by Lea Wait
“He insisted. He said I was blood, and my father and I hadn’t had what he and his children had grown up assuming was their due. That he was going to change his will no matter what I said.”
“But let me guess—he wasn’t sure that his children would want to share with you.”
“Exactly. Plus Robert Lawrence is famous. What I knew about his life, even if it was a short episode, was an unknown chapter. A scandalous one. If people found out I was his granddaughter, they’d want to know all the details. Ted’s children—my cousins—wouldn’t be the only ones questioning someone appearing out of nowhere and declaring they were related to one of America’s most famous artists.”
“You could have DNA tests,” I suggested.
“At first we didn’t want to do that. Ted said he believed me, and the tests would take an amazing story and turn it into a clinical analysis. I said it was up to him. But after a while we both realized that for other people, for legal reasons, we needed more proof than old letters and an untitled painting. So we went ahead and had the DNA tests, Angie. Robert Lawrence was definitely my grandfather, and Ted Lawrence is my uncle.”
“So when are you going to tell people?”
“Very soon. That’s why I’m telling you now. Ted’s invited his children to his seventy-fifth birthday party. He’s going to introduce me. Tell them who I am.” Sarah looked at me. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Angie. His children have their own, very different, lives. How will they react to having a new cousin? You met Ted at the Wests’ home last month.”
I nodded.
“He liked you, and he knows you and I are good friends. I asked him if you could be at the birthday party, too.”
“Me?”
“Angie, I’m really nervous. All my life I’ve wanted to be part of a family. Now, at least biologically, I have one. I love being Ted’s niece. He hasn’t been feeling well in the past month, and I’ve loved being able to help him a little. But after all these years, I’ve just found him. I don’t want to lose him, the way I lost my grandmother in England. Now I’m afraid the joy of finding my uncle will be lost if his children reject me. I’m scared. I don’t want to face them by myself. Please, Angie. Be my friend. Come to my uncle’s seventy-fifth birthday party with me.”
Chapter Four
“While education cultivates the mind,
May sacred virtue lead to joys refined.”
—Verse stitched (in addition to three alphabets) by Mary Rhodes of Southampton, Long Island, New York, in 1806. Mary was eleven years old, and her work was done predominantly in cross-stitch and queen-stitch.
Ted Lawrence’s seventy-fifth birthday party turned out to be a birthday weekend. His children, Sarah explained, lived too far away for the event to be just an evening, or even just a day. I reluctantly volunteered to help her prepare Ted’s house for the event, and his gallery employees, Patrick and Jeremy, were also recruited to prepare for the big day.
An early fall nor’easter had taken down one of the oldest maples in my backyard that week, the maple I’d built a tree house in when I was nine. The tree house I’d escaped to after Mama disappeared and I didn’t even want to talk to Gram.
The tree house was long gone, but I mourned that tree, and the memories it had held. And as a practical issue, I had to cut up the branches and trunk and get the wood out of the yard and into the woodpile. Plus, to add to my tasks as a new homeowner, the maple had fallen on top of the old stone wall separating my home from my neighbors’. Granite doesn’t crumble, but a few of the stones had now cracked, either from the blow of the tree’s falling, or from water that had filled and frozen in openings decades before and, given the right pressure, now had split them. Dozens of rocks that a few days ago had been carefully balanced and settled in the wall were now covering part of my yard.
I’d made a start on cutting up the tree, beginning with the smaller branches, using the chain saw Reverend Tom, now my step-grandfather, loaned me. I’d decided to rebuild the wall myself. After all, my ancestors had built it to begin with. I was up for the challenge. Not to mention it would be a lot less expensive than hiring someone to do it for me.
My neighbors had left early for their winter home in Florida. I had time. I’d been looking forward to starting on the wall. But how could I say I’d rather build a stone wall than help my best friend? The stones would be waiting for me after the birthday weekend.
Jeremy was going to close the downtown gallery early Friday afternoon in honor of the occasion, while the rest of us prepared The Point and its grounds. Ted didn’t seem concerned about the details. He’d clearly turned them over to Sarah. I hadn’t realized he was depending on her that much.
While she bustled about with lists and schedules, Ted insisted the sixty-degree day was chilly and asked Patrick and I to keep the wood box next to the living room fireplace filled. As hours passed Ted sat quietly, not saying anything, but occasionally throwing another log onto the fire.
Sarah cornered me in the kitchen. “I’m worried, Angie. Ted should be excited and looking forward to his children arriving. But he’s hardly said anything.”
“Are you afraid he’s getting cold feet about telling his children about you?”
“I don’t think so. But something’s on his mind.”
“He is seventy-five,” I pointed out. “Maybe he’s tired, and resting up for the weekend.”
“That’s what he says. But he’s changed over the past few months. There’s something he’s not telling me.”
“You’re just nervous about the weekend,” I cautioned. “You’re hoping your cousins will love you and be thrilled you’ve appeared, but you know they may not be. You have to be prepared for anything, Sarah.”
She nodded. “‘When I hoped, I feared—Since I hoped I dared.’ That’s what Emily wrote. I keep hearing that line of hers over and over in my head.”
“And you are daring,” I said. “You’ve been incredibly brave through everything—leaving Australia, finding your grandmother in England, coming here. . . .”
Sarah glanced into the hallway. “Shh! Patrick or Jeremy might hear. Nobody knows but you and Ted and me.”
“Soon, Sarah. They’ll all know soon. He’s going to tell everyone tonight, right?”
“That’s the plan. With the champagne and before the birthday cake.”
“Only a few more hours to hold on, then,” I said, trying to be reassuring. “Now, what else can I do to help? If we keep busy the time will go faster.”
” Would you mind putting clean sheets on the guest room beds? I dusted the rooms yesterday, but didn’t have time to make the beds.”
“No problem,” I said, groaning inwardly. I hated making beds. “Which bedrooms?”
“All of them,” she said. “Except Ted’s, of course. We won’t even go in there.”
“But when you walked me through the house earlier today didn’t you show me six bedrooms? I thought he had three children.”
“He wants all the beds made,” she said. “One room’s supposed to be for me, but I don’t want to stay here with the family. Even if they are technically my family, I don’t know them. I want them to have time to talk with each other when I’m not here. Plus, I want to be able to escape, to go home and feed Ruggles and sleep in my own bed. I told Ted, but he insists I might change my mind. So three bedrooms for his children and their husbands, one for me—and an extra, I guess.”
“Here’re the orders from the patisserie,” said a tall slender man, walking in and balancing a stack of boxes in his arms. “Sarah, you ordered bread for tonight, and pastries for breakfast, right? And the birthday cake.” He put a large square box in the middle of the whitewashed kitchen table and turned to me. “You must be Sarah’s friend, Angie Curtis.” He held out his hand. “Jeremy Quill. I work for Ted down at the gallery.”
His handshake was firm, his hand surprisingly smooth, and his tan slacks and pink oxford shirt, open several buttons at the top, fit perfectly. His thick wavy blond ha
ir was immaculate, and he wore one small gold earring. He looked like someone who worked in a gallery. A perfectly arranged piece of art.
“Good to meet you,” I answered. Sarah’d told me Jeremy had worked for Ted for at least ten years, maybe more. (“He once said Jeremy was like a son. A son who was interested in art.”) “The big weekend is about to start.”
Jeremy glanced at his large gold watch. “And I need to get going. The New York City crew is due at the Jetport in a couple of hours, and I want to get a good parking space. Anything else you need done right now, Sarah?”
“Nothing; everything is on schedule. Thanks for stopping at the patisserie.”
“Not a problem,” said Jeremy.
“You’re picking Ted’s sons up?” I asked.
“Seemed the right thing to do. Ted said they could rent a car, but it seemed more personal for me to get them.”
“Do you know them?” I asked. I didn’t, of course, and neither did Sarah or Patrick. I’d wondered about Jeremy.
“I’ve met Luke and his husband,” he said. “They came up for a few days several years go. Never met Michael or Abbie.” Nothing in Jeremy’s expression told me anything more than the facts.
“I’m looking forward to meeting them all,” I said.
“It should be an interesting weekend,” he said, raising his eyebrows a bit. “The gathering of the clan.” He headed for the door. “I’m on my way. Should be back with the crowd by seven, Sarah.”
“Great. Abbie and Silas are driving. They should be here by then too,” she agreed.
Jeremy waved and left.
“Tell me again about the three of them,” I said. “Then I promise I’ll do the beds.” Maybe talking would help Sarah relax.
“It’s not complicated,” Sarah said. “Abbie’s Ted’s oldest, and only daughter. She and her husband, Silas Reed, are driving from Caribou.”
“That’s up in the County,” I confirmed. (In Maine, “the County” always refers to Aroostook, the northernmost part of Maine.)
“Right. About a seven-hour drive, I think. They’re “back-to-the-land” ers. Raise sheep and chickens and farm potatoes. Abbie teaches kindergarten. They’ll be staying in the rose bedroom. It was Abbie’s when she was growing up.”
Ted’s children had grown up in this house in Haven Harbor, as I’d grown up in the house I’d always thought of as home, and now was mine. Gram had hung photographs of Mama and me in almost every room of our house.
No photos were hanging here. You couldn’t tell by walking through The Point that Ted even had children.
Sarah was continuing. “Luke’s an investment banker. His husband, Harold, is an actor. They live in New York City. Michael’s the youngest. He lives in New York City too, but from what Ted’s said, I don’t think he and Luke are close.”
“So Luke and Abbie are both married. What about Michael?”
“All Ted told me was that Michael had a serious relationship with his bar bill at a Greenwich Village tavern. He’s a poet. Had two poems published in a small quarterly several years ago, but none since. He’s been a graduate student at NYU for ten years or so.”
“How old is Michael?” I asked, incredulously.
“I don’t know exactly. Ted said they’re all older than me.”
Sarah was thirty-three. I was baffled. Did Ted’s children have anything in common other than their biological parents? Michael, the poet, was the closest to having an artistic gene. And from what both Jeremy and Sarah had implied, the three weren’t close to either each other or their father.
I headed upstairs to make beds. Luke and Harold were assigned the large blue room in the front of the house called “the nursery.” Clearly that name dated from a much earlier time.
Michael was to have the room next to his father’s, over the kitchen, and down the hall from Abbie’s.
That left the two unassigned bedrooms, the yellow room for Sarah and another room, pale blue with red accents.
No grandchildren, I thought, as I walked through the upstairs, checking that all was in order and up to Sarah’s standards. Ted has no grandchildren. At least not so far.
Sarah had put fresh flowers in every room, even the unassigned bedrooms, and bowls of candy and fruit on each bureau.
I couldn’t miss the spectacular quilt hanging in the yellow room. I’d admired it in Sarah’s antique shop about a month ago. Ted must have bought it.
It was a “crazy quilt,” pieced from different colors and shapes of velvets and velveteens. That would have been spectacular enough. But on almost every patch a different woman or girl had embroidered—some in cross-stitch, some in needlepoint, some in simple outline stitch, and others in a combination of stitches—what Sarah had decided were memories. Her research had indicated the quilt was most likely made as a wedding gift, perhaps for a young woman whose marriage would take her far from home. I’d been fascinated by the quilt the first time I’d seen it, and immediately went to look at it again. Ted had framed it carefully, to protect it. I looked for my favorite patches—a gull. A robin. Daffodils. A compass. A schooner. The North Star. Strawberries. A house, with an ell and a barn. A pine cone. A lighthouse. The ell pointed to Maine origins—few houses outside of early-nineteenth-century Maine had ells. And the lighthouse and schooner would only have been meaningful to someone whose roots were on the coast.
Each carefully stitched patch had also been initialed in now-faded ink. The quilt had been a treasure when it was made, perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago, and it was a treasure today.
Each patch told a story, now long-forgotten. I wished, not for the first time, that the patches could talk. That there was a key to the meaning of the pictures.
Perhaps the bride had held that key in her heart.
I touched the nonreflective glass now covering the quilt. Its condition proved it had been treasured. I hoped its owner’s life had been long and valued. Clearly her friendships had been.
Reluctantly I finished making the beds.
The upstairs looked perfect. More like a hotel than a family home.
I went back downstairs. When would Abbie and Silas arrive? I couldn’t see anything else in the house that needed to be done. Patrick was dusting and vacuuming the private gallery and Sarah was conferring with Ted about something. I didn’t interrupt them.
She’d been right when she’d told me this house and the land it stood on were valuable. The main house, designed so most rooms had views of the sea, opened to a wide porch overlooking the ocean and a gently sloping lawn that led down to a boathouse and dock and small sandy beach. (When I’d marveled at the sand, a feature not common on nearby rocky Maine beaches, Sarah told me her grandfather had created the beach fifty or more years ago, and Ted now replenished it regularly, after high winter tides and storms pulled the sand out to the north Atlantic.)
Two barns, one on each side, were connected to the main house by a series of small rooms that curved slightly inward, toward the ocean. The whole series of attached rooms and buildings was a C shape, protecting the porch and garden areas near the house from any winds not coming directly from the water. The gallery, which looked like a barn but was designed to display two levels of large paintings in a climate-controlled environment, was on one end. Next to it was additional space for storing paintings, and Ted’s studio, which I suspected had once been his father’s. On the other end of the house was a real barn, designed, not for horses or cows, but for several cars. It now held a small tractor and snowplow and a workbench that didn’t appear to have been used for years. Camping and sports equipment hung on the walls and large cabinets held gardening supplies and smaller items. Unusual for such a large Maine complex, every room in every building was heated. And even the barn was immaculate.
Ted referred to the main house as his “cottage,” the classic Maine word for a large vacation home. Perhaps at some point in the past his famous father had only used it seasonally.
I walked down to the gallery. Patrick had opened its wide doo
rs to fall breezes.
“Hi!” I called out.
Patrick started; he must not have heard me coming. He turned quickly, dropping the broom he was using to sweep the polished pine floor.
Reddening with embarrassment, he picked up the broom. It wasn’t easy. He still had trouble holding things.
“Hi! Did Sarah release you from chores?”
I grinned. “She’s a bit uptight about this whole weekend.”
“She shouldn’t be. It’s Ted’s party. We’re just friends helping out. As soon as his children arrive I assume they’ll take over.”
Patrick didn’t know about Ted’s announcement tonight. He didn’t know why Sarah might be nervous.
“Looks like you’ve got the gallery in order.”
“It wasn’t hard. I’ll admit I took as long as I could cleaning up the nonexistent dust. Just being in the same room with these paintings is an experience.”
I hadn’t looked around until then. “Are they all Robert Lawrence’s work?”
“Most are. A few are Ted’s, and he’s even got a few Andrew Wyeths over on the back wall. From the inscriptions, I think Andrew gave them to Robert.”
“Incredible. I hope he has this place insured.”
“For sure. And there’s a major security system. Although no insurance could replace what’s in here. We’re lucky just to be able to see this work up close. Most of Robert Lawrence’s paintings are in museums or major private collections.”
“I don’t know much about art. But”—I turned slowly, looking around me—“even I can tell these paintings are amazing. Very different from yours, though. And I love your work.”
“The work I did before the accident.” Patrick winced a little. “But I’m honored by your comparison.” He bowed in my direction. “I’m not exactly in the same class as these guys.”
“That painting in your living room is fantastic,” I declared. “I love the colors and textures and . . . I just love it. I haven’t got the right words to say why.”
“I’ll take ‘love it.’ And thank you.” He looked out the wide doors toward the ocean. “I hope soon I can paint again.” His tone was bitter, as he glanced at his deformed and scarred hands.