid-February, so I could approve them, and then have the chair seats finished by the end of June?”
I did some fast calculations. Winter was our slow season, when most of the needlepointers had extra time to work on large projects. “We could,” I agreed. “I’d need a deposit of one thousand dollars when you bring in the chair, to cover the design work. When you’ve approved the designs and colors, I’d need fifty percent of the total cost of the project. I can’t tell you exactly how much that would be until I see the chairs and we decide on the designs.”
“That sounds reasonable,” she said without hesitation. “I could bring you a chair this afternoon.”
“I’m afraid I have an appointment this afternoon,” I told her, remembering my promise to help Patrick decorate.
“What about tomorrow morning?”
“That would be fine.” I stood.
“By the way,” she added, “I heard on Show Business Daily that Skye West has a home in Haven Harbor.”
“Really?” I said.
“I’m a big, big fan of hers,” she said, still sitting. “Huge. Have been for years. It’s such a thrill to be in the town where she lives!”
I nodded. Skye’s privacy was important to her. Fans asking about her wasn’t uncommon. But details about Skye’s life weren’t for public consumption.
“Your friend Sarah told me you know the West family. That, in fact, you’re dating Skye’s son!” She glanced significantly toward the two stockings hanging above the fireplace.
“Sarah told you that?” I needed to have a serious talk with Sarah.
“What’s Skye West really like? Is she as glamorous in person as she is in her movies? She always looks perfect—like someone who never has smeared lipstick or a hair out of place,” Carly rattled on. “But on the television they said she’d been having problems on the set of the movie she’s doing now. That it might be canceled, and the studio could lose millions of dollars—millions, can you believe?—if she and her costar, that handsome Paul Carmichael, don’t stop fighting.”
“You heard all that on television?”
“I never miss Show Business Daily,” Carly continued. “I follow several stars, but Skye West is my favorite.”
“I’ve never seen Show Business Daily,” I admitted, proudly.
“But do you know how her movie is doing? I was so looking forward to seeing it next year. Pride of Years. Isn’t that a great name? But maybe the television had it all wrong. You’re an insider. I can’t believe I’m talking with someone who knows Skye West personally. So—give me the scoop.” She leaned forward. “What’s happening on that movie set in Scotland? I promise, cross my heart, I won’t breathe a word to anyone. I’ve been so concerned about those reports.”
“I couldn’t tell you,” I said, heading toward the door. “Even if I knew. Which I don’t. I haven’t spoken to Skye in months.” Not since September.
Carly got up and followed me as I headed to the front door. “And what’s her son like? Does he look like Skye? If he does, he must be handsome!” She smiled at me as though we were girlfriends sharing secrets. “What a catch. To be dating someone rich and handsome who’s also Skye West’s son!”
“I’ll be here tomorrow morning about nine, if you bring your chair by,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I have another appointment now.”
“Of course. I apologize. I burst in here, I was so excited about my chairs. But if you see that man of yours, you tell him you met one of his mother’s biggest fans. I’d give anything to meet her,” she was saying as I closed the door.
Fans! If Carly Tremont hadn’t had the potential to be a very good Mainely Needlepoint customer I would have ignored her. But we could use a few big orders about this time of year. Orders slowed after Christmas, although winter was the time to prepare inventory for next summer.
And I hadn’t told Carly anything about Skye or Patrick. What harm would it do to take an order from a fan?
I reminded myself to tell Sarah to keep her mouth closed in the future, though.
Mainely Needlepoint was not the Maine office of Skye’s fan club.
Chapter 5
“A time to learn my Parents give,
I’ll ne’er forget it while I live.”
—Verse stitched on a sampler by 12-year-old Fanny Mosley of Westfield, Massachusetts, in August 1784. Fanny’s sampler features a filled-in black background, two alphabets, a geometric border, strawberries, a basket of flowers, and two trees.
I had plenty of time to get the needlepointers lined up and the ornament boxes stowed before Patrick called. He sounded relieved. “Mom’s tree is up! Ob had all the right equipment,” he said, “and he brought two friends. I couldn’t have cut and hauled and set up a sixteen-foot tree by myself, even if my hands were still good. Wait until you see it in the front hall. We cut pine branches for the tops of the downstairs doors and mantels, and I called that shop in Portland you told me about and they’re delivering lights and ornaments this afternoon. Dave’s going to have four young people here to decorate at five, while I’m meeting with Bev Clifford. But I still need wreaths and garlands. Do you have time now to help?”
“Sounds like you made a great start,” I said. “I’ll come over and show you where you can get everything else you need.”
Patrick must have placed an enormous order with that Christmas shop in Portland if they were going to personally deliver everything in a few hours.
I bundled up, boots and scarf and parka, and drove out to Patrick’s carriage house, on the grounds of his mother’s home.
“Let’s use my car,” Patrick suggested, looking at my Honda. “Mine is bigger.”
“Your car will be littered with pine needles,” I warned. “But that’s up to you. Head out to Route 1,” I instructed as we got into his car. “When we get back I want to see that enormous tree you found for your mom.”
“It was up in the woods behind the back field, so we didn’t have to bring it far,” he said. “Ob knows Aurora’s land and buildings better than Mom and I do. He knew just where to find the right tree.”
“He was the caretaker there for years,” I reminded Patrick.
Snow was lightly covering the windshield. He turned on the wipers. “How far do we have to go?”
“Not far. Beyond the used car dealership. Do you know the space on the side of the road there where cars can pull over?”
“Last June I bought strawberries and rhubarb from a car parked in that spot.”
“That’s the place. I’m pretty sure Arvin and Alice Fraser will be there today.”
“Do I know them?”
“Not yet. But they’re a nice young couple.” And they could use the money Patrick had to spend. “Arvin lobsters in the summer, but this time of year they make and sell wreaths.” The Frasers were a young family steeped in Maine ways, including finding an assortment of ways to support themselves.
Arvin scouted pine trees for the tips needed for wreaths, and Alice assembled them in the evening and while their baby napped. Wreaths were a cottage industry in Maine. Peopl
e hung them on all their windows and doors, and sometimes left them up until spring. And each year Maine sent thousands of wreaths south to be placed on veterans’ graves in Arlington National Cemetery as part of Wreaths Across America.
We pulled over a few minutes later.
“Angie! Good to see you again. I thought you’d bought what you needed last week.”
Arvin was taking fresh wreaths from the back of his truck to fill empty spaces on a large display frame.
“My doors and windows are covered, thanks to you,” I answered. “But I’ve brought you a new customer.” I pushed Patrick forward. “Today Patrick’s looking for wreaths.”
“Ours are wicked good,” Alice assured him, knocking snow off some of the hanging wreaths and then clapping her gloved hands together to remove the icy particles. “Fresh made. Last for months. Choose your size from those on the easel or leaning against the truck. We have more of every size, with red bows or without. But adding a bow means another two dollars each,” she cautioned.
Patrick shook his head. He hadn’t expected the wide selection of sizes he’d been offered. “I’ll need two for the carriage house doors.”
“You’ll need wreaths for your windows,” I reminded him. “At least for the front of your house and the windows facing the street. Mainers hang a lot of wreaths.”
He nodded, doubtfully. “You know the territory.” He walked along the side of Arvin’s truck, looking at the sizes.
“Wreaths are a Maine tradition,” I assured him. “Wreaths. Plural.”
Patrick looked down at me and touched the end of my nose with his gloved hand. “Angie. My consultant on all things authentic Maine.” Then he turned to Arvin. “I’d like two twenty-inch ones and seven fourteen-inch.” He smiled. “Complete with ribbons. Let’s go for it.”
I hid a smile as Alice pulled out a bag of ribbons and started attaching them. That large a sale would make her day.
“Shall we put them all in your car?” Arvin asked, looking at Patrick’s BMW. “Do you have a cloth to put under them? Otherwise you’ll have pine needles in your car for months.”
“And it will smell like Christmas,” Patrick agreed. “No problem. Inside my car’s fine.”
Whatever the customer wanted.
“I saw your Little Lady’s still in the water,” I said. “Are you decorating it for the parade?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said. “Alice and Jake are sailing with me this year. We have a tree for the deck all picked out and lights for the boat. After the parade I’ll be dry-docking it so I can caulk and paint it this winter. But we wouldn’t miss the parade.”
“Parade?” Patrick asked.
“Lobstermen in Haven Harbor decorate and light their boats for Christmas and accompany Santa as he circles the harbor and arrives at the town dock,” I explained. “Then the high school band and Y kids and other town groups accompany him and his moose assistant to the Haven Harbor Town Hall, where he’s available for photo ops and there’s a town Carol Sing.”
“When does all this take place?”
“The twenty-second,” said Arvin as he shook the snow off Patrick’s wreaths and piled them into his trunk. “It’s called the Christmas Cheer festival. Anything else?” He grinned at me. “A kissing ball?”
Patrick looked confused.
“It’s a ball made of pine or holly to hold your mistletoe,” I explained. Didn’t they have kissing balls in southern California?
“Sure.” He winked. “Better have one of those. Maybe it’ll help me find someone to kiss.” He nudged me.
“Okay, then,” said Arvin, adding a kissing ball to the pile of wreaths. “That it?”
“Actually, no,” Patrick said. “Those wreaths are for my house. Now I’d like your largest wreath—a four-footer, right? And twenty-six two-footers for my mother’s house. You’d better add another kissing ball, too.” He was getting into the spirit of the afternoon.
“Yes, sir!” said Arvin. “Coming up!”
Alice was trying not to look gleeful.
“Do you have garlands?” I asked.
“In the truck,” he assured me.
“Then, about sixty feet of pine,” I ordered.
“No bows on the garland; bows on the wreaths, though,” Patrick instructed.
Arvin and Alice were grinning as they almost emptied their truck for Patrick. They’d have to go home and make more wreaths. And home was warmer than standing by the side of their truck on Route 1 hoping for customers. “How’s the baby?” I asked.
“Shush. Napping,” Alice said. “He’s sleeping through the night now, thank goodness. Had a colicky first six months, but now he’s fine. We’re looking forward to his first Christmas. He loves to stare at the lights on the tree in our living room.”
I brushed a few snowflakes off their truck window and peeked inside. Jake was sleeping snugly in his car seat with wreaths and garlands stacked behind him. In a few years he, too, would be constructing the wreaths that helped his family make it through the dark winter.
Making a living from land and sea wasn’t a bad way to live. But it wasn’t easy, either.
Would I ever have children? I glanced back at Patrick, who was helping Arvin stack wreaths in the back seat of his car, since the trunk was already full. Then he peeled bills off the stack he carried in his pocket. He’d given up using a wallet. His swollen hands couldn’t remove bills or credit cards easily.
Patrick had grown up attending private schools and Hollywood parties and smiling with his mother in magazine spreads and publicity pictures. I suspected by the time he was twelve he’d owned a tux to wear at movie premieres.
I glanced through the truck window at little Jake.
His life would be very different from Patrick’s.
Money had made Patrick’s life easier. Had it been a better life than Jake’s would be?
I wasn’t sure, as Alice finished attaching bows to wreaths and Arvin thanked Patrick for choosing his stand to buy wreaths.
No simple answers.
Chapter 6
“Abby Wright ‘called in Springfield (Massachusetts) to see a piece of needlework lately executed at a celebrated school in Boston,’ adding, ‘the expense of the limner in drawing and painting was $8 and six months were spent in Boston working on it.’”
—From Journal of Abigail Brackett Lyman,
March 23, 1800.
Back at the estate I told Patrick I loved to hang wreaths, but needed him to hold the ladder steady for me.
It was a white lie.
I volunteered because I was afraid his hands would make it difficult to hold the nails steady.
He’d learned to manage most day-to-day tasks, but he hadn’t gone back to painting. Picking up small items, like paperclips or brushes or nails, was still difficult. He didn’t talk about his hands, but I’d noticed he avoided displaying them to others. He’d added a high front to his desk at the gallery so customers didn’t see him struggling to pick up papers and writing invoices. His new cell phone had larger buttons. I was beginning to doubt his hands would ever again be “normal.” I was used to the way they looked, but people who didn’t know Patrick stared.
Today’s light snow freshened Haven Harbor’s roads and buildings but made hammering nails a challenge even for me. I took my gloves off after hanging the second wreath (which included dropping five nails into the snow below the ladder) and decided frigid fingers and half an hour were a small price to pay for making the carriage house look like Christmas was really coming.
Aurora, his mother’s house, was another story.
Three stories, to be exact.
I was secretly relieved when Captain Ob appeared from his home across the street with a longer ladder. And more relieved when Dave Percy’s high school students showed up early to help decorate. They hung the wreaths on the second-and third-floor windows. Patrick and I managed the first floor and, inside, added electric candles to every window in the house.
“Perfect,” Patrick pro
nounced, stepping to the road in front on the property and admiring our work. We’d finished just before dark; most of the lights were on, the candles glowed, and the outlines of the wreaths were clear. Aurora shone.
Skye could have no complaints about the outside decorations.
Now for the inside.
Patrick supervised as the students enthusiastically climbed ladders, wound lights around the tree in the front hall, and hung the ornaments the Christmas shop had delivered. They weren’t personal ornaments, like the ones on my tree, but they gleamed.
I spent the next hour weaving garlands around the staircase railing from the first to the third floor, and then, with Patrick’s help, adding shorter pine branches to mantels, tops of bookcases and cabinets, and above first-floor doorways.
I was tempted to discard the kissing ball Patrick had bought, but ended up hanging it in the doorway between the dining room and front hall. That invited a few impudent remarks from the teenagers, which Patrick and I ignored after one chaste kiss to demonstrate the ball’s power.
Bev Clifford arrived while the boys were finishing the tree. She looked as sturdy and dependable as she was, and she was wheeling a small suitcase and carrying a box of pans and other cooking gear. She and Patrick retreated to the kitchen to plan the next week’s menu. Patrick had even talked her into “living in” for the duration. As always, he and his checkbook were very convincing.
Sometimes I wondered what he’d be like if he didn’t have his mother’s money to depend on.
“‘Kissing don’t last: Cookery do.’” Gram had often repeated when she (unsuccessfully) tried to teach me to cook as a teenager. George Meredith wrote that. I should have taken it seriously. I was finally learning the basics of cooking, but I was a little late to the party. Bev Clifford was known locally as an excellent cook. She could capitalize on opportunities like the temporary job Patrick had offered.
The tree was decorated and lights sparkling (every time I looked at those red and green and yellow lights, my mind said, “Caution!”), and the teenagers and I were piling up empty ornament and Christmas light cartons when we heard the beeping of a truck backing up.