by Kate Hewitt
“What way?” Hamish asked, a thread of anxiety in his usually genial voice.
“Rose needs someone to take care of her little ones, and I certainly can’t be spared.” Ruth nodded decisively. “We’ll send Ellen instead. She isn’t fit for schooling anyway, and I’m sure she’ll be a help to Rose.” She fixed Ellen with a hard stare. “Won’t you?”
“Send me?” Ellen repeated faintly. “Where?”
“To my sister’s, in Ontario,” Hamish explained. He threw a troubled look at his wife. “Rose McCafferty. You probably don’t remember her, but she’s your aunt. She married an Irishman right off the ship and went to live up on Lake Ontario. She has five children all down with the scarlet fever, but I don’t think...” he trailed off under Ruth’s fixed stare.
“You don’t think what, Hamish Copley? It makes perfect sense. Ellen can be of some use to someone, and I’ll be able to stay here.”
“But she’s just a child...”
“You’ve nursing experience, don’t you?” Ruth demanded of Ellen. “You nursed your mother for over a year, as I recall.”
Ellen nodded. She felt as if her carefully constructed world, difficult as it was, was collapsing around her. Move again? To nurse someone else’s children? The McCaffertys might be kin but they were still strangers, even more so than Hamish and Ruth.
And worse yet, she would not be able to go to school.
This wouldn’t have happened if Da hadn’t left, Ellen thought with a savage surge of bitterness. She gazed at her aunt’s determined face, a face she’d come to hope hid a fledgling affection, and wondered if her aunt was punishing her. Maybe Ruth wanted to see her off just as she’d seen off Da.
“Now that you’ve finished eavesdropping, you can go upstairs and get some sleep. Tomorrow you’ll tell your teacher you won’t be back to school after this week, and I’ll arrange your train fare.”
Ellen was amazed at how quickly things could change. In just a matter of days, Aunt Ruth had bought her train passage to Millhaven, Ontario, from which she would take a ferry to Amherst Island, where the McCaffertys lived. She’d sent a telegram ahead to warn them of Ellen’s arrival, muttering darkly all the while about the unreliability of telegraph services on the island, so Ellen wondered if anyone would even know she was coming.
Three days after Aunt Ruth made her decision, Ellen found herself at the train station, a valise at her feet, while Aunt Ruth and Uncle Hamish said their goodbyes.
“You’ll change at Rouse’s Point and Ogdensberg, to Millhaven,” Aunt Ruth said briskly, although she’d gone over Ellen’s itinerary several times already. An all-day train to Rouse’s Point, on the Canadian border, where Aunt Ruth had arranged for the landlady of a boarding house to look after her for the night. The next day, she would take the train to the shore of Lake Ontario, where she would board a ferry to Amherst Island. “The conductor will help you,” Ruth continued bracingly. “Just ask if you’re unsure.”
Ellen felt dizzy. Two rail changes and a ferry, not to mention an overnight stay, by herself? She wanted Da desperately, and yet at the same time she couldn’t help but feel a sharp stab of resentment that he wasn’t here to help her.
He’d made his choices. And hers were being made for her.
“I wish one of us could go with you, Ellen,” Uncle Hamish said in a low voice. “It’s a long way, I know.”
“Nonsense, it’s all taken care of,” Ruth said briskly. “She’ll be in good hands. I’ve promised Rose she can have you till Christmas. After that I expect she’ll want you sent back here.”
Ellen felt like a parcel, and an unwanted one at that. She couldn’t help but wonder what had turned Ruth so cold towards her.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Ruth,” she said hesitantly, “if I’ve offended you in some way.”
“Offended me? Of course not.” Ruth looked surprised, and then almost as if she wanted to say something but decided not to. “You might even enjoy getting to know your cousins, Ellen, if you let yourself. At least you’ll be with other children.” To Ellen’s surprise she bent and kissed her cheek. Her lips were cool and soft and as she straightened she gave what Ellen supposed was meant to be a smile. “Away with you, then. God bless and keep safe.”
The train whistle blew and Uncle Hamish picked up her valise. Ellen turned towards the train and boarded it with a heavy heart.
She didn’t actually remember much of the journey. She felt as if she had a fragile enough hold on her composure, and to remark on all the strangeness of it would make her relinquish it completely.
She did notice the leaves, the trees creating a blurred rainbow of reds and yellows as the train sped by. They looked, Ellen thought, as if their tops were on fire. The sky was a deep, aching blue, so bright and solid a color it hurt to look at it.
The conductor was friendly enough, and at noon Ellen ate the sandwiches Aunt Ruth had made for her, wrapped in wax paper, washed down with a bottle of sarsaparilla from the store.
It was six o’clock when she arrived at Rouse’s Point, and she was met by a stout woman in bottle green bombazine.
“Don’t talk much, do you?” she commented when Ellen had given several monosyllabic replies to her questions.
“I’m sorry, I’m very tired,” Ellen murmured, and the woman, Mrs. Cranby, nodded in sympathy.
“It’s a long day, at that. Well, you won’t find anyone to say boo to—I cater to the soldiers at Fort Montgomery, and they won’t bother with a child like you. Mind, we’ve some traders staying with us just now, but they speak French. They’re Quebecois, not American like you or me.”
“I’m not American,” Ellen said startled, and Mrs. Cranby nodded knowingly.
“Scottish, aren’t you? Well, you’re American now.”
Ellen couldn’t decide if she liked that or not.
After making most of her way through a large plateful of venison stew, Ellen was escorted to her room, a small box room off the kitchen set up with a cot bed. Mrs. Cranby gave her a hot brick for the bottom of her bed, for the nights were chilly, and a hot water bottle for the top.
Despite the complete strangeness of it all, Ellen fell asleep nearly the moment her head hit the pillow. The next morning Mrs. Cranby took her back to the station, and she boarded the train to Ogdensburg, and switched again to Millhaven, helped by a kindly conductor who pointed her across the platform.
It was late afternoon when she finally arrived on the shores of Lake Ontario, a wide expanse of blue-green water with a few islands no more than gray-green specks on the horizon. It looked to Ellen as big as an ocean.
The train conductor directed her to the ferry, and Ellen walked across the little town, her valise bumping against her knees, to board the ferry to Amherst Island, a small craft with a cheerful, red-cheeked captain.
“You’re my only passenger today,” he told Ellen, “so I reckon we can leave.”
Ellen looked at him in surprise. “It’s only half past three. I thought the ferry wasn’t due to leave until four o’clock?”
“It ain’t,” the captain agreed cheerfully, “but I’m in charge, so I am. I suppose I can decide when it leaves. Besides—” he spat neatly into the foaming water—“no one left the island this morning, I’d have known. So no one’s comin’ back.” He pointed to his head, covered in white wispy hair that made him look like he’d dipped his head in cotton wool. “I keep it all in here.”
Ellen nodded, torn between liking the man and thinking he was quite barmy.
Still, she enjoyed the crisp lake breeze as it blew against her face, and the water of Lake Ontario was a deep, foamy blue-green, clear and beautiful. In the distance she saw a faint green smudge that the captain told her was Amherst Island.
“It’s not a big place, mind,” he said. “No more than twelve miles long and four miles at the widest point. But it’s a happy place, I’ll tell you that. The islanders are fierce proud of their little slice of land.”
“Do you know the McCaffertys?” Ellen asked hesitant
ly, and was rewarded with the captain spitting into the lake again.
“Do I know the McCaffertys! Everyone knows everyone else on this island, child, and that’s a fact.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Got more children than sense, Dyle has,” he continued. “He used to run the inn in Stella, a fine place, good taproom, but the island just can’t support that kind of business now the shipping’s down. It’s all going by rail, these days. He sold it up to the town, and they turned it into the new school. Of course, all the old ladies were fair scandalized, the children learning their letters in an old taproom! As for Dyle, he bought a farm out on the shore, nice piece of land, but... well, Dyle’s not much of a farmer, and that’s a fact.”
“I see.” Although truthfully, Ellen wasn’t sure she saw at all. She’d heard Ruth call Dyle a good-for-nothing, and now she wondered uneasily if it were true. Just what would the McCaffertys be like? And would they like her? It seemed like no one else had.
Ellen felt an ache inside her, of both longing and loss. She was tired of living with strangers, of feeling like a stranger herself. She wanted the comforts of home, of being known and loved, and yet she knew they would be denied her, at least for now. For a long while, if her experience was anything to judge by.
“You’ll like the island,” the captain assured her. “Everyone does.” He grinned, and Ellen saw that both of his front teeth were missing. “You say hello to Dyle for me, missy, say hello from Captain Jonah.” His grin widened. “There ain’t no whales in Lake Ontario, so don’t you be worryin’. I think my mum had a laugh when she named me, to tell the truth.”
They’d reached the island, and Ellen glanced nervously at the cluster of wooden buildings that comprised, according to the Captain, the island’s only town. A school, a general store, a post office, and a couple of churches, all looking silent and a bit forlorn in the setting sun. Captain Jonah tied the boat up by a small, wooden building that Ellen saw was the ferry office, now shuttered for the night although it wasn’t much past four o’clock.
“Harrumph,” he muttered. “As if I don’t know where Bill Lawson has gone!”
“Where has he gone?” Ellen asked.
Captain Jonah gave her a dark look. “Just because Dyle McCafferty sold up his inn don’t mean there ain’t any other taprooms on this island.” With that pronouncement, he went striding off down Stella’s only main street.
“Captain Jonah,” Ellen called, her voice edged with desperation. “What shall I do?”
“Wait,” came the reply, over his shoulder as he continued striding down the street. “Someone’s bound to come for you.”
Ellen wasn’t so sure about that. What if the McCaffertys had never received Aunt Ruth’s telegram? Considering what she knew so far about the island, it seemed entirely possible.
The sun was setting low in the sky, turning the waters of Lake Ontario to burnished gold, and there was a nip in the air. The leaves, copper and crimson and deep yellow, rustled dryly in the breeze. It was very pretty, but also terrifyingly strange.
The little ferry office was all shut up, so Ellen sat on the weathered bench outside, her valise at her feet. She peered down the street, but Captain Jonah had disappeared and she couldn’t see a soul.
“If no one comes, what shall I do?” she murmured to herself, the first stirrings of real panic fluttering inside her. Surely Captain Jonah would return or someone else would happen by. She could always walk up the street and knock on someone’s door, although she had no idea what kind of reception she’d get.
Ellen leaned her head against the back of the bench and closed her eyes. Right then she wished to be anywhere else—even the old flat in Springburn, or under Mr. Phillips’s beady eye at school—than alone in the oncoming darkness in such a strange place.
Her eyes still closed, she heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and their low nickering. She opened her eyes to see an old wagon slow to a stop in front of the ferry office. A sullen-looking boy of fourteen or so with scruffy black hair gave her an impatient look.
“Well, I’d suppose you’d better get in, then, Ellen Copley,” he said.
Ellen gaped at the boy in surprise. “Get in?” she repeated, her voice little more than a squeak. “But who are you?”
The boy tugged at his cap irritably, his expression little better than a scowl. “Name’s Jed, and I’ve been sent to fetch you. So get in.”
Ellen swallowed. It wasn’t as if she had much choice. Darkness was falling fast, and the air was decidedly chilly. “All right.”
She stood up, her valise banging against her legs. “Shall I... shall I just put this...?” She gestured helplessly to the back of the wagon, which looked dirty and half-filled with old straw.
Jed muttered something under his breath and swung out of the wagon. “Here.” He took the valise from her and threw it into the back of the wagon where it landed with a muffled thud.
He turned to stare at her, and Ellen saw his eyes were a startling, light gray.
“Aren’t you going to get in?” he demanded.
“Er... yes, all right.” Clumsily Ellen grabbed the side of the wagon and swung herself up. Behind her she heard Jed snort in derision, and her face flamed. This was not what she’d hoped for her arrival on the island, yet it was on par with everything else she’d experienced of America.
Jed swung himself up beside her in the wagon and took the reins. He didn’t speak, just clucked softly to the horses who started a slow, steady trot out of Stella.
The buildings fell away to rolling meadow, now cloaked in twilight, with tumbledown stone fences lined with maple trees on either side of the dirt road.
“Are you my cousin?” Ellen asked after a moment, her voice only a bit quavery.
Jed turned to look at her incredulously. “Me? No.”
“Oh. Well, I’ve never met them, you see.”
He snorted. “So it would seem.”
Ellen bristled. She couldn’t help it. She was tired and anxious, and her whole body felt as if it were strung tighter than a bow. “You haven’t exactly introduced yourself,” she pointed out sharply, and was gratified to see a faint blush stain Jed’s cheeks.
“I told you, my name’s Jed,” he said. “Jed Lyman. My pa’s farm is next to the McCaffertys’.”
He stared straight ahead, his mouth a grim line. Ellen gazed around at the meadows now covered in darkness, the lake just a sound of water lapping against a distant shore. She shivered.
“You cold?” Jed demanded in a surly tone, and Ellen quickly shook her head.
“No. No, that is...” she shivered again. Her dress and thin shawl were little protection against the now decidedly nippy air. Her new wool coat, taken straight from the store, was in her valise.
With a scowl Jed shrugged off his own battered coat, draping it over Ellen’s shoulders with a decided lack of grace.
“Thank you,” Ellen murmured, silently concluding that Jed Lyman was one of the most unpleasant, ill-mannered boors she’d had the misfortune to meet.
They rode the rest of the way in silence, the horses trotting slowly but surely over the rutted road, knowing the familiar path even in the oncoming darkness.
By a large archway of oaks, Jed pulled the wagon to a stop. “Here we are.”
Ellen merely looked at him, for the lights of the farmhouse were mere twinkling pinpricks in the distance, up a long drive, the oaks flanking each side. Surely he wasn’t going to make her walk up all that way with her valise?
Muttering under his breath, Jed turned the wagon up the lane. The oak trees arched over the dirt track, making it seem as if they were going through a tunnel.
“Jasper Lane,” Jed told her after a moment. “The McCaffertys’ place.”
The wagon stopped before a large, rambling and rather ramshackle farmhouse in white clapboard, with a wide porch out front with a few rather broken-looking rocking chairs and a clutter of old boots. Although there were lights flickering in the front window, no one came out to greet them.<
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Ellen slid out of the wagon uncertainly while Jed went to get her valise.
“Should I...?” she began but Jed just shrugged indifferently.
Gritting her teeth, Ellen marched up the porch stairs and knocked on the weathered front door.
Inside the house she heard a high-pitched yelp, followed by laughter, and the scurrying of children’s feet. Then nothing.
Just who was in there, Ellen wondered, and did they even know she was coming? Where was Rose or Dyle?
“You could just go in,” Jed suggested, with the air of someone who wanted to leave as soon as possible.
Ellen threw him a dark look over her shoulder. “Well, then, you’re coming with me.”
“Me?” Jed looked horrified, and Ellen nodded grimly.
“You know these people. I don’t.” She beckoned with one hand, refusing to be cowed, and Jed climbed up the stairs with a decidedly martyred air.
Ellen turned the handle, and stepped into the front hall of the farmhouse. It was clean and shabby in a comfortable way, a house that seemed both much used and much loved. The threadbare carpet and clutter of shoes and shawls by the front door comforted Ellen; she preferred it to the spartan cleanness of Aunt Ruth’s house.
There was a second of silence before a bloodcurdling cry split the air, and a boy with a mop of chestnut hair and a ferocious expression came hurtling down the stairs.
Ellen instinctively stepped backwards, jostling into Jed, who put his hands on her shoulders to steady her.
The boy skidded to a halt in front of Ellen, a ferocious expression on his young and rather dirty face, a wooden spoon raised threateningly over his head.
“Surrender!”
“Ppp—pardon?”
A girl of about seven years old careened down the hallway. Her hair was also chestnut, a wild tangle around her face, and her wide hazel eyes were alight. She was carrying a makeshift bow and arrow.
“Got you!”
“No, you didn’t!”
“Yes, I did!”
The boy made to swoop with his spoon, the girl screamed and ducked, and Jed’s hand came out quick as lightning and grabbed the spoon.