Small Town Cinderella
Caron Todd
Enjoy the dreams, explore the emotions, experience the relationships.Welcome to Three Creeks, an ordinary little town where extraordinary things are about to happen… Some say life has passed Emily Moore by. They’re wrong. She’s just waiting for her moment. Then she discovers her friend Daniel is missing and a stranger – supposedly Daniel’s nephew – is living in his house.Innocent Emily is suspicious of the handsome newcomer – but as he pays her more and more attention, the shy woman begins to blossom. It’s time for Emily to seize the day and start living!
So that was Emily Robb.
The problem of how to meet her was solved. He watched until she reached her car – an old Tempo, 1990, maybe – then he shut the door. It didn’t do anything to shut out her indignation.
People reacted differently to a blank slate. Some rushed to please, some got angry, some got scared. He’d been up all night and had reached the point of not fully trusting his impressions, but it was clear her efforts to please weren’t for his benefit. Daniel’s, he supposed. Or maybe the community’s.
Hard to know what to think about her. Flustered, emotional, a little on the schoolmarmish side. At least, that was what she presented. For some reason he kind of liked her. But that didn’t have to be a complication.
He yawned and rubbed sandpapery eyes. His files were downloaded, passwords set up, contacts alerted. Time for coffee and a shower. Then he’d go exploring.
Small Town Cinderella
CARON TODD
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my parents, whose appreciation of books and
respect for language – its poetry and its rules –
helped me find this very enjoyable path.
CHAPTER ONE
THE MORE Emily thought about Daniel missing the wedding, the more concerned she became. Nearly everyone from in and around Three Creeks had gone, whether or not they were formally invited, and he had certainly been invited.
She sank her hands to the bottom of the sink, feeling under the bubbles for any last breakfast dishes, then pulled the plug, wrung out the dishcloth and spread it over the rim of the sink to dry.
“Mom? I’m going to run into town to check on Daniel.”
Julia sat at the kitchen table behind a stack of cookbooks, shoulders bent, graying hair twisted into a tidy roll just above her neck. She pressed one finger under the line she’d been reading and looked up, not quite at Emily, but beside her. “On Daniel?”
“In case he’s fallen or something.”
“Not him.”
Emily wasn’t sure if that was an expression of confidence or disappointment. She had never been able to figure out what her mother and Daniel thought of each other. “He’s immune to trouble, is he?”
Julia had already gone back to her book. She rarely cooked, but she liked reading recipes.
“I’ll drop in on Grandma, too. See how she’s doing after all the excitement. I won’t be long.”
This time her mother gave an absent nod.
As soon as Emily took her keys and purse from the hutch cupboard, the cat appeared from under the table, nearly tripping her on her way to the door. It was a stray that had adopted them that spring, establishing itself first on their driveway, then their front step and, finally, at their feet, wherever their feet happened to be. So far they hadn’t given it a name. It faced a tough decision when she opened the door, but decided to stay with Julia.
Emily stepped outside. Right away, perspiration prickled on her forehead. It was a still, quiet day, the heat too much even for the squirrels and goldfinches she usually heard. There had to be a hundred trees in the yard, with millions of leaves, but not one rustled. Not until Hamish emerged from under the caragana hedge. He stretched one leg behind him, then the other, and his tail gave a token wave.
“Good morning, old man.” She bent to stroke the border collie’s white-streaked face. “Don’t worry, in a few months it will snow. Won’t it be nice to have the cold to complain about?”
She emptied stale water and drowned flies from his dish and refilled it. “There. All set. You’re in charge, Hamish.” His tail wagged harder.
DANIEL LIVED on the north edge of Three Creeks, a few miles from Emily and Julia’s farm. His house stood on the last of five elm-lined streets that branched off the town’s main road and ended one block later in a field of mixed clover. It wasn’t his family’s original property. That was long gone, the trees and yard bulldozed when the provincial highway first went through and the house torn down years later, when it was widened.
The Rutherfords had moved away then, scattering across the country. Daniel had spent most of his adulthood moving from place to place, first in the Army and then the RCMP. No one had expected him to come back, but one day a sign had appeared on the community bulletin board—Daniel Rutherford: Security Consultant—and there he was, home for good.
All of that had happened before Emily was born. It was one of the stories she heard whenever her relatives were in the mood for reminiscing. As far as she was concerned, Daniel had always been in Three Creeks, as much a part of her world as her grandparents and her aunts and uncles.
She pulled up outside his house, a cozy story and a half—cozy except for the security bars on the basement windows. The driveway was empty.
He didn’t usually park in the garage, but she decided to check. Protecting his car’s finish from the sun wasn’t an issue. He’d been driving the same sky blue ’77 Cutlass for as long as she’d known him and it had done all the fading it was going to do.
The doors were locked. She leaned close to the window and shielded her eyes so she could make out the shapes inside. No car and, as far as she could see, no Daniel.
“I’m surprised you’re out and about today, Emily.” The soft voice startled her. An older woman wearing long sleeves and a wide-brimmed straw hat had come out of the neighboring house. “Don’t you need a bit of slothful time?”
“I slept until nine, Mrs. Bowen. How much more slothful could I get?”
“A hammock comes to mind. How is your dear mother this morning?”
“Craving solitude.”
Mrs. Bowen gave an understanding smile. “What a lovely day it was yesterday. Perfect for a wedding. It did my heart good to see you and Liz and Susannah together again.”
“Mine, too.” Emily’s cousins hadn’t been home at the same time since high school. After fifteen years in Vancouver Liz had recently moved back, but Susannah never would. Paleontologists had to live where there were fossils to dig.
“Liz and Jack are off, are they?”
“Somewhere over the Atlantic by now.”
“And you’re visiting already! You won’t find Daniel home. He hasn’t been around for the better part of a week.”
That couldn’t be right. She’d spoken to him a week ago, and he hadn’t mentioned a trip then. “Did he say anything to you about going out of town?”
“Not a word, but he never does. Are you worried that something may have happened to him? He’s a very self-reliant man, dear.”
But in his seventies, Emily thought, and gone without explanation.
“I’ll be right back.” Mrs. Bowen disappeared into her house and returned a few minutes later, flushed from hurrying. “He leaves a spare key with me. I suppose we could take a peek inside.”
After ringing the bell twice, then knocking, she unlocked Daniel’s side door and opened it a few inches. Hot, stuffy air reached Emily’s nose.
“Hello? Daniel?” It was a tentative call. Mrs. Bowen hardly raised her voice, as if even that would be an intrusion. They went up the steps from the landing into the kitchen.
“Oh, his plants! Look at them!” Mrs. Bowen pushed a half-full coffee mug out of the way and began carrying drooping begonias, philodendrons and violets to the sink. “What was he thinking, leaving them like this?”
Now Emily was even more worried. She quickly checked the main floor and the two small bedrooms under the eaves. Upstairs and down, dust had settled on surfaces, but there was no sign of Daniel and nothing to suggest he had run into any kind of problem.
“Some milk and fruit in the fridge were going off, and there was moldy bread in the box,” Mrs. Bowen said when Emily returned to the kitchen. “I’ve got rid of those and watered the plants. You know, Daniel usually is quite responsible about them when he’s away. He rigs trays of water so they can drink as much as they need. He must have been in a hurry this time.”
She paused when Emily opened the basement door. “His cameras and so on are down there, all that police paraphernalia of his.”
“I won’t touch anything.” She flicked on the light. A staircase with narrow steps and steep risers came into view. It was hardly better than a ladder. If Daniel had fallen anywhere, this would be the most likely place, but there was no huddled shape at the foot of the stairs. She sidestepped down, keeping one hand on the rail and the other on the wall.
Rows of metal shelves filled the room. They were stacked with sealed cardboard boxes, coiled wires and stainless steel equipment Emily didn’t recognize. All she knew was it helped ranchers guard against poachers and small businesses ward off the occasional thief. She tried a door in the middle of one wall. It was locked.
Mrs. Bowen’s voice came from the head of the stairs. “That must be the furnace room. At least that’s where my furnace and water heater are, but they’re not walled off like that.”
“Why would he lock the furnace room door?” Emily felt over the top of the frame for a key. It didn’t seem likely that an ex-Mountie who ran a security business would stash a key so close to the lock it opened, and of course, he hadn’t. She rattled the knob. “Daniel?”
“He’s not in there. I really think he’s gone off the way he does sometimes. You worry too much about people, dear.”
Emily started back upstairs. She didn’t think she worried too much. Just a sensible amount, about sensible things…her grandmother’s health and her mother’s absent-mindedness. And now Daniel’s unexplained absence.
The telephone sat on a recessed ledge near the kitchen table. She opened the yellow pages and made a series of calls. The RCMP in Pine Point told her a ’77 Cutlass hadn’t been involved in any accidents. Daniel hadn’t been admitted to the local hospital, or any of the hospitals in Winnipeg.
“I don’t know what else you can do, Emily.”
“There’s still the garden to check.”
They went out together, Mrs. Bowen unlocking the gate and recounting all the times her neighbor had disappeared for a day or two, or even a week, and returned without explanation. If you didn’t have ties at home, why not travel whenever the urge hit you?
She broke off when they rounded the corner.
The soil was cracked and gray. Lettuce leaves wilted, tissue-paper dry against the ground. Tomato plants drooped despite the wire frames around them. Green beans shriveled on the stem. Muttering that it was too late now, and what was wrong with her not to have thought of it before, Mrs. Bowen hurried to the back of the house and began uncoiling a green hose from a metal bracket.
Daniel loved his garden. Digging in it, choosing seeds, watching daffodils come up in May and roses open in June, harvesting vegetables at exactly the right moment. If that wasn’t a tie, Emily didn’t know what was.
EMILY PARKED OUTSIDE the general store and post office. It was a Saturday morning, so the store was full of people getting groceries, picking up mail and helping themselves to fifty-cent cups of coffee at the lunch counter. Everyone stopped to comment on Liz and Jack’s wedding and Emily began to wonder if she would ever reach Mrs. Marsh, who worked slowly and calmly, her ashtray and cigarette at her side. She belonged to the same generation as Mrs. Bowen, but seemed to want to disprove it. Her hair, a deep rust-red, was cut short, with bangs brushed flat against her forehead and a sculpted point of gelled hair in front of each ear.
When Emily finally had her turn at the counter, buying a bunch of bananas to be polite, Mrs. Marsh said, “Didn’t think you’d be out this morning. No rest for the wicked, eh?”
“This from a woman who works seven days a week.”
“Got me there.”
“I wanted to ask you about Daniel Rutherford’s mail—”
“You can ask, but I can’t answer.”
Emily paused, then tried again. “He seems to be away—at least he wasn’t at the wedding yesterday and he isn’t home right now. I wondered if he made arrangements with you to hold his mail or forward it somewhere.”
Mrs. Marsh picked up her cigarette. She took a deep, appreciative drag, then inhaled the surrounding smoke for good measure. Smoking wasn’t allowed in enclosed public places anymore—a sign staring right at them said so—but no one liked to mention that to the postmistress. “I’m not supposed to discuss customers’ mail. Can’t walk without banging into a rule these days.” She went to the post office section of the counter. “Couple of things came for you and your mom yesterday. The hydro bill and another one of those book catalogs.”
Emily put the mail in the bag with the bananas. “Is there anything the rules will let you tell me?”
“I guess you heard John Ramsey’s coming to visit.”
“No, I didn’t.” She considered leaving it at that, but ended up asking, “When is he expected?”
“Don’t know exactly. In a couple of weeks. Going to take a little trip, like you did last time?”
“That was an in-service for people working in school libraries.”
“Can’t hope for that now, eh? Not in the summer.”
Emily smiled. “I don’t want to avoid John. I’ll be glad to see him.”
She thanked Mrs. Marsh for the mail and the bananas and went out into the hot sunlight, glad to get the door between her and the curiosity she felt coming from her neighbors. It wasn’t a lie. After all this time she would be glad to see John, if they happened to run into each other.
Halfway down the road was the Legion Hall. Inside, five of Daniel’s friends sat at a table with a pitcher of Guinness in front of them and mugs at varying degrees of emptiness in hand. They waved her over, mentioned how good the food had been at the wedding and told her how pretty she’d looked in her bridesmaid’s dress. None of them had any idea where Daniel had gone.
“He does what he wants, Emily. Things like weddings and gardens don’t stop him.”
“Even if it’s Liz’s wedding?”
“Even if it’s his own.”
They all laughed at that. Five tolerant smiles came her way, along with a pat on the arm that felt more like a dismissive pat on an anxious child’s head.
WHERE THE CREEK ROAD CURVED and narrowed, becoming Robbs’ Road, Emily slowed the car. Manitoba maples and purple clover filled the ditches and hidden by trees on her right, one of the three creeks flowed. The road wasn’t much of a barrier between woodland and water. Deer and rabbits went across to drink; sometimes at night she saw foxes and raccoons. She often lurched the last mile home, starting and stopping, weaving around toads and garter snakes.
Yesterday had been tough on them, with all the cars crunching along from town for the reception. Most wedding dinners were held in the church basement or at the hotel in Pine Point, but Liz had wanted to celebrate at their grandmother’s place. It was the house their great-great-grandparents had built, where she and Jack had met, and where she had finally made peace with the ghosts of her first, short marriage.
When they came back in the fall, Jack would move in with Liz and Eleanor. They had already started working on the house, replacing windows, reshingling the roof and repainting inside and out. With so much work taken off her hands and someone to talk to whenever she wanted company, Eleanor had begun to look healthier and more rested.
It had been a hectic week, though, and today her fatigue was apparent. Emily found her at the kitchen table, shelling peas. The dogs, Bella and Dora, watched intently, as if every hard green kernel hitting the bowl was a slice of roast beef.
“On your own today?” Emily took a handful of pods and began to snap them open. The rest of the family had gone to the lake, a half-hour’s drive away.
“A cool kitchen sounded better to me than a hot beach.”
“To Mom, too.”
“And you?”
“I don’t mind a chance to catch my breath.” Since the beginning of June she’d been going full tilt, helping with wedding plans at home, Field Day and Awards Day at school and doing inventory for the library. She’d closed it the previous week, around the time dress fittings and dainty making had mutated from cousinly togetherness to near panic.
She reached for more pea pods and began to tell her grandmother about her concern for Daniel.
“There couldn’t have been anyone missing,” Eleanor said at first. “The church was bursting.” She looked out the window as if trying to visualize the crowd of guests. “Come to think of it, I didn’t speak to Daniel at all yesterday. He must have been here. He left a gift.”
Emily had seen the package on the gift table, too. Even without his signature on the card she would have recognized the sometimes ornate, always measured letters that reminded her of his age when nothing else did. “Maybe someone dropped it off for him.”
“Wouldn’t that suggest he made plans to be away?”
“I suppose it would. Am I fussing?”
“You?”
Emily laughed. “That’s the thing about worrying. It’s hard to know when it’s reasonable.”
“I do understand. What woman wouldn’t? Learned or instinct, we tend to take care of people. School’s out, my dear. We’ve finally got Elizabeth and Jack married and on their way. Isn’t it time to relax and enjoy the summer?”
“Mrs. Bowen mentioned a hammock.”
“What a good idea. Get yourself a hammock and a pile of books and don’t budge for a month. Who knows, maybe your mother will notice the dust and take care of it herself!”
Emily couldn’t help smiling at the thought of her mother minding dust that settled anywhere but on her books.
“Don’t forget,” Eleanor went on, “tea tomorrow afternoon.” Because of the reception and a barbecue planned for later in the week the family wasn’t getting together for the usual Sunday dinner.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“It’s only you and your mother, and Susannah and Edith and me. I’ve already told Julia that, but remind her, won’t you, Emily?”
“I don’t think she’ll come, Grandma.”
“No, I don’t suppose she will.”
THE COOKBOOKS WERE put away. Julia sat at the kitchen table, this time bent over one of her book catalogs. Emily could see she wasn’t reading it. Her neck and shoulders looked tight and her arms were pressed to her sides, elbows digging in.
“You said you wouldn’t be long.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” She put the bananas in the fruit basket, the hydro bill on the hutch and the new catalog on the table.
Her mother ignored it. “If you don’t mean ‘not long’ you shouldn’t say ‘not long.’”
“I meant it at the time. Did you worry?”
“I didn’t know I’d have to make lunch. I waited.”
Emily went to the fridge and took out jars of mayonnaise, mustard and pickles, a tomato and their share of the leftover wedding ham.
“Then you still didn’t come. So I had a sandwich.”
“You did?” She put everything but the ham back. “You’re ahead of the game. I haven’t eaten yet.”
“I don’t know why you call it a game.”
“Come on, Mom. You do so. It’s an expression.”
“An odd one.”
Emily cut a slice of ham, then leaned against the counter while she ate it. “Daniel wasn’t home.”
“You see?”
“I sure do. You said he didn’t fall.”
“And he didn’t.”
“Nobody knows where he is, though. Everybody says he likes to follow his inclinations, and if that means a missed wedding or a dried-up garden, so be it.”
Julia looked at Emily’s feet. “His garden dried up?”
That small reaction was more effective than all the reassurance from Daniel’s friends. “It’s strange, isn’t it? And his house plants are half dead. Mrs. Bowen said that’s not like him.”
Julia picked up a pencil and leaned closer to her catalog, her brief interest withdrawn. Emily watched her drift further away, pencil eraser to her lip, finger following the text. Every now and then she marked a title with a star. That meant interested, but not sure. Her library was huge and always growing. Fiction and nonfiction, painstakingly organized, filled floor-to-ceiling shelves on every wall of the living room.
When her mother began circling titles—the next step toward a decision—with the air of someone who was alone in the room, Emily put away the meat and washed the knife, then went outside again. This time the cat followed.
They crossed the crisp, brown lawn and the road, went down one side of the ditch, then up the other and through a narrow band of trees to the creek.
It was low this year. If the heat continued it might dry up completely. The water still bubbled along, though, over smooth, round stones. Emily took off her sandals and waded in, the warm water ankle-deep and cool against her skin.
The cat was still with her. It trotted along the bank, pouncing at rustling sounds, then rushing to catch up. Ahead of it, a red-winged blackbird flitted from grass tip to grass tip. Emily listened to the bird’s piping song and wished for a breeze to cool her head, hot under heavy hair.
“The thing is,” she said to the cat, “not turning up at the wedding, without a word, is odd.”
She had run into Daniel at the post office the day she’d closed the library for the summer, around the time Mrs. Bowen had said he’d left. He’d told her then that he had a speech prepared for the reception. “A few impromptu words,” he’d said, and his eye had flickered in what would have been a wink if he was the kind of person who winked.
At his house she had only looked for him, not for explanations. Now she remembered the coffee cup on the counter, half full with a swirl of murky cream on top, and the sour milk and moldy bread Mrs. Bowen found. Daniel wouldn’t go on an impulsive holiday leaving unwashed dishes and food to spoil.
It hurt a bit that everyone had dismissed her uneasiness about Daniel’s welfare. She had seen that happen to other women—legitimate concerns waved away because they’d reached a certain age without marrying, unspoken needs and fluctuating hormones blamed for their apparent fussing. She was only thirty-two, though, and half the time her relatives treated her as if she was fifteen. Was it the same in the city, or was it only in small places like this that it took marriage to make someone real in other people’s eyes?
Everyone is a pair now, except for Grandma and Mom and me. The thought had never occurred to her before. That was the trouble with weddings, with red-letter days in general. They disturbed the contented flow of things.
Tomorrow, after lunch since it was Sunday, she would ask Mrs. Bowen to let her into Daniel’s house again. If she could find his address book she could contact some of his relatives. With any luck one of them would know where he’d gone.
THE AIRBUS GOT INTO Pearson International from the Bahamas at eight in the morning. At the start of business hours, he picked up a couple of white, no-wrinkle shirts, replenished his supply of batteries—laptop, cell phone and camera—and made arrangements to pick up a car that evening. By noon he was at a lunch meeting, looking out at the SkyDome and wishing there was time to see a Blue Jays game.
The subject on the minds of everyone around the table was the recent discovery of a crash site in northern Manitoba. In 1979 a bush plane had disappeared between Flin Flon and Winnipeg. The plane, a deHavilland Beaver, and the pilot, a D-Day vet and ex-cop by the name of Frank Carruthers, were both considered absolutely reliable. Carruthers had done his preflight check, studied the weather charts, filed his flight plan, then taken off and was never seen again.
Last month a group on a fly-in fishing trip had found the plane’s remains tangled in some dead trees on a lakeshore. What concerned the people in this room was that its cargo—fifteen gold bars—was gone.
Fifteen bars identified by a refiner’s stamp and number, each weighing a thousand ounces. It was more than the mine usually sent out at once. A series of blizzards and a bad flu season had caused the cancellation of a couple of planned flights. Somewhere out there, in the muskeg or underbrush or transformed into gleaming ankle bracelets, was nearly seven million dollars’ worth of gold.
He opened the map he’d bought at the airport. Most of Manitoba’s population was concentrated in a band along the south of the province. The central and northern areas looked almost empty. Lakes, rivers, forests, bogs, tundra. It was easy to see how even something as large as a plane could go unfound for so long.
“Same arrangement as usual,” said the woman at the head of the table. “Expenses and ten percent of what you recover.”
“My partner is already in place.” He refolded the map, leaving it open to show the area northwest of Winnipeg. “We’ll do what we can.”
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER THE SUN SET, he could hardly stay awake. Driving alone in the dark down a nearly straight, nearly abandoned highway felt almost like crawling into bed. The dotted yellow line disappearing under the car every microsecond didn’t help at all.
He turned off the air conditioner and rolled the windows down. Fresh air felt better, even warm, humid fresh air. It smelled like hay. Hay made him think of farmers. Farmers made him think of farmers’ daughters. That took him right back to where he had started the day.
Not happy.
He should be happy. The information he needed was waiting for him. The dark corners and unanswered questions connected with the job didn’t bother him. Not even the remote chance of success bothered him. Long odds made things interesting; the potential payoff made them worthwhile. His problem was with the personal aspects of what he had agreed to do. If he was going to start getting fastidious about things like that he’d have to look for a new line of work.
The headlights picked out a sign on the side of the highway. Three Creeks.
Getting to his destination always gave him a shot of adrenaline. He felt alert again. The clock on the dash said one-twenty.
He slowed the car and turned onto the gravel road.
THE MORNING BEGAN with an argument over Eleanor’s invitation to tea. Julia didn’t want to go, not even if it was just the five women, not even if her mother particularly wanted her to be there.
“All they do is sit around and talk.” She poured herself a glass of juice, took a piece of toast and jam from the plate in the middle of the table and opened a cookbook.
“It won’t be long, Mom. An hour.”
“You go. I’ll make dinner.”
“You will?” Those words never failed to make Emily’s neck muscles tighten. The tension wasn’t reasonable. From time to time she came home from work to find dinner simmering or roasting, the table set, the house standing. “Something cold would be fine.”
Julia didn’t answer. One minute they were having a conversation and the next, they weren’t. Drawbridge up, moat flooded. Emily was never sure when the barrier was erected, before her mother heard or before she was expected to respond to an unwelcome idea. It couldn’t be involuntary, not all the time.
“Did you know John’s coming for a visit?”
The drawbridge eased open. “Who?”
“John Ramsey.”
Julia turned a whole sheaf of pages and landed in the pasta section. “Never liked him much.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Pasta primavera. I have peas. I have tomatoes.”
Emily waited, wondering if her mother would say more about John. They had dated all through grade eleven and twelve. She’d never expressed an opinion about him then.
“Why didn’t you like him, Mom?”
“Who?”
“John Ramsey.”
Julia went to the cupboard. “It should be fettuccine. We never have fettuccine.”
“Mom?”
“You need those wider noodles to hold the sauce.”
It didn’t matter if her mother hadn’t liked John, or why. He’d moved to the city and Emily had stayed home. If he’d wanted to take over his parents’ farm they’d probably be married now.
Julia was on her knees, buried up to her waist in the cupboard. Emily could hear containers being moved back and forth. Boxes began to appear on the floor.
“When I go to town after lunch I’ll get fettuccine.”
“There’s no need to go to town.”
“I’m going anyway, back to Daniel’s.”
“Get some of that bread, then, the square white bread.” Julia didn’t like the taste or texture, but she liked the way the sides lined up straight for sandwiches.
While her mother put the boxes back in the cupboard, Emily began to tackle the housework that had piled up during the week. As she was finishing the laundry and about to start making lunch, her cousin Martin called.
“Grandma told me you were asking about Daniel. You can stop worrying.”
“He’s back?”
“Looks like it. I went through town late last night, saw the light on over his door.”
The uneasiness that had clung to her all of yesterday still didn’t let go. “You’re sure it wasn’t one of his neighbors?”
“I’m sure. His Christmas lights were on, too.”
The thought of those bright colors sparkling through a hot July night made Emily smile. A couple of winters ago Daniel had decided he’d had his fill of climbing ladders. Now he left the lights attached to the eaves all year.
“Have you heard the other news?” Martin asked.
“News? No.” She assumed he meant local news, family news. “What happened?”
“You’re seeing Mom and Sue later, right? I’ll let them tell you.”
“Martin—”
But he had already hung up.
AN ALMOST NEW silver-gray Accord with Ontario plates sat in Daniel’s driveway. He wouldn’t have taken off without telling anyone just to buy a car, would he?
Emily rang the side door bell. She had raised her hand to ring a second time when the door opened. A stranger stood in front of her.
“Yes?”
He was tall, with a trim, hard build. In spite of the summer heat, he wore suit trousers and a dress shirt that looked formal even with the sleeves rolled up and the collar unbuttoned. He needed a shave, and he looked as if he’d missed at least three nights’ sleep. It gave him a grainy, world-weary appearance that made her heart beat a little faster.
She stood straighter, her grade one teacher’s daily admonition popping into her mind from wherever it had stayed dormant all these years. Shoulders back, chest out, tummy in. “I was hoping to see Daniel. Is he home?”
“I can give him a message.”
It wasn’t a very informative answer. The man didn’t even smile. Emily felt as welcome as a door-to-door canvasser. “I’d like to talk to him myself. Is he here?”
Dark-gray eyes looked back at her. Did he really need to think it over? Daniel was either here or he wasn’t. Her concern flooded back. “Has something happened to him?”
“He’s been called away.”
“He’s all right, though?”
“He’s fine.”
Emily didn’t want to play tug-of-war with the man over one simple piece of information. If his clothes weren’t enough of a clue, his tone made it clear he was from the city. No one used to small-town life would sound so distant when company called, not even when that company dropped in without notice.
She used the firm expression that usually got children’s attention when they were misbehaving and waited expectantly. Finally he added, “Daniel asked me to look after the place while he’s gone. He should be back in about a week if you want to try again.”
The door began to close.
She couldn’t believe it. He’d been so cool through the whole exchange, no more than polite. Not even polite. Stiff and distant and unhelpful, all with a sort of repressed energy that she found a little unnerving. “If you’re talking to him, would you tell him I came by? Emily Moore—”
The door, half-shut, opened again. “Otherwise known as Robb?”
For a moment his eyes had some life to them. Why did he care if she was a Robb? “According to people around here.” She smiled tentatively. “Not on any legal documents.”
“My uncle mentioned you. I’m Matthew Rutherford.”
A nephew! The name didn’t ring a bell.
He leaned against the doorjamb. Maybe he was feeling more relaxed now that they were introduced. But if he was more relaxed, why was she still standing outside?
Daniel would be disappointed if his nephew didn’t get a proper welcome. “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay in Three Creeks. You’ve come a long way to watch the house. Not many nephews would be so generous!”
“I suppose it depends on the uncle.”
“That’s true. I’d do just about anything for Daniel, and we’re not even related.”
Her comment was met with a blank stare.
Emily sighed. She tried to catch it before it was out, but she was too late. “The last time I talked to him he was expecting to go to my cousin’s wedding this past Friday. He must have changed his mind suddenly. Did he go to Ontario?”
“He didn’t mention a wedding.”
Another non-answer. Daniel wouldn’t mind her knowing where he’d gone. She tried a subject the nephew might find less personal. “Have you met your neighbors yet?”
“You’re the first person I’ve seen.”
“Mrs. Bowen—” she pointed over her shoulder “—next door, is a dear friend of your uncle’s. Once she knows you’re here and alone—oh! Are you alone?”
As soon as she asked the question, something flashed between them. Awareness. She had forgotten about that sense of possibility. A pleasant, alert, tingly sort of feeling. It was a little rusty if it thought it should pop up now. There was no possibility with this unfriendly stranger.
“I’m here alone,” he said.
“Then she’s bound to be knocking at the door with salads and cookies and casseroles. She’ll pack your fridge with enough food for a month.”
The idea didn’t seem to please him. This really was an uphill conversation. She wasn’t going to give up, though. “Why don’t you come for dinner at my place one evening soon?”
Again, the stare. It wasn’t a complicated question. “Thanks, I’d love to,” he could say. Or “Sorry, I won’t have time.”
He didn’t choose either of those easy options. With traces of that disquieting awareness hovering, he stood in the doorway, apparently evaluating the invitation. She could picture him at the table, slowly and silently chewing and swallowing with that same look in his eyes. And she could picture herself getting very annoyed if he did.
“Daniel won’t want you to sit and look at the walls while you’re here. Now and then you’ll need to get out of this boiling hot house and have a proper home-cooked meal.”
The watchfulness became mild interest. His head tilted to one side. “Do you think a home-cooked meal is beyond me?”
Was he being curious or challenging? “Well, no…but there’s nothing like a home-cooked meal eaten in the shade of a big old maple tree.”
“That sounds appealing.”
The maple tree had clinched it. She should have known food wouldn’t be a draw. As far as she could see he didn’t have an ounce of body fat anywhere.
“Good.” She thought of her mother, still recovering from the wedding crowd. How long should she wait? He was only here for a week—it wasn’t meant to be a farewell dinner. “Come tomorrow? Around six?”
His expression was less stern now. Was he thawing? Was it because she was about to leave?
She smiled, and hoped it didn’t look as wooden as it felt. One dinner, and her duty to Daniel would be done.
SO THAT WAS Emily Robb. The problem of how to meet her was solved. He watched until she reached her car—an old Tempo, 1990, maybe—then he shut the door. It didn’t do anything to shut out her indignation.
People reacted differently to a blank slate. Some rushed to please, some got angry, some scared. He’d been up all night and had reached the point of not fully trusting his impressions but it was clear her efforts to please weren’t for his benefit. Daniel’s, he supposed. Or maybe the community’s.
He went up to the kitchen, ran the tap until the water was cold and filled a glass. From the window over the sink he could see the street. Her car was gone.
Hard to know what to think about her. Flustered, emotional, a little on the schoolmarmish side. At least that was what she presented. And why not? That’s what she was. A small-town, high-school-educated teaching assistant. Flustered schoolmarms usually got his back up. Not this one. For some reason, he kind of liked her.
It didn’t have to be a complication.
He yawned and rubbed sandpapery eyes. His files were downloaded, passwords set up, contacts alerted. Time for coffee and a shower. Then he’d go exploring.
BELLA AND Dora took the trouble to leave the shade of the lilac bushes as Emily’s car approached, and three figures on the veranda waved. Aunt Edith and Susannah had already arrived.
As soon as Emily stepped onto the porch her grandmother handed her a cup of tea. “No luck with your mother?”
“Sorry, Grandma. I guess she needs a little more time to herself. She’s fine, though. Reading recipes and ordering books, as usual.”
“Just as if Susannah and Alex and Winston and Lucy weren’t visiting,” Edith said, smiling over her tea.
Eleanor frowned. “Really, Edith.”
“I’m not criticizing her. I’m only saying what she’s doing. That’s allowed, isn’t it?”
Susannah said, “Aunt Julia and I had a good visit at the reception.” She looked content in a Muskoka chair, her long dark hair pulled back in its usual French braid, her feet up, and one hand resting on her very noticeable stomach. She and her husband Alex were expecting their first child in September.
“You’ve grown over the past couple of days, Sue.”
“Must be all the somersaults. He’s flinging himself every which way.” She had told Emily they were sure the baby was a boy. Something about heart-rate and needles swinging over pulse points and deep-down instinct. They weren’t acting like scientists at all.
“If only Liz hadn’t left for her honeymoon yet,” Aunt Edith said to Eleanor. “Wouldn’t it be lovely to have the three girls here with us?”
“We did, all week—”
“Barely long enough to tease.” Edith helped herself to a cookie. “You won’t believe what happened yesterday, Emily. In broad daylight. Here, in Three Creeks.”
This must be the news Martin had promised.
It seemed Eleanor had already heard. “The first thing Jack did when he moved into the Ramsey place was install better locks. He advised me to do the same.” She looked at Edith pointedly. “And to use them.”
“Someone broke into your house, Aunt Edith?”
“Well, not exactly broke—”
“The doors weren’t locked,” Susannah explained.
“Someone went in without our permission, though. Corporal Reed says that’s still called break and enter.” Edith was becoming more animated with every word.
“When we got back from the lake yesterday evening—oh, and it was a lovely day, Emily, you should have come—the door was open, the house was full of flies and bees, the cat—who knows perfectly well she’s not allowed in—was comfortable as can be on the sofa and refusing to budge, and everything in your uncle’s desk, all his bills and receipts and bank statements, were pulled out of place.”
“Aunt Edith!”
“Pulled out of place,” she repeated with satisfaction.
“They didn’t take anything,” Susannah added. “Dad thought they must have been looking for credit card receipts or checks they could use.”
“Such nasty people. They were long gone by the time we got home. A pity, with Will and Alex ready to take them on. They’ve gone to town to buy dead bolts.”
Emily looked at her grandmother. “I thought we’d be able to move into the long, lazy part of summer now that the wedding’s over. When do you suppose that will happen?”
Susannah stretched. “Right now. Every moment from now until the first contraction is going to be peaceful.”
“And not a single moment afterward, my girl,” Edith said. “Never again.”
A look of irritation crossed Susannah’s face. Emily decided it was a good time to jump in with her news. She rarely heard anything first, so she tried to draw it out.
“A stranger has come to town.”
Three curious faces turned her way.
“A handsome stranger?” Susannah asked, in a Twenty Questions voice.
“I suppose you could say handsome.”
“We are talking about a handsome man?”
“Definitely a man.” No need to think about that. In spite of his overall coldness, Matthew Rutherford had radiated more masculine energy than Emily had ever experienced from a single source. “Just standing in the doorway doing nothing he made Daniel’s house feel smaller.”
Three sets of eyebrows twitched.
“You know how men can be,” Emily said quickly. “So…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yes, indeed,” Edith said.
“But what was this handsome, virile stranger doing in Daniel’s house?” Susannah asked.
Emily explained who he was, concluding that he had agreed to come to dinner the next day. Eleanor and Edith went back and forth listing Rutherfords and birth dates and agreed they didn’t know a Matthew.
Susannah held out her cup for more tea. “Tell me, Em, what was that inflection I heard in your voice just now?”
“I heard it, too,” Aunt Edith said. “Is he anything like his uncle? I think I remember Daniel being a very attractive man when he was younger.”
“He still is,” Eleanor protested.
“You can stop matchmaking, all of you. This nephew is only here for a week. Anyway, he hardly spoke to me. He seems used to being in charge, not answering to anyone. He sort of guards information.” That was exactly what he did. As if it was his own personal treasure. “I couldn’t even find out where Daniel went, or why. Whenever I asked him a direct question he ignored me!”
“I’ll ask him. He can’t ignore a woman who’s about to give birth.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Then I’ll ask him,” Eleanor said. “He can’t ignore an octogenarian. Can he?”
“Wait until you meet him, Grandma. Then you’ll see.”
Edith passed around the cookie plate. “He doesn’t sound like a very nice man. Of course, the Rutherfords were always like that. Standoffish.”
“It’s more that they’re slow to warm to a person,” Eleanor said. “They’re good in a pinch, though.”
That was a perfect description of Daniel. Emily wasn’t sure it applied to the nephew, not with that analytical look in his eye. By the time he’d finished evaluating the pros and cons of getting involved the pinch would be over.
The conversation turned to the problem of feeding a rather large man when temperatures were so high. Now that she had promised a proper home-cooked meal, Emily would have to provide something more impressive than the sandwiches she and her mother usually ate on hot summer evenings. When she left her grandmother’s, she had a jar of pickled mixed vegetables in one hand, a bag of frozen potato scones in the other and a promise of a green bean salad from her aunt.
“And do lock your door whenever you leave the house,” Aunt Edith said. “With people driving so fast these days we’re not as far from the city as we used to be. Who knows how many troublemakers are around?”
CHAPTER THREE
EMILY HAD ALWAYS LOCKED the door at night, so talk of troublemakers and break-ins didn’t disturb her sleep. The thought of Matthew Rutherford did, though. It was the suit, she decided, while getting dressed the next morning. Who wore a suit to drive all the way from Ontario?
It was the attitude that went with the suit, too. Leaving her standing on the step while he looked her up and down appraisingly—as if she was the stranger! If she’d thought of it earlier she would have invited her whole family for dinner. Let him appraise them. See how he liked being appraised right back by a room full of Robb men.
She took an empty ice cream pail from the pantry and went outside to pick berries for dessert. She had just the thing in mind, something she’d seen once in a magazine—five or six layers of meringue with whipped cream in between and fresh fruit on top. Simple, but special.
Hamish and the cat followed her along the driveway. The dog stopped once, head raised, looking into the woods across the road. A few years ago he would have bounded after whatever he sensed there, but now he turned and continued down the path to the garden. As soon as they reached soil he stretched out, flattening himself against the cool dirt.
The cat stayed close to Emily. When she stood still to pick a few berries it sat down, and when she moved more than a few steps it jumped up and trotted after her.
“You do know you’re not behaving like a cat,” she told it. “Cats don’t follow people. Cats play hard to get. Maybe we should call you Rover.”
It stared, nose twitching.
“You don’t like Rover? I don’t blame you. It’s not respectful. I apologize.”
Its gaze intensified.
“All right, then, if you want to talk, tell me what you think about this nephew Daniel never mentioned. Am I being harsh? He’s male and from the city, after all. How chummy can I expect him to be?”
The cat rubbed against her. She scratched behind its ear and it immediately threw itself on the ground, offering its belly for her attention, purring as soon as she touched it. When she got back to work it gave a protesting meow.
“Sorry. One day soon you can come on the porch with me. I’ll read and scratch your tummy.”
She hadn’t been out to pick for days, except for snacking, and most of the berries hovered between perfectly ripe and overripe. When she cupped a hand under them whole clumps of dark red fruit dropped in.
Instead of concentrating on avoiding spiders and worms, her mind kept going back to Matthew Rutherford. In particular, back to the suggestion of hard muscles under a crisp white shirt. How could she be preoccupied by something so superficial? There was nothing attractive about a man who wasn’t kind.
Maybe it didn’t have much to do with attraction. It could be the challenge of defrosting that cold face of his. Once or twice yesterday it had shown a hint of warming. Did he ever laugh? She’d like to see that. And manners. Manners would be nice.
She looked down at the cat, rubbing against her legs again. “I’m asking too much, aren’t I? A pretty tablecloth won’t make him behave.”
EMILY SQUEEZED PAST her pacing mother and began washing berries. “Something wrong, Mom?”
Julia gathered speed. After a few trips from the sink to the window and back, she said, “There’s another early book.”
“How early?”
“From Egypt.”
She must mean from the time of the Pharaohs. An unexpected picture of Cleopatra curled up reading came to Emily’s mind.
“Sinuhe, it’s called. The originals are on papyrus. Fragments of papyrus.”
“It’ll be hard to get your hands on any of those.”
Her mother didn’t smile. “Only museums can have the originals. Old papyrus needs special conditions or it will crumble. It’ll crumble, anyway.” Doubtfully, she repeated, “Sinuhe. I don’t even know how to pronounce it.”
“We’ll have to go to the library so you can look it up.”
“When?”
Emily wasn’t sure. She had promised to help with her grandmother’s garden and housework while Liz was away. “Soon. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day?”
“Tomorrow.” Julia gave a determined nod. She’d never learned to drive. It didn’t usually bother her because she rarely wanted to go anywhere. She picked up her new book catalog and left the room. Something heavy, no doubt the Encyclopedia of Ancient and Medieval History, thudded onto the coffee table.
The rest of the day went too quickly. Emily finished washing berries, fried chicken to serve cold, picked up beer in case the nephew liked it, defrosted a quiche she’d made during cooler weather, piped rounds of meringue onto cookie sheets, whipped the cream and prepared salads.
With an hour to go before dinner she dragged the picnic table into the shade of the maples, as promised, angling it so no matter where the nephew sat he would be able to see the perennial garden, where sweet-smelling daylilies and clumps of bright yellow heliopsis were coming into their prime.
It was an ordinary, weathered picnic table, more than weathered, really—in a few years it would be sinking into the ground, its very own compost pile—but with a bit of care it looked beautiful. Her mother’s Irish linen cloth on top, a bowl of deep pink roses from the Henry Kelsey climber in the middle, sparkling glass and silverware, and the Wedgwood china her father had given her mother as a birthday present the year before he died. There was something about linen and bone china outdoors, with grass underfoot and branches overhead. No one, regardless of his personal deficiencies, could look at this table with anything but approval.
Hamish got up and gave himself a shake just before Emily heard tires in the driveway. The nephew was early, or she was late. She smoothed her hair and pulled at her dress, fanning it against her skin, then went to greet her guest.
He stood beside his car with his back to her, looking at the house. Today he had dressed more casually, but city casual, in lightweight khakis and a shirt that looked so soft she wondered if it was made of silk. She wished she’d had time to shower.
“Matthew. You found us.”
He turned, and in that moment her mental image of him, tended overnight, dissolved. The coldness that had surprised her yesterday, and that awful evaluating expression, were gone. He’d shaved, and he looked rested. Approachable.
Her body started humming about possibility again. She told it to give up. He was here for one week—less than that now—he had shown no interest in her, and he had been pleasant for all of thirty seconds since they met.
“Mrs. Bowen told me it was the house with all the trees around it,” he said. “Luckily, she added it was the third house with all the trees around it.”
“My aunt and uncle and my grandmother are the ones before us. You see why they call it Robbs’ Road.”
“Your very own road. The Robbs must be big fish.”
“Little fish, but there’s a big school of us.”
He held out a plastic-wrapped rectangle. “This was in my uncle’s freezer. Can you make use of it?”
It was a pumpkin loaf, like the ones Jack pressed on her when his crop outstripped consumer demand. Since his first harvest everyone he knew had received more loaves, pies and muffins than their appreciation for pumpkin could accommodate. “Lovely. We’ll have it with tea after dinner.”
Hamish hadn’t barked when Matthew arrived, but he kept skulking with his low-to-the-ground herding posture, circling from Emily to the newcomer and back.
“It’s all right, Hamish. Matthew is invited.”
“Is he a good watchdog?”
“He doesn’t get much testing. If he likes people he lets them do whatever they want.” She gave the dog a reassuring pat. “He growls at the cat all the time. I hope he can do it with people. My aunt and uncle’s house was broken into the other day.”
Matthew’s voice changed. “Anything taken?”
“Not that they could see. Things like that hardly ever happen around here.”
“You’re worried?”
She looked at him curiously. His manner wasn’t protective, but it ranged in that direction. Short, to-the-point questions, a sudden return to yesterday’s hardness. She found she didn’t mind it when it wasn’t aimed at her.
“Not really. There’s nothing to take. No fabulous gems. No Group of Seven paintings.”
“That’s not what most thieves are looking for—so I hear, anyway. Your laptop or your DVD player will do nicely.”
“We don’t have those, either.”
He smiled as if he thought she was joking. “I really have come to the backwoods, then. Next thing you’ll tell me you don’t have a telephone or the Internet.”
“We do have a telephone.”
“No Internet? Really? Are you Amish?”
Emily smiled. “Wouldn’t the phone disqualify me?” It was good to see him feeling a little out of his element. Not quite so in charge. “Daniel doesn’t have an Internet connection, either. If that bothers you the library in Pine Point has computers for the public to use.” She started toward the house. “Why don’t you come in and meet my mother?”
They walked side-by-side up the driveway. She caught a glimpse of the cat peering from behind an oak. The animals were behaving as if they had never seen a visitor. ‘Never’ was stretching it, but she hadn’t introduced anyone to Julia for a very long time. She wondered if it would be a good idea to prepare Matthew and, if so, how much to say.
“Maybe I should mention…my mother isn’t comfortable with new people. Right now I think all her sociability has been used up by my cousin’s wedding. Don’t worry if she ignores you. It isn’t personal.”
“Is there anything I can do, or not do, to help her feel more at ease?”
Emily shook her head, but said, “It helps if you don’t stare at her.” She touched his arm. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“For asking.” She led the way up the cement steps and pulled open the door to the kitchen. Her mother waited by the stove, standing almost at attention. She shifted when they came in, then stilled, her body more rigid than before.
“This is Matthew, Mom. Daniel’s nephew. Matthew, my mother, Julia Moore.”
Julia’s eyes flashed his way, then settled on a patch of air near him. Her voice loud from nervousness, she said, “You look like Daniel.”
“If that’s so, I’m lucky. Uncle Daniel is considered the height of Rutherford evolution.”
Julia smiled at the wall.
She likes him, Emily thought, then quickly told herself there was no need to be pleased.
It was even hotter in the kitchen than it was outside. “I’m sorry to disappear, but I really need to get out of these work clothes. Mom, could you fix us all something to drink?” She turned to Matthew. “There’s lemonade or iced tea. I picked up some beer, but it might not be very cold yet.”
“Lemonade sounds great.”
Emily left the two of them getting in each other’s way beside the fridge and nipped into the bathroom for a quick wash. There she came face-to-face with her reflection.
Oh, no. She’d greeted him like this? Stood beside his car chatting and feeling like a hostess, like this?
Not all her hair had frizzed into an auburn puffball. Sweat flattened some of it to her forehead. Her chin was smeared with icing sugar where she’d scratched a mosquito bite, and raspberry juice and flecks of meringue dotted her dress. And she had thought he wasn’t polite.
At this stage, brushing would only make matters worse. She flattened the puffy sides of her hair and fastened it behind her ears with bobby pins, then scrubbed her face and neck and dabbed concealer on the bite. There. All the way from grubby to almost clean in less than a minute.
Matthew and her mother were still in the kitchen. Emily sprinted up the stairs to her room, leaned against the door to make sure it clicked shut, then pulled off her dress and threw it on the bed. She stood in her underwear with a feeling she’d never had before, a complete and blank-headed uncertainty about her clothes. She’d never understood how women could frantically claim they had nothing to wear. Now she did. She had nothing to wear for a home-cooked meal with Matthew Rutherford.
She took a flashlight from her desk and went into the closet. It was tucked under the eaves, large but unlit, like a cave. The ceiling sloped steeply so that dresses and slacks fit at one end, blouses in the middle, and nothing but pairs of shoes at the other end.
The jackets, skirts and slacks she wore to work would be too hot and too businesslike, her jeans and shorts too casual. Her supply of flowered, plaid or paisley sundresses, comfortable and cool to wear over coordinating T-shirts, were as shapeless as sacks. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?
One of the dresses was a solid blue, almost the color of gentians. She tried it without a shirt underneath. It looked dressier that way, but still casual and summery. She buckled on low-heeled sandals—the only pair that had never seen garden soil—and hurried back downstairs.
WHILE MS. ROBB made herself presentable and her mother behaved as if he didn’t exist, Matthew took a good look around the kitchen. There was nothing worth noting. It wasn’t impoverished, or up-to-date, or luxurious.
As far as he’d been able to tell that went for all the properties owned by the Robbs. The relatives who had just got married—the children’s author and the computer whiz pumpkin grower—were giving the original homestead a new lease on life, but it had obviously been moldering away as you’d expect of a house over a hundred years old.
He wandered into the living room, an action that got Mrs. Moore’s attention. Was there something she didn’t want him to see?
Ah, the books.
He went to the shelves for a closer look. They were mostly hardcover, some very old and a bit bedraggled—first editions? He could feel Mrs. Moore behind him, emanating silent protest.
“Treasure Island.” He pulled it from its place and opened it to check the copyright date. Reprinted 1931. Probably not valuable—he didn’t know enough about that to be sure. “I must have read this three times when I was a kid.” He smiled over his shoulder. “You, too?”
“I haven’t read it.” Her voice and posture were stiff.
“You should. You won’t be able to put it down.”
“One day.” She almost snatched it from him, then examined it carefully, checking for injury. He moved along and chose another book, small, with a faded, wine-colored cover. This time she rescued it before he got it open.
He turned at a sound on the stairs. There was Ms. Robb, clean and tidy and unduly alert, looking quickly from him to her mother and back. He got it. Don’t touch the books.
“This could be a lending library.” He smiled, trying to put them both at ease. “You two must own a copy of every book in the world.”
“It’s my mother’s collection. She’s getting there.”
“I don’t want every book. Just the main ones.”
“The main ones?” he asked.
“The ones that changed things.”
“How do you decide?”
She slipped the books he’d handled back into place, making sure they were lined up with the others, then left the room without another word.
He raised his eyebrows at her daughter. “Don’t touch?”
“It isn’t the end of the world if you do.”
But it was. The mother seemed every bit as obsessive as he’d been told. The daughter, an anxious caregiver. He felt a moment of sympathy, but got rid of it. Objectivity was going to be difficult. He needed time to get used to how gentle she seemed, how soft.
“You must have chosen that dress to go with your eyes.”
The comment startled her. It startled him, too.
“I chose it because of the sale tag.”
“A lucky chance, then.”
His voice was acting on its own, sounding almost intimate. He went to the kitchen, expecting physical distance to bring emotional distance with it. “Can I help with dinner?”
She followed, bustling around, and loaded him with serving dishes to carry outside. Every couple of minutes she threw him puzzled glances, and he found himself wanting to tell her that everything would be all right.
BY THE TIME they sat under the maple trees, Julia on one side of the picnic table, Matthew on the other and Emily on the very end of her mother’s side in an attempt to sit beside both, or neither, she was upset with herself for judging him so quickly the day before. After all, he had just finished a long, hot drive, and some kind of problem in his family had brought him here.
He was different today. Relaxed, friendly to her mother, helpful with dinner…and then there was that moment in the living room. She still felt a catch in her chest remembering the way he’d looked at her when he commented on her dress. Her eyes were not the color of gentians, she knew very well they weren’t, but she felt less embarrassed now about the mess she’d been in when he arrived.
He hadn’t volunteered any more information about himself, though. Not where he was from or what work he did or where Daniel had gone. Most people would have covered all that in the first few minutes. Then it would have been easy to move to more personal things, like whether visiting Three Creeks alone meant there was no woman in his life and where he belonged on the Rutherford family tree. Her only clue to that was his Ontario license plate.
She waited until all the food had been passed around once. “Matthew, do you belong with the Toronto batch of Rutherfords, or the London batch, or the one that’s scattered around the Ottawa valley?”
“I grew up in Ottawa.”
His voice was nice when he wasn’t being guarded. Deep, but quiet and warm, not loud like Uncle Will’s. “Right in the city? I’ve never been there.”
“You’ve never been to the capital?”
“Is that awful? I’ve never seen the Parliament Buildings or the tulips in spring.” The longest trip she’d taken was to Alberta with her mother to visit Susannah. “We should travel more, shouldn’t we, Mom? Maybe one day we could go to Europe, like Liz and Jack.”
“There’s no need to go to Europe,” Julia said flatly.
“Well, not a need—”
“You sit for hours. It’s bad for your legs.”
“Liz is the cousin who just got married?” Matthew asked.
Emily turned to him, glad to avoid getting into details about blood clots. “They’ll be spending two months exploring the ruins of British castles.”
“That’s an unusual honeymoon.”
“Jack has been surprising us since he first moved here. Right, Mom?”
Julia didn’t answer, so Emily kept going. “All the farmers in this area plant grain, but Jack put in blueberries and pumpkins, then Christmas trees. Everybody thought he was crazy. You have to wait ten years to harvest them.”
“Lots of people must do it.”
“If they can afford to wait.”
“And Jack can?”
Emily nodded. “We all thought he’d go bankrupt. Then we found out he’d already made his fortune with computers.”
“An actual fortune, or just a nest egg?”
“A fortune.” She offered Matthew another potato scone. “My other cousin, Susannah, had an even odder honeymoon. She and Alex went to the Gobi Desert to dig for dinosaurs.”
“Adventurous.”
She smiled at her mother. “Doesn’t Europe sound tame after that? If we went, you could visit museums and see real papyrus fragments.”
“Behind glass.”
“Or we could go to Ireland.” One line of Robbs had come from Waterford. “I wonder if they have tours of the crystal factory. You’d like that.”
Julia perked up. She began to talk about the history of crystal, how it was made and whether the lead content was dangerous. She went on to list books she owned that were connected to Ireland in any way. Matthew listened intently, and when she switched to the botany lesson she gave whenever she was feeling comfortable and had half a chance, he showed an interest in the bark, leaf shapes and insect hazards of every kind of tree in the yard.
Emily handed him the plate of cold fried chicken. “You didn’t mention yesterday where Daniel’s gone.”
“Didn’t I?” With murmured thanks, he took the plate. “This is great chicken. Tender, crisp, not greasy.”
“Almost good for you.”
“Did Edith make it?” Julia asked.
“No, Mom, I did, this morning.” Her mother knew that. She’d been researching Egypt in the next room, complaining about the danger of fat droplets reaching her books.
“But the bean salad, that’s Edith’s.”
Emily moved the chicken to the other side of the table and passed Matthew the tossed greens. “For him to miss the wedding I’m afraid it must have been something serious.”
“There was a health emergency in the family.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”
“An aunt. He wanted to be with her.”
Any aunt of Daniel’s must be ancient. “I’m still surprised you came all this way to watch the house. Mrs. Bowen would have been happy to keep an eye on the place.”
“You’re collecting information, aren’t you?”
She couldn’t tell if he minded. “Isn’t it more of an exchange?”
“I’ll bet everyone’s waiting at the coffee shop to hear what you find out.”
“Of course not!”
Julia said, “Three Creeks doesn’t have a coffee shop.”
Matthew looked amused at that. “I guess it is a long way to come to house-sit—”
“There’s the counter at the post office,” Julia went on. “People get coffee there. And gossip.”
Matthew smiled at Emily, as if her mother had made his case. “We were planning a visit anyway. I’m researching our family history.”
“You don’t seem like a family history buff.”
“No glasses?”
“Not old enough and…not female enough.”
“You’ll have to come to a genealogy meeting sometime.”
“Are you trying to tell me genealogy meetings are full of athletic men in the prime of life?” She had said what she was thinking without realizing how flirtatious it would sound. Maybe not such a bad thing. He was looking at her again the way he had in the living room.
Julia reached for the quiche. “My husband was interested in genealogy.” She cut a thin slice and paid attention to lifting it without losing a crumb. “He liked reading the births written in my mother’s Bible. He liked the way my family uses the same names over and over.”
It was the longest speech Emily had ever heard her mother make about her father. She didn’t know anything about his relatives. “Is there a Moore family Bible?”
“This looks like Edith’s quiche.”
“No, Mom, it’s mine. Remember? I stocked the freezer with them in the spring, for hot days like this.”
“It’s sure good, whoever made it,” Matthew said. “Emily, would you be able to show me around sometime?”
“Around Three Creeks?”
“Around this farm. It could stand in for the Rutherford homestead, couldn’t it? Give me a sense of the way things were for my family—if you and your mother don’t mind.”
“I’d be glad to, but there isn’t much to see.”
“Would tomorrow work for you? After lunch?”
Julia said, “She’s busy tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow afternoon would be fine, Matthew.” More than fine. Her grudging sense of duty had disappeared. She wanted to spend time with him.
She stood up, gathering plates. “I’ll get dessert.” No doubt her mother would find it necessary to remind them Jack had baked the pumpkin loaf, but there was no way she could give anyone else credit for the raspberry meringue torte.
MATTHEW DIDN’T STAY LONG after dinner. He helped with the dishes and then Emily walked him to his car. Croaking sounds came from all around them.
“Isn’t it supposed to be quiet in the country?”
“The creek is full of frogs and toads. They make quite a racket in the evening. And then when you’re trying to fall asleep there’s the crickets and the whip-poor-will.”
He stood beside the car door, but didn’t move to open it. “I’ve never heard a whip-poor-will. Never heard of one, either.”
“It’s a bird. A plain, clumsy brown bird that whistles its name. At night, unfortunately. You probably won’t hear it in town.”
“I guess that’s a good thing. Thank you for dinner, Emily. It was a terrific meal. A group effort, I take it.”
She made a small sound of protest. “My grandmother and my aunt donated a couple of things. Not as much as my mother wanted you to think.” What her purpose had been, Emily didn’t know. “Thank you for being so nice to her.”
“Nice?”
“Not everyone is. She makes some people uncomfortable.”
“I can see she has her own style. That’s good, isn’t it? A little variety? I enjoyed meeting her.”
He seemed to mean it.
“You’ll have to let me know if there’s anywhere else you’d like to go while you’re here—for your family history, I mean. There’s a pioneer museum in Pine Point that might be helpful.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
Matthew smiled and got into the car. Emily waited while he backed out of the driveway, and waved when he started toward the creek road. She spent most of the walk back to the house wondering why there had been no warmth in his eyes when he had smiled so kindly.
CHAPTER FOUR
ALL JULIA WANTED to do in Pine Point was get to the Encyclopedia Britannica. She agreed grudgingly to stop for a midmorning ice cream cone, then refused to have one and stood silently while Emily tried to enjoy her single scoop of maple walnut in a waffle cone.
“Done?” she said, as Emily took the last bite.
“You know, you could be a little more cooperative. I’m not going to stand beside you groaning while you read ten pages of fine print about obscure Egyptian publications—”
“Publications isn’t the right word. There wouldn’t have been actual publishers.”
Unsure whether fondness or exasperation was her dominant emotion, Emily started for the library, barely listening as her mother explained about pharaohs and government ministers and clerks who knew how to write hieroglyphics. As soon as they stepped inside the building, Julia stopped talking and headed unswervingly for the reference section. Emily wandered off to find paperbacks suitable for long afternoons stretched out in the relative coolness of the porch.
When she had a pile of books, enough that she could discard any that didn’t catch her interest when she settled down to read, she made her way to the checkout desk, past book carts in the aisle, people reading in chairs and a toddler half-asleep on the floor. The winding route took her almost to the door of the adjoining computer room. Feeling a pleasant little jolt, she stopped. Matthew was there, intent on the screen of a microfilm reader.
She stood watching him, enjoying the focused stillness of his body. Most of the people she knew were solidly one way—-of course they had variations in their personalities—but she could say without hesitation that Aunt Edith fussed and Liz dreamed and Martin teased.
Matthew seemed different. Cold and distant on one hand; warm and kind on the other. Analytical, with an air of professionalism, but physically strong, not bookish. In spite of the suit that had annoyed her for no good reason, she couldn’t picture him doing desk work.
He was a puzzle. Maybe that was why Hamish didn’t trust him. Yesterday he’d lowered his head whenever Matthew had spoken to him and kept his tail still. The dog had met people he didn’t like before, very nice people. He wasn’t that keen on Aunt Edith. It made Emily wonder, though. Two days, and two versions of Matthew. Why assume the one she liked was more real than the one she didn’t?
JULIA PILED the reference books she’d borrowed from the library onto the kitchen table. She shuffled through them a few times, rearranging them, then placed her catalogs and several sharpened pencils beside them.
“I’ll just put my books away upstairs, Mom. Then I’m going out to the garden.” Emily wanted to pick radishes and green onion to add to the leftover fried chicken sandwiches she planned to make for lunch.
There wasn’t much time before Matthew came, but she ended up staying outside longer to deal with some weeds. She had ignored them for the past few weeks, in the name of nice fingernails for the wedding. The cat sat next to her and watched as she pulled plantain and pineapple weed from between the carrots, sometimes batting a paw at a trailing root.
“That’s it,” Emily said softly. “Kill that root! You’re such a hunter. Oh, dear.” She’d got a baby carrot by mistake. She rubbed it clean and ate it in two bites, then picked more, thinning the row. “We’ll take some to Mom. There’s nothing like baby carrots to cheer a person up.”
“Talking to the cat now?”
Emily jumped. Martin stood at the edge of the garden, his truck parked behind him. “You startled me!” She got up, brushing dirt from her knees.
He climbed through the rails of the fence and stepped over the rhubarb to reach her. Every time she saw him he looked more strained. He and Liz’s brother, Tom, were working toward organic certification. It would be a few more years before they got there and in the meantime they were using grain profits to feed cattle they couldn’t sell. Given the date, she thought she knew why he’d come.
“Is your mom still excited about her thief?”
He grinned. “Oh, yeah, it was the best thief ever. You’re keeping your door locked, right?”
“I always do, Martin.”
“Like right now?”
“Well, no…but I’m here, close by, and Mom’s in the house.”
“You didn’t see me come. The dog didn’t bark. You should lock it during the day, too, Em, even if you’re home.” Changing pace abruptly, he smiled and patted the cloud of hair above her head. “You’ve got your Albert Einstein look goin’ on.”
Emily pushed his hand away. “Quit it, you.”
“Except you’re prettier and not quite as smart.”
“Thanks for clarifying.”
Martin’s tense smile faded. He shifted from one foot to the other and looked out at the road. “We were hoping this wasn’t going to happen again. We haven’t got the end-of-June check yet.”
“That’s all right.”
“Not really.” He glanced her way. “It’s just the build-up of expenses. You and Aunt Julia shouldn’t get the short end of the stick, but if we don’t pay for feed they won’t give us any more—”
“It really is all right.”
“We might be moving a few heifers in the next week or two. Can you wait till then?”
“Of course, Martin. On one condition—”
He perked up at the mention of a condition. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
“No more hair jokes.”
“Aw, Em…”
“I know it’s tough, but that’s the deal.”
He gave her a quick kiss on the head, which under the circumstances she thought probably qualified as a hair joke, and went to his truck with a wave over his shoulder. The engine revved and with a spray of gravel he roared away.
A WAIT OF A WEEK OR TWO wasn’t worth mentioning to her mother, not today, when she was just starting to settle down about the book from Egypt.
Emily hurried through lunch, then showered and braided her wet hair the way Susannah did, making sure every piece was well secured. Her Einstein look? Martin made it sound like a regular thing.
She came out of the bathroom feeling refreshed and polished, ready for company, and found her mother balanced on tiptoe on a chair, stretching to wash the highest bookshelf. Well away from potential drops of water, stacks of books blocked the path to the kitchen.
When she was safely on the floor Emily said, “I thought you’d be diving right into your library books. Did you forget Matthew’s coming?”
The cloth dipped vigorously in and out of a bucket of water.
“Mom—”
“I didn’t forget.” Julia climbed back up on the chair.
Emily tilted her head to see which books were piled on the floor. Prehistory and ancient history. Under a book about cave paintings were a few about the origins of the universe. Those moved back and forth regularly, from the very first spots on the shelf to a much later shelf devoted to modern science. Julia wanted her collection to run seamlessly from the beginning of all things to the present moment in time. The fact that the present moment kept changing complicated her plans. What Emily found endearing was that right near the end, included with all the books in the world that her mother thought were important, were the children’s books Liz had written and illustrated.
A bit of a mess didn’t matter. Emily wanted to help Matthew with his research, not impress him with her spotless house. It would be easier to remember that if he didn’t have such an air of spotlessness himself.
“Here he is.” She felt a lift when she saw his car, another when he stepped out of it.
Hamish got to him before she did and circled him warily. Matthew wore khakis again and another button-up shirt, a more casual cotton blend, as if he was noticing how people dressed in Three Creeks. Maybe by the time he left he’d be wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“Another hot day,” he said.
“And in spite of it, my mother’s climbing up and down scrubbing book shelves.”
“Will it disturb her if we look around?”
“If you imagine a boundary around the books on the floor and don’t cross it, we’ll be fine.” They walked to the kitchen door. “Our house was built a generation later than the Rutherford place. I’m not sure how a tour will help.”
“I thought I’d soak up atmosphere.”
“You mean the overall creaky floor, crooked walls, cobwebs in the corners kind of atmosphere?”
He smiled. “If that’s what you’ve got, that’s what I want.”
Emily began in the living room, pointing out the characteristic lumber used at the turn of the twentieth century, three-inch strips of tongue-and-groove British Columbia fir, applied vertically up to a chair rail and then horizontally. Julia continued to clean, ignoring them.
“My great-great-grandfather gave parcels of land to his children when they married, so there’s the original place, where my grandmother lives now, and a number of houses built for his children, like this one. My cousin Tom and his wife Pam built their own place.” She smiled. “Pam didn’t want to soak up anybody else’s atmosphere.”
“The houses have changed hands by inheritance?”
“Sometimes. My grandfather bought this place for my parents from his sister—”
She stopped. Matthew had stepped over Julia’s barricade of books and was examining the shelves. After one startled glance, Julia stared at the book she was holding as if she had discovered mold on its cover.
He tapped the backboard. “That’s not the original wall, is it? It’s not tongue-and-groove like the rest of the room.”
It was the one thing Emily had asked—that he respect her mother’s territory. “My dad built it out a few inches. He didn’t think the books should rest against an exterior wall.”
“Temperature differences, condensation?”
“You never know.”
“He did a nice job.” Matthew ran his hand along one of the shelves, feeling the tight joins where boards met boards, apparently unaware of the disapproval around him. “Beautiful work.”
Stiffly, Julia said, “My husband liked carpentry.”
“I can tell. Did he put the shelves up in stages as your library grew?”
“All at once.”
“He had an idea you’d want a whole room full, did he? The wood’s dried out. He must have done this a long time ago.”
“In the fall of 1980. After harvest.”
“It’s a big job for one person to take care of a library of this size.”
“You can’t let the books get dusty,” Julia said. She still frowned at the one she was holding, but she had relaxed. “You have to give them air. You have to think of an organization that makes sense, so you can find what you want.”
She began telling Matthew about Sinuhe, everything she had learned at the library that morning. That it came from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom—1940 to 1640 BC—and that Sinuhe was the name of a clerk or scribe who worked in a palace. He ran away during a time of conflict and spent his life in exile until his king pardoned him. It was pieced together from papyrus fragments and carvings on limestone, and it was the reason she was cleaning—to make room for a section of books about and from Egypt.
When she ran out of facts she fell silent. Matthew rejoined Emily outside the circle of books.
“I wasn’t supposed to do that, was I?” he said quietly, as if he had just remembered.
“No, you weren’t.”
“I’m sorry. Your place is so different from where I grew up. My parents liked the minimalist look.”
She opened a door at the front of the house. “This is our only minimalist room. It’s supposed to be for company.”
There was no bed, no furniture at all. Only rows of plastic containers piled on top of one another. “I call it the Robb-Moore Archives,” she said lightly. “At first my mother kept everything in cardboard boxes, but I put my foot down. Too much of a fire hazard.”
Matthew read one label out loud. “‘School reports, Emily Moore, grade 1-12.’ It’s nice that your mom wants to keep things like that.”
“Until you know she wants to keep everything. Wedding invitations, birth announcements, obituaries, sales receipts, newspaper clippings, livestock papers…”
His gaze deepened into something she was afraid might be sympathy so she quickly added, “Which is great. If someone in your family had done this you could have found all the information you wanted in a day.”
She backed out of the room and led Matthew to the second floor. When they reached the landing he looked at a trapdoor overhead.
“An attic?”
“Not a usable one. It’s rafters and cobwebs and the odd chipmunk.”
He reached up, easily touching the door. “Could I take a look?”
“There’s nothing to see. The last time I opened it a whole load of dust and little bits of gray insulation poured down.” She wasn’t going to clean that up again.
Her mother’s room was on the left, with the door shut, and hers was on the right, overlooking the front yard. As soon as she saw her twin bed, so childish under the window, she wished they had stayed downstairs.
Matthew took in the bed, the photos of horses and dogs, the books and the dolls and teddy bears left out because they had too much personality to be shut away. “Cozy.”
“But not very helpful for your family history.” “It is. Really. I’ve never been in a big old prairie house.” He knocked on the wall. “When I was a kid I always thought old houses had secret rooms.”
“Hang on.” Emily pushed her bed to one side. Behind it was a small door held shut by a block of wood. She turned the block on its nail and the door swung open. “It doesn’t qualify as a room, and it isn’t a secret. It’s just so we can access the space under the half-roof.”
Matthew knelt beside her and peered in. “Great place for hide and seek.”
“My father was firm about that.” It was one of the few things Emily remembered about him, he’d warned her so often. “He told me I’d crash right through to the room below.”
“Scary thought.”
“I hid things, though. Notes to Susannah and Liz. Or Halloween candy once. That was a mistake. A whole family of chipmunks moved in that time.”
Matthew laughed, and she immediately wanted it to happen again. It made his face so warm and open.
“Mind if I take a closer look?”
“It’ll be dusty.”
Brushing past her, he leaned deeper into the crawl space. It was a long time since she’d been so close to a man who wasn’t a relative. How did her body know? There was quite a divide between its point of view and her own. It was always tingling and softening and perking up when he was around. She couldn’t seem to impress on it how short a week was, and how quickly it was passing, or the fact that she didn’t know anything about him, not even if she liked him.
No, she knew that much. The question was whether she should like him.
As his head and shoulders came back into the light his knee knocked against hers. She edged away. He was out of place in her room, with her old teddy bears staring from the shelf. Through the warm air grate in the floor she could hear her mother working. What she was feeling didn’t belong here. John had called it her nun’s cell.
She stood up quickly. “You wanted to see outside? The barn, you said? The outbuildings?”
“If you don’t mind.” He went around to the other side of the bed and pushed it back into place.
BETWEEN THE TIME he stuck his head under the roof and pulled it back out, something had changed Emily’s mood. Did thinking about her father upset her? Or was she worried about having someone snoop around the house?
As helpfully distancing as the name was he hadn’t been able to think of her as Ms. Robb for very long. Only until the third or fourth time her mother had asked which relative had made the quiche or the salad or the chicken and she’d looked as if one word of appreciation would go a long way. Then she’d become Emily in his mind.
He followed her downstairs and out the kitchen door. The dog, back in the shade of the hedge, gave him another baleful stare. No growling or biting so far. That was good.
The yard was like a forest. It looked as if long ago someone had felled just enough trees to make room for a house and left the rest. Emily and her mother barely kept up with it. A closer inspection was confirming yesterday’s first impression. Inside and out, there was no sign of big spending—except for the books and not even those if the collecting was spread over the years.
No gems, no Group of Seven paintings, she’d said. It was the kind of joke people might make when they were covering something. He didn’t think that was the case here. Liars usually gave themselves away with tics and avoidance gestures or expressions so blankly innocent alarm bells went off. Emily had been five or six when the gold had disappeared. Not involved, obviously. That didn’t mean she wasn’t drawn in later. He had to remember that.
THE OUTBUILDINGS WERE all well past their prime, with moss on their shingles and scampering sounds overhead. There was a single-car garage to check, a pump house, a henhouse, a storehouse, a granary and a barn.
“I suppose all this would have been typical of the Rutherford place.” Emily was still looking for connections to Matthew’s family history. He had been quiet since they’d come outside and she wondered if he was losing interest in the tour. “Working farms have updated their buildings.”
“This isn’t a working farm?”
“Not since my father died. Martin and Tom—two of my cousins—use the land for grazing.”
Matthew swung the storehouse door back and forth. “No lock. You don’t care if your friendly neighborhood thief comes in?”
“He’d be welcome to anything he found in here.”
She led him between moldy saddles and dusty buckets and out the back door into a meadow. One step, and they were knee-high in prairie grasses. Here and there were spots of color—deep-yellow black-eyed Susans and pale-yellow buttercups, orange tiger lilies and purple Russian thistles. Beyond the meadow were poplar woods dotted with darker green oak and spruce.
“Do you mind a walk? There’s a spot I’d like to show you.”
“Good. I was hoping to see the woods.”
“We can take a roundabout path to the place we’re going, or a shortcut through a marshy area.” As soon as she mentioned the marsh she knew she didn’t want to go that way. “It wouldn’t be wet now and the woods on the other side are beautiful, almost all oaks and elms.”
“Whatever you prefer is fine with me.”
She smiled. “You’re easy to get along with.”
“Always.”
She chose the longer way. He was full of questions as they went. How big was the farm, had they sold any parcels of land, were any other buildings found on the property? Emily couldn’t remember anyone being so interested in her home.
Cattle traveling in single file had worn a narrow path through the bush. They followed it to a more densely wooded area, mostly thin poplars too close together, with an undergrowth of highbush cranberry and hazelnut. Not far off, they heard water bubbling.
“The three creeks?”
“One of them. The biggest one.”
The woods thinned again and they entered a small clearing where daisies grew almost as thickly as grass. Large, smooth rocks—lichen-spattered granite—rose out of the ground at the edge of the creek.
“It’s beautiful, Emily. From the road you’d never know it was like this.”
“Your uncle taught me to fish here. That’s why I wanted to show it to you.”
Matthew climbed onto the stones. “It looks too shallow for that.”
“You can get jackfish or suckers in the spring, when the water’s high.”
“Suckers. Yum.”
She laughed. “And then in the winter Daniel played hockey with us here—with Sue and Liz and me. Three Creeks can be such a guy-ish place. Daniel is different.”
Matthew cocked an eyebrow. “Not guy-ish?”
They both smiled at the thought.
“He made time for us when we were kids, not just for the boys. He helped us if our horses weren’t behaving or had a problem with their hooves, he knew more about making snow forts than anybody. He taught us how to whistle.”
“Sounds like a father. Or an uncle.”
“Maybe not.” Daniel was never like the other grown-ups. “When we were little, he used to give us coffee. No one else let us have coffee. And while we drank it—hating it—he’d tell us stories about his Army days or about chasing criminals. He always called them ‘dumb clucks.’”
Matthew smiled at that.
“So if I seemed…impatient or anything when we met it was because I was afraid something had happened to him. I didn’t think he’d voluntarily miss Liz’s wedding.”
“You weren’t impatient—or anything. He’ll be sorry to hear he worried you.”
“Don’t tell him.”
She climbed up beside Matthew on the rocks, then stepped onto the next stone and sat down, her feet dangling above the water. Remembering the purpose of the afternoon, she began to tell him what she knew of the first settlers’ arrival, how the Robbs, the Rutherfords and five other families had traveled from Ontario by train and oxcart, and at the end of a long and difficult journey had found an untouched forest where they could hunt, with creeks that provided fish to eat and fresh water to drink.
She stopped when she noticed how intently he was watching her. “Matthew?”
“Hmm?”
Had he heard anything she’d said? “You’re staring. Past eye color, past freckles, right down to DNA.”
“Sorry. I guess I zoned out. Maybe it’s the drive.” He gave a quick, unconvincing smile. “Car lag.”
It wasn’t the drive. “You must be worried about your aunt. Or great-aunt, I suppose. Has Daniel called to let you know how she’s doing?”
“Not yet.”
“I wouldn’t mind talking to him—”
Matthew wasn’t listening. He lifted his hand to brush her cheek. “What a very nice woman you are.”
Oh boy.
She stood, casually she hoped, and moved off the rocks. Funny what one touch could do. All those questions about time and character vanished.
She patted the bark of the tree closest to her. “This is a poplar. Good for firewood, not so good for building, because it tends to twist. Do you have poplars in Ontario?” Silly question. Of course they did.
“Aspens.”
“Oh, right, trembling aspens. I love that name. My mother told me it comes from the way the leaves are attached. There’s something unusual about the stem that makes them shake and flutter in the breeze.”
He had the most intense eyes. They had been intense at Daniel’s the first day, especially when he heard her name. They had been intense yesterday while he stood with Treasure Island in his hand. They were intense now, in a way that confused her. She couldn’t tell if he was flirting with her or putting her under a microscope, and if he was putting her under a microscope she had no idea why.
“My cousins and I used to climb these poplars on windy days. We’d pretend we were up in the rigging of a tall ship out on the ocean. Cartier’s ship, usually, or pirates off Newfound-land’s coast. The tops of the trees swayed so much you could just about get seasick.” She was talking quickly, and a lot. Chances were her attempt at a casual retreat hadn’t fooled him.
“Sounds like fun. The girl cousins, I suppose?”
“Susannah and Liz.”
“Daniel told me about the three of you. They both left and you stayed. No wanderlust?”
“They had good reasons to leave. I didn’t.”
“Did you have reasons to stay?”
“Why would I need reasons? I live in a beautiful place with clean air and clean water. We produce most of our own food. We know exactly what’s in it and on it. I love my job, I love my family, and they love me.”
“It sounds perfect.”
“It is.”
“Except for the archives?”
“That’s a little thing.” She patted the poplar again, encouraging him to focus, the way she did with six-year-old boys in the library.
“So,” she said, her voice sounding too much like a teacher’s, “the woods at the Rutherford place would have been exactly like this. My grandmother might have pictures. I’ll call her later today and ask.”
He kept looking at her, evaluating, adding and subtracting, amused, and then he allowed his attention to be redirected to the trees around them. She could see that unlike the six-year-old boys in the library, he was only humoring her.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BELL OVER the door jingled when Matthew went into the post office the next morning. The place had just opened but there were already a number of customers inside and, if he wasn’t mistaken, half of them were Robbs. Four men, two older and two younger, visibly related, clumped together at the far end of the grocery counter drinking coffee from takeout cups, visiting as if they were in one of their own kitchens. They noted his arrival, then ignored him.
A woman with her back to the door sorted mail. She smoked while she worked, keeping two fingers busy with the cigarette and managing envelopes and flyers with the other three.
“Good morning,” Matthew said.
The hand came up, telling him he would have to wait. From a distance she looked young, with one of those unnaturally red hair colors. Up close, her neck and hands and the way she stood gave a more realistic idea of her age. Late sixties, he guessed. This must be Virginia Marsh. Born in Three Creeks, widowed at thirty. Bought the store in ’72 and finished paying off the mortgage just twelve years later.
While he waited he half listened to the conversation by the coffeemaker. One of the older men was saying something about looking on the bright side. His voice became louder as he made his point, confident and nostalgic.
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