by Lea Wait
I pulled my hat down farther as I realized other people were looking at me. Watching me. Were they waiting for me to do something crazy? I’d already heard the whispers. “Doesn’t she look just like her mother?”
But I wasn’t Mama. And she wasn’t as sinful as some of them thought.
Others in Haven Harbor were worse. Much worse.
One of those other virtuous citizens had killed her.
Maybe Lauren’s father? Maybe one of these nice churchgoing folks nibbling cookies and sipping punch?
Whoever it was, for nineteen years they’d gotten away with it.
Chapter Seven
Old Mother Twitchett had but one eye,
And a long tail which she let fly;
And every time she went through a gap
A bit of her tail she left in a trap.
What is she?
—Traditional nursery rhyme riddle
Our house had always been my sanctuary. The one place I could be myself, no matter what people in the outside world said or did.
But my years away had made a difference. Walking through those once-comforting rooms now felt like walking back in time. A time I wasn’t proud of. I hadn’t fit in, and I’d flaunted the reasons why. Seeing those people at the funeral had brought back a lot that I hadn’t thought of in years.
I remembered Maine days in May as warm and smelling of freshly plowed gardens and sea breezes. I hadn’t remembered the chill I felt today.
“Tea?” asked Gram. “And maybe a tuna sandwich?”
“I’ll make the sandwiches,” I agreed.
Neither of us had taken advantage of the funeral food.
Gram put the kettle on while I found a can of tuna in the cabinet and got out jars of mayonnaise and pickles. “You only have whole wheat bread now,” I noticed, opening the bread box. Who but Gram still used a bread box?
“Doctor says it’s healthier for me. Better for the cholesterol,” said Gram, putting two yellow mugs on the table.
“How are you? Seriously,” I asked, mixing the tuna salad. I’d heard Lauren’s message. I’d deserted my grandmother. And, much as I hated to admit it, Lauren was right. I’d left Gram to deal with what I couldn’t. In the ten years I’d been away, I’d grown up. But I wasn’t the only one who was ten years older. I should have asked about Gram’s health earlier. She looked good, but maybe Lauren knew something I didn’t.
“I’m fine. Being sixty-five isn’t the end of the world. My brain still works, thank the Lord, although parts of my body aren’t as limber as they used to be. I’m just supposed to pay attention to that cholesterol. I figure, whole wheat bread and oatmeal for breakfast in the winter should keep me going a few more years. So far, no complaints.”
I nodded, hoping she was telling the truth.
The kettle was singing. I cut each sandwich into four triangles, as Gram had always done, while she poured hot water over our tea bags. I hadn’t realized I was hungry, but my sandwich disappeared before Gram had half-finished hers. I added another teaspoon of sugar to my tea.
“There’s more tuna in the cupboard,” she said, looking at my plate.
“I’m okay for now,” I answered. I sipped the tea. In Arizona I’d become addicted to cup after cup of coffee each day. I’d forgotten how comforting tea was.
“Your mama always added extra sugar to her tea,” Gram added.
“Did she?” Usually I wanted to remember details like that. But right now, today, I’d heard enough about Mama. I pushed my mug away. “Tell me more about your business. About Jacques Lattimore. If I’m going to help you, I’ll need some place to start.”
Gram nodded. “I told you Jacques found us, not the other way around. Mainely Needlepoint was doing pretty well. Our biggest problem was finding people to stitch. People called or e-mailed looking for personalized pillows to commemorate events from births to birthdays and anniversaries. Family reunions. Weddings. Even a Bas Mitzvah once! And that didn’t count the orders from gift and decorator shops. I’ll tell you, we all had sore fingers and tired eyes trying to keep up with the orders.”
“Who are ‘we’? You, of course, and the others you introduced me to: Dave Percy and Katie Titicomb and Ob Decker. And Lauren. She told me you’d taught her needlework.”
“I did. Several years ago when I was at the Harbor Haunts Café, where she waitresses, she said one of her customers had shown her our work. She asked if I could use any more help. I told her ‘yes,’ of course . . . but then it turned out she didn’t even know how to thread a needle.” Gram shook her head. “But she was a quick learner. I’ll say that for Lauren. And a hard worker. She and Caleb were newly married then, and struggling financially. They were trying to pay off their lobster boat. Lauren could do needlework on her breaks at the restaurant, or at home at night. She and Caleb depended on the extra dollars she brought in from stitching. After a while she only needed to waitress when the tourists were here. She’s had to go back to waitressing regular since we’ve had troubles. She and Caleb don’t have it easy. Lobster prices have fallen in the past few years, you know. Been hard on those trying to make a living from them.”
I hadn’t known that. Another sign I had a lot of catching up to do. Lobster prices were critical to many Haven Harbor families’ economies.
“So you taught Lauren. Who else works with the two of you? Anyone else I’d know?”
“Six of us work at it steady. Ruth Hopkins helped at the beginning, but she’s getting on. When her arthritis flares, she has to stop for a while. She hasn’t taken more than a couple of jobs in the past year.”
I nodded. Mrs. Hopkins had seemed ancient to my teenaged eyes ten years ago. No surprise she was “getting on.”
“And one more?” I asked, counting on my fingers. The business wasn’t as large as I’d thought, especially if Ruth wasn’t contributing much now.
“That’s Sarah Byrne. She’s our newest. New to Haven Harbor, and new to the United States, actually. She’s from Australia.”
“Australia! How did she get to Haven Harbor?”
“I don’t know her whole story. Says she was driving up the coast on vacation and got to Haven Harbor and decided to stay. She bought up that little shop on Wharf Street . . . the place where they used to sell candy. Do you remember?”
“Sure. They sold saltwater taffy—had one of those taffy-pulling machines right in the shop window—and all flavors of popcorn. Red Hots and whoopie pies. Is Sarah Byrne still selling candy and popcorn?”
“Goodness, no. It was a candy shop three owners ago. Sarah’s trying to make a go of an antique shop there. She goes to auctions all over the state and picks up pieces of china and silver and small pieces of furniture—a motley collection, if you ask me—but the summer folks seem to like what she’s selling. They may go in just to hear her accent! She closes the shop in winter. Does her buying then. She’s really skilled with a needle. She heard I could use extra hands and came looking for a job. She likes that she can stitch at the shop, or at an auction, or at home. She’s got no family to be a distraction. And she’s good. She’s one of us now.”
“That’s six of you working actively, plus Ruth Hopkins.”
“Right. Every one of them was at the church to pay their respects this afternoon. Sarah and Ruth left before you could meet them.”
“You all seem to get along.”
“Most of the time, although we’re all stubborn in our own ways and don’t always agree. I’m the only one who’s full-time on the job. They all have other obligations—work or family or both.”
The people who did the stitching were important, but I needed to know more about Lattimore. “Do you have a contract with Lattimore?”
“We do. I may not be an expert on business, but we all knew we wanted to get down in writing what Jacques agreed to do. Not notarized or anything like that, which was probably a mistake. But we have a paper we all signed.”
“And it worked?”
“Worked so well we got to depend on those
monthly checks. It all worked fine until last December.”
“That’s six months ago!”
“Close to six. And don’t I just know it! December and January are big months for us. We prepared orders for the holiday season, and Jacques would pick them up in October or November, and then the checks would come in, in time for the holidays. All right as rain. Until last December. Jacques said some accounts weren’t paying up as well as they should, so he only paid us needlepointers half of what each should have gotten.”
“That’s a major difference.”
“Made for pretty sparse Christmases around here, I’ll tell you. But we figured we’d all get even in January. That the checks then would make up the difference. We had no reason not to trust Jacques. Lauren told me she ran up credit card bills on his promises, and I suspect others did, too.” Gram got up and poured herself another cup of tea. “But January came, and, again, our checks were far smaller than we’d expected.”
“And . . . ?”
“And January’s the last time I saw Jacques Lattimore. In March I sent him a letter, registered and all, telling him he owed us money, but it came back. Couldn’t be forwarded. I have no idea where he is now.” Gram looked down at her mug of tea. Her hands were shaking. “And it’s all my fault, Angel. I’m the one agreed to work with him. And now the needlepointers are angry, and people—Ob and Lauren, especially—need the money owed them. I’d pay them myself if I had it. But I don’t. I don’t know what to do.” She looked up. “Until you said you’d find out about Jacques, where he is, and when he’s going to pay back the money that’s owed.”
“I promise, Gram. I’m pretty good at finding people. But this sounds like a mess. You may need a lawyer and have to do a lot of paperwork to get him to pay up.”
Gram nodded. “Don’t I just know it. But first things first. You’ll find him for me, right, Angel? Then I’ll get a lawyer. Or a gun.”
I knew—at least I thought I knew—Gram was kidding about the gun. We were about the only family in town that hadn’t had one. I remembered Lauren bragging after she’d shot her first deer, and even newcomer Clem had her own rifle.
Guns were taken for granted in Maine.
Chapter Eight
Home tis the name of all that sweetens life.
It speaks the warm affections of a wife.
Oh! Tis a word of more than magic spell
Whose sacred power the wanderer can tell.
He who long distant from his native land
Feels at the name of home his soul expand.
Whether as patriot husband, father, friend,
To that dear point his fondest wishes bend.
And still he owns where ere his footsteps roam
Life’s choisest blessings centre still at Home.
—Sampler stitched by Martha Agnes Ramsay, age twenty-three, Preble County, Ohio, 1849
At that point Gram declared she needed a nap. I probably should have slowed down, too. Between Mama’s funeral and feeling like an outsider in my own hometown and then hearing Gram’s business woes, my mind was moving too fast. But I couldn’t relax. I needed to do something.
I decided to risk running into any members of the press still remaining in Haven Harbor, and go for a walk. I left a note for Gram, went out the back door, and took a shortcut through a neighbor’s yard on a path that used to be well-worn but was now nonexistent. I headed for the harbor.
I might not have missed all the people in Haven Harbor, but, especially on Arizona’s simmering-hot August days, I’d longed for harbor views and breezes.
Outside of the houses and church and police station and municipal buildings, the working waterfront and commercial district of Haven Harbor was basically two streets, both of which paralleled the small harbor. Most of the shops were on Main Street. Some catered to tourists and were full of seagull and moose and lobster Tshirts and postcards and souvenir Christmas ornaments and cheap balsam pillows with MAINE painted on them. Not at all the sort Gram made. Those shops were open only when the customers from away (“visitors,” Mainers call them, to be polite, but we know what they really are) were here, from about Memorial Day to Columbus Day. Other businesses, like The Book Nook, which specialized in books set in Maine or by Maine writers, were open year-round. Both the art gallery and the shop that sold high-end crafts closed in January and February.
Stewart’s still displayed gold and silver jewelry, much of it made by Maine craftsmen. During the summers they featured rings and necklaces set with tourmaline (Maine’s state gem) or sea glass, or “beach pebbles,” for tourists with full wallets or checkbooks to take home as souvenirs. In winter they cut their staff and focused on plainer pieces of gold and silver, with a few diamond rings available for engagements or anniversaries. I’d been very proud that my gold angel necklace had come in a Stewart’s box.
Hubbel Clothing was where you bought clothes when you couldn’t get to the Freeport or Kittery outlets, or to branches of discount stores like Marden’s or Renys. Hubbel could fill your needs for sweatshirts and flannels and wool jackets, as well as bright yellow bib pants and slickers for fishing and blaze orange hats and vests for hunting. They carried flannel nightgowns and pajamas, too. I glanced in the window. Global warming hadn’t affected Hubbel’s inventory.
I kept walking. I paused at the new “patisserie,” where Greene’s Bakery used to be. Cookies, cakes . . . and what Mr. Greene had called “treats.” There was still an alley next to it, with space to drive into the lot in back of the store, or cut through on foot to Wharf Street. Had Mr. Greene killed Mama at his bakery? Had he put her body in his bakery truck when he drove her to Union?
And if it wasn’t Joe Greene, how had her body gotten into a freezer in his storage unit?
I kept walking as my head exploded with memories and possibilities. An antique shop (From Here And There), which must be Sarah Byrne’s, was where the old candy shop had been. I missed the smell of toffee drifting out the door when I walked by. Sarah’s windows featured an old pine children’s table set with small china cups and plates for a tea party. A pot of lilies of the valley decorated the table, and an old teddy bear sat patiently in a small rocking chair. Cute. But not enough to draw me in. How had someone from Australia ended up in Haven Harbor? Was she running to something? Or running from . . . ?
I walked faster. I wasn’t shopping. I wanted to see what had happened to Haven Harbor in my absence. A new women’s boutique looked interesting. The consignment store around the corner from it was new, too. That had been the small grocery store where I’d been sent to pick up a quart of milk or a box of cereal. I cut through another alleyway I’d always avoided, with reason, as a child, and went down to Wharf Street, which paralleled the working waterfront of the harbor.
Two lobster boats were out in the harbor, and three were docked at the Town Pier. In summer the pier would be bustling. Today, only the lobster boats and a couple of skiffs were tied there.
I walked by the marine supply house and Harbor Haunts Café, where Gram had said Lauren worked, and where Mama had waitressed. Nice enough, and open year-round. I didn’t stop. Past the café was the lobstermen’s co-op, where I’d spent my summers steaming lobsters for tourists to eat at benches set along the pier. My skin, my hair, my clothes, had all smelled like lobster in those days, no matter how many showers I’d taken. I’d hated it. I hadn’t tasted lobster since. The co-op hadn’t opened for the summer yet.
Would lobster taste better now? I wasn’t ready to check it out today.
Beyond the co-op was another pier, and a rocky beach, before the mainland circled back toward the ocean. The Haven Point Lighthouse stood above the rocks on the point of land that jutted out into the Atlantic. It had been automated for years, but still blared out fog warnings. Its beams were the constant stars in Haven Harbor’s night.
I walked down to Pocket Cove Beach, one of my favorite past escapes. It was low tide. Rockweed and driftwood and mussel shells, dropped by herring gulls, mixed with used con
doms and broken glass and cigarette stubs and beer cans on the wrack lines high on the shore.
When I’d lived here, the elementary school had a cleanup day at the shore in May when we’d all bring large trash bags to the beach and collect the detritus from winter’s high tides. If they still did that, they hadn’t yet this year. I kicked a Moxie bottle filled with seawater. It didn’t break. Moxie bottles were tough.
I stared out at the ocean. The Three Sisters, three small islands just off the coast, were still there, where they’d been for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. My great-grandparents had rowed there for lobster bakes. My grandparents had explored them in small boats equipped with outboard motors. Each summer the yacht club over on the eastern point, opposite the lighthouse, held sailing races. And each summer at least one small sailboat ended up on the rocks of First Sister, the largest island. It had the highest cliffs and the longest stretch of rocks at low tide. Even at high tide you had to navigate the reach between it and Second Sister carefully.
Children were told every seventh wave would be the big one. How many times had I stood here, counting waves, trying to make that true. But the waves obeyed their own rules, and wouldn’t conform, no matter what everyone said.
I inhaled the smells of the mud flats and the ocean, then smiled.
I loved this town on the sea. Even when it hadn’t loved me.
I walked the short length of the beach, looking down. Mama’d shown me where to find starfish here, and limpet shells, and sea urchins, some alive and some dead, bleached white by the waters and the sun.
I looked for a sign, something to tell me what to do now. A few feet from the ledges at the end of the beach, I saw it: a pure white stone, smoothed by the sea. And, close by, another. Smooth and black.
I picked them up, one in each hand, as I had hundreds of times before. I closed my eyes, wished, and then threw them both back to the sea.