Shadows In The Mirror
Linda Hall
Never go back to Burlington!Those were the dying words of the secretive aunt who'd raised orphaned Marylee Simson. Yet to discover who she was, Marylee had to go back, sure the Lord would look out for her. But learning anything about her past was proving impossible. Why were there no records of the accident that claimed her parents' lives? No records of her parents, period? And who was trying to stop her from fi nding out? Someone whose threats were escalating. Someone close to her, such as Evan Baxter, the handsome photographer she'd entrusted with the one clue she had.
Shadows in the Mirror
Linda Hall
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
My Domino Diva writing buddies,
without whose support I’d never have ventured
into writing romance.
You gals rock!
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
The little girl with the purple ribbons in her hair held tightly to the man’s hand. He was taking her to the place of mirrors, he said. And the mirrors were the best place for playing. She would run in and out, between them and behind them and make funny faces. She’d stick out her tongue, and laugh and laugh. Then she’d sit on the floor and undo her purple ribbons and press them flat against the mirror. Sometimes Mommy leaned the mirror back and when she did that it made their faces look all funny and fat like plates or really skinny like crayons.
If she got up really, really close, her nose got big. And the way she got her nose to look even fatter was to squish it up against the mirror until it looked like a pig nose. When she breathed hard it left a dark place on the mirror that she could draw lines on with her finger.
But the man told her not to do that. It smudges the mirrors. It makes the mirrors no good. And he would take a handkerchief out of his pocket and back and forth, back and forth, he would wipe them clean. But Mommy never minded when she wrote with her fingers on the mirror. Sometimes Mommy would take her up in her arms and they’d twirl in bare feet around the mirrors and laugh at their reflections, while Daddy looked on and smiled. Then he would open his arms and they’d both go into that special and safe place.
Before the man came for her that day, the little girl had been in the living room where everyone was quietly sitting on chairs. Mommy and Daddy weren’t there.
“Where’s Mommy?” The little girl looked around her.
“Child,” someone said.
“You poor, poor thing.” A lady she didn’t know but who smelled like mashed potatoes ran her hand through the little girl’s hair.
“Such a poor, poor thing.”
The little girl sat down on the floor, her coloring books spread out all around her. She would wait for Mommy.
“Such a shame,” someone said. “She doesn’t understand, poor thing. She doesn’t know.”
“How can she know? She’s too young.”
“Such an honest to goodness tragedy.”
“An orphan at such a young age. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
The little girl had gotten up from her coloring and followed Scrapples the cat into the kitchen, and the man was there. He bent down to her level and put his fingers to his lips. He told her quietly that he was going to take her to the place of mirrors where she could be happy again.
“Is Mommy there?”
“Yes, of course. Mommy and Daddy both, and if you come now you can be with them forever.” And he smiled at her.
She had to hold his hand tightly, very, very tightly and walk outside with him. Could she promise to do that? Could she keep a secret? She nodded solemnly.
He gave her a cookie and they walked out the back door, and no one saw them leave. It was raining.
Later, much later, they would ask her how it was that she had wandered out here and ended up asleep at the bottom of the root cellar. It was the cat, they said, that alerted them, the crying of the cat from the bottom of the root cellar. But how had she managed to open the heavy door all by herself?
They would wrap her up in a blanket and give her hot chocolate at the table and cluck their tongues.
“Poor child. So cold.”
“Such a cold, cold day.”
“Poor thing followed the cat outside.”
“And clear down to the root cellar. But how had the hatch been up?”
They shrugged and looked amongst themselves. But on this strange and awful day, someone, they reasoned, had gone down for a can of peaches and left it open distractedly. Anything was possible on a day like today.
And no one thought to ask the little girl.
ONE
23 Years Later
“Mom, Dad,” I whispered. “Things are good here. I want you to know that. I’m even sort of happy. The shop is doing well and I found a nice church to go to and I’m making a few friends. And there’s even this guy who smiles at me.”
Why did I just say that? I’m not ready for any man to smile at me. Especially not after the fiasco of my engagement. “Of course, you know my doubts because I’ve told you all of this in great detail, but it’s still nice to know that I’ve still got it, whatever ‘it’ is. And in a couple of minutes, I’m heading downstairs for my class. I can’t believe eleven people signed up for my mirrors class. I think you’d be proud of me.”
I sighed and placed the framed photo of my parents back down on my end table. I let my fingers glide along the top and rest there for a moment. The thing was, I had no idea whether they would be proud of me or not. I don’t know my parents. They were killed in a car accident when I was three and a half. All I have is this one picture. And yes, I talk to it. It’s one of my quirkier habits, but it’s one that gives me a strange sort of comfort.
“Hey, Marylee, hi.”
I gasped, turned. Johanna, my best friend, or as best a friend can be after only half a year of knowing someone, was standing in my bedroom doorway. I stood up and straightened the photo on my nightstand.
She said, “Your door was unlocked.” She motioned toward my kitchen and to the door that led out of my apartment and down the back stairs. “So I came in. I knocked on the doorjamb. Guess you didn’t hear me.”
She saw the look on my face. “Sorry. I should’ve knocked louder. I didn’t mean to startle you. You were on the phone?”
“No.” I offered no explanation. Not a lot of people know that I regularly talk to my dead parents.
She was still in the doorway, nervously urging one side of her hair up into a small jeweled barrette while she talked. “Oh, I can’t get this—sorry for barging in—does this look all right?”
“You look fine.” I moved away from the picture. “Your hair is beautiful.” And it was. My friend always looks fine; petite and pretty.
“It’s a hopeless frizz mop in this weather,” she said. “Call me Medusa lady. Snakes for hair.” My friend Johanna teaches English lit at the community college so she regularly peppers her conversations with literary references.
“No, your hair has body,” I said, fiddling with her barrette. “Not like my straight mop. It rains and mine flattens into my head. And it’s such a boring brown.”
“You could get highlights. Your smiling coffee guy might like it.” She was grinning and I was grinning and I was happy she was my friend.
“I don’t have a smiling coffee guy,” I said.
“Sure you do.” She pointed at me. “The guy you keep telling me about, the one who just happens to be in the coffee shop every morning when you just happen to get your coffee, the guy who just happens to smile when he sees you, that guy.” She reached into her pocket for her lipstick. Johanna never carries a purse; instead all of her jackets and pants have copious pockets in which she keeps loose change and lipsticks and combs and barrettes.
“He winked at me today,” I told her.
“He winked at you!” She stopped and turned, holding the lipstick tube. “That’s a step up from smiling, you know.”
“There’s no step up. There’s no steps anywhere in a relationship that’s not a relationship. I don’t even know his name.” I pulled my own hair back into a pink scrunchie I’d had on my wrist. “And besides, I’m not interested.”
I wish I were glamorous. Or at least sort of pretty. But every time I look at myself I think of my aunt Rose who raised me; capable, smart, talented, plain. When I was fourteen a neighbor of ours called me handsome. That’s me, handsome. No wonder my former fiancé dropped me like a sack of composted turnips. “You need to learn the way things work, Marylee,” Johanna said, capping her lipstick tube. “First there’s the look, and then there’s the half smile. You know, the mouth only up on one side.” She did a pretty good facsimile. “Then there’s the full smile. And then there’s the wink. And need I mention that your coffee guy is way beyond my Evan? I went into his photo shop today to get some pictures developed. All he said was, ‘Hello, Johanna. Nice weather, isn’t it?’ That was it. That was all. Nothing. After all we shared, he’s talking about the weather.”
“Johanna.” I turned to her. “You’re such a great person, you shouldn’t be wasting your time on some idiot who’s treated you horribly.”
“He didn’t treat me that horribly. He just never called me again.”
“Same difference,” I said.
I had heard often about the wonderful and famous Evan and the two glorious dates they’d gone on, and then how Evan hadn’t called. Still, Johanna had multiple excuses for him. He was busy with work. He’d just come off a broken engagement. He’d been so hurt in life he had trouble committing.
She opened her mouth to say something and then clamped it shut and shrugged. Finally she said, “I just wish that someone, I don’t even care who, would finally break through that thick hedge of his soul.”
I grinned at her. “Oh, you do care,” I said. “You want that person to be you. Admit it.”
She put up both hands in mock surrender and shook her head. “No, I’m an adult. Seriously. I mean, of course I would like it to be me, but I’m ready for whatever.” Then she added, “I pray for him every day, you know.”
“Personally, I think you’re wasting your time.”
She shrugged, looked away from me. Were we good enough friends for me to say that to her? I hoped I hadn’t hurt her, but it maddened me that my new friend was enamored of a guy who took her out twice and then just stopped calling with no explanation.
“Well,” I said and pulled on my blue sweater, “we should get downstairs. Class awaits.”
But she was standing there, quiet. “Marylee, may I ask who were you talking to when I came in? Did I interrupt something?”
Maybe Johanna could be trusted with some of the secrets of my life. “I was talking to my parents.”
“Your parents!” She looked at me, wide-eyed. “On the phone? But, I thought…”
“I know it’s strange, but I have a picture of them and I’ve been talking to that picture for, like, my whole life. It sort of, I don’t know, gives me comfort. Sounds weird.”
“It doesn’t sound weird at all. Can I see them? Do we have time?”
I went and got the photo from the nightstand and showed it to her. She studied it. “She’s so pretty. Your mother.”
I nodded. In the twenty years since my aunt Rose had given me this framed photo on my birthday, I had memorized every nuance, every shadow, every square inch. My father is handsome and tall and stands with his arm protectively around my mother. She looks up at him, her sweep of long blond hair falling gently down her shoulders to her waist. She wears a green cotton dress and is barefoot. They’re both barefoot. Her feet are dainty and small, so unlike my own. She’s young and pretty, younger than I am now. Behind them is the blue of Lake Champlain.
All of my growing up years I wanted hair like my mother’s, long and softly curling and blond. Instead, mine is more like my aunt Rose’s, plain and straight and brown. Plus, my mother is so slender, and I’m always battling five pounds, sometimes winning, sometimes losing.
Johanna looked at the picture and said, “I thought your mother was the picture you have in your living room, that one on the wall. The resemblance is quite strong. I always thought you look so much like her.”
“No,” I said. “That’s my aunt Rose. She raised me after my parents were killed.”
Johanna set the picture down on the kitchen table, where we now stood, and I made sure the French doors to the balcony off my kitchen were locked. I closed the curtains on the windows that overlooked the tiny porch. Actually, it was this little postage stamp of a wrought-iron deck that sold me on the place. It’s only big enough to hold not much more than my wicker rocking chair, and even though it overlooks a back alley, I like sitting out here on warm nights with a book.
Doors, windows securely shut and locked, I grabbed my keys and said, “We better get going. Downstairs we have eleven ladies wanting to learn how to make mirror mosaics.”
I armed the security system to my small apartment and we headed down the back steps to the craft shop I owned. I owned! I still couldn’t get my mind around the fact that I’d owned Crafts and More for seven months now. A month ago I was even flush enough to hire a woman to work with me three afternoons a week. Barbara was a wonderful crafter who was using the extra money to help her youngest son who was in his first year in computer management at the Community College of Vermont, the same place Johanna taught English lit. I knew her from church where she led a weekday-morning crafts-and-Bible study. She bought lots from my shop. When I’d asked if she wanted to work here part-time, she’d said, “Sure! Why not? I’m here the equivalent of that time anyway.”
I’d also begun offering craft classes in the community. My favorite was a scrapbooking class for seniors over at the Champlain Seniors’ Center. In addition to tonight’s mirror arts class, I had a quilting class. Plus, I had plenty more classes in the planning stages.
Johanna was wearing two different colored socks I noticed, as we headed back down the stairs. I smiled to myself. Johanna was good for me. My funky friend brought a lightness to my life that had been absent for too long.
Three women were waiting under the awning at the locked front door. “Hello, ladies,” I said cheerfully, letting them in. “There’s a bit of time, so if you want, you can pop over next door and grab a coffee. They’re still open for a few more minutes. We won’t start without you.” I poked my head outside and looked through the large glass windows into the brightly lit coffee shop. But of course the man who got his coffee the same time I did each morning wouldn’t be there. What was I thinking? And why was I even looking for him?
I was about to turn back when I saw something. Or felt something. It was as if a dark hand had waved across the coffee shop windows. It disappeared so quickly that I couldn’t get a handle on it, couldn’t figure it out. A person? A cloud? Fog? What?
I held my sweater closed at my throat, but the sense of something, or someone, there made me quiver. I thought of my aunt’s constant premonitions, her asking me to make a promise before she died. “Don’t go back to Vermont. Whatever you do, don’t ever go back to Vermont, Marylee. Promise me this!”
And I had looked at her skeletal face, wasted by the cancer that would take her in a matter of weeks, and made no such promise. Instead, I’d wept as I’d smoothed a wet cloth on the forehead of my mother’s sister, the woman who’d raised me.
A chill so profound started at the tip of my toes and ended in a place near my forehead. I closed my eyes briefly.
“Are you okay?” A woman with gray curls approached me.
“Just a chill. It’s cold out there,” I said.
“Do you think so?” said someone else overhearing the tail end of our conversation.
“Warm for this time of year,” said another from across the room.
“Supposed to rain,” said someone else.
And while the ladies talked on about the weather, I drew back into my cheerful shop and made my way to the craft table in the rear. Earlier I had set out pieces of mirror, both glass and plastic. At each place I’d laid a nine-by-twelve mirror. I’d instructed the ladies to bring photos or pictures from magazines that they wanted to use in their mosaics. For those who hadn’t brought pictures, I had a stack of old tourist magazines featuring scenes from Vermont and other parts of New England they could cut pages from. I had told them this was going to be a fun class and that anybody could do it. Even Johanna, who claimed she couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler, was going to participate.
Two more ladies entered; another two went for coffee and a few more sat down at the table and fingered through pieces of mirror.
“I’ve done decoupage, but never with mirrors,” one said.
“It’s something I learned from my aunt,” I said with forced cheerfulness. I was still reeling from what I’d seen out there. Or hadn’t seen. “But watch your fingers. Some of those pieces are sharp. We don’t need any cut fingers tonight.”
Ten minutes later all eleven women had arrived. Most of them seemed to know each other already. I had us fill out colored name tags with marking pens, but this was obviously more for my benefit than theirs. I stood at the head of a long table and began to explain mirror mosaic art as taught to me by Aunt Rose.
“Is it like tole painting?” asked a woman whose name tag read Gladys.
“Not really,” I explained. “It’s a bit like decoupage. But not exactly. It a bit dif—” I stopped. I began choking, coughing. I put my hand to my throat. My eyes went wide. I couldn’t breathe. One of the ladies reached into her purse and handed me a paper-wrapped cough candy. “Thank you,” I managed to say. I tried unwrapping it, but my fingers refused to find the edges of the wrapper.
This wasn’t an ordinary tickle in my throat. A woman named Beryl was smoothing out the picture she’d brought with her. It was the same exact picture I had kept in the frame on my nightstand for all of my growing-up years. It was the picture that had listened to all my whispered prayers and thoughts. It was the picture I had said good-night to almost every night of my life, and the one I had said good morning to when I woke up. I was still coughing. I needed to sit. I needed to flee. I needed to throw up. I closed my eyes. I swallowed.
Johanna drew back, put her hand to her mouth.
I pointed to the picture, astounding even myself by my ability to ask Beryl in a very calm voice, “Where did you get that picture? Do you know those people? Are they related to you?” Could this little owl-like woman with the oversized glasses be a relative of mine? Some distant aunt? Did she know my aunt Rose?
She shook her head. “This is just a magazine picture, dear. I cut it out years ago. I’ve always thought the picture so lovely and romantic.”
“What magazine?” I managed to ask.
“I have no idea. It was one of those magazines that had romance stories. Not many of them do anymore, you know. There was a time when every women’s magazine had a romance story. I miss that.”
Several women nodded in agreement. Several more looked up at me, concern across their faces.
“But what magazine? When?”
“Oh, my dear, that would be years ago now.”
I kept looking at her and asked, “Did you…Have you lived here a long time?”
She shook her head and said, “We moved here when Bert retired. That would be ten years.”
“Then do you know these people?” I pointed at the picture.
Her eyebrows screwed together into one long brow across her face. I was conscious of time standing still, of the rest of the class regarding me, but I had to know.
“No, dear,” she said. “I told you. This is just a picture from a magazine.”
“But, um…” I couldn’t take my eyes from the picture, the two of them, my parents in a stranger’s hands.
I had lived with the story of my parents for as long as I could remember. They’d died in a car accident, the details of which were too painful for my aunt to ever fully talk to me about. Even when she was dying, she’d refused to tell me about the particulars of the accident. Was it a head-on collision? Was it a drunk driver? Had the car skidded out of control on icy or wet roads? When I would ask these questions, my aunt would simply turn her head away from me, tears at the edges of her eyes. I finally figured out that losing her sister was so painful to her that she couldn’t, wouldn’t talk about it. But I never stopped asking.
I looked around me. “Do any of you remember Allen and Sandra Simson? They would have lived here a long time ago, around thirty years now.”
The ladies looked at each other and shook their heads.
I took a deep breath. “How about Rose Carlson? Do any of you know Rose Carlson? Or her sister, Sandra Carlson? That would have been her name before she was married.”
All around were mystified head shakes. By now I felt so nauseated I could barely stand. I felt hot and cold all at once. Without further explanation, I fled to my little bathroom in the back, where I leaned both hands on the edge of the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. I was freezing. I was sweating. Peas of moisture beaded on my forehead, yet my throat was dry. I swallowed several times and just managed not to throw up. Breathe. Breathe, I told myself. Something else was bothering me, something I’d shoved to the back of my mind for all these years, something I didn’t confront, couldn’t. But something that was even now staring me in the face. I looked up at the reflection of my own face in the mirror above the sink. That beautiful, barefoot woman with the long hair was not my mother. The two in the picture were not my parents.
I could hear Johanna in the other room. “Well, ladies, let me go see how Marylee is. Keep leafing through the magazines and we’ll be right back.”
A moment later her hand was on my neck.
“Did you see the picture?” I asked.
“I did, Marylee. I did. But there’s going to be a simple explanation. After the class, I’ll come up to your apartment and we’ll figure it all out.” Her voice was soothing, and I was so glad she was my friend and that she was with me tonight.
“But why?” I asked. “Where did Beryl’s picture come from? Where did my picture come from?”
After my aunt Rose had died and my engagement had fallen apart, I’d come here to Burlington, Vermont. It was the only thing I could really do. Even despite her Cassandra-like warnings, I was born here and had lived here for the three years prior to my aunt driving us out west. The secrets lay somewhere here in Burlington. I just had to find them. Of course, I had researched the accident. Through the years, I’d pawed through my aunt’s things looking for pictures, looking for news articles, looking for death certificates. I’d found nothing. I’d searched my parents’ names on the Internet, plus any reference to a car accident in Vermont many times, and had come up empty.
Someday I would stand at the graves of my parents. Someday I would find the rest of my family. For I knew there had to be more than just me and Aunt Rose.
Yet in the seven months I’d been here, I hadn’t been able to find anyone who knew my parents or my aunt. I had scoured the cemeteries. No luck. None of the seniors in my afternoon scrapbooking class remembered the names Allen and Sandra Simson. I’d also worked my way through the newspaper archives at the public library so many times that the reference librarian was getting sick of seeing me come in. Yet I had found zilch. Google searches continued to yield nothing.
And now this! My first real clue in seven months and you’d think I’d be cheering and jumping up and down, yet here I was, my hand to my mouth to keep from throwing up.
Maybe there was a part of me that was afraid of what I would find. Or what I wouldn’t find. Maybe, after all, there was nothing to find.
TWO
After the last satisfied customer had left, I armed my store’s security system and we went upstairs to my apartment, where Johanna brewed a big pot of chamomile tea.
Somewhere during the course of the evening it had started to rain. An appropriately cold rain which matched my mood slashed at the windows like knives.
I’d managed to muddle through the class with Johanna helping. I also apologized for running off like that, but offered no explanation. No one pressed for a reason. Johanna helped me lay out their initial efforts on tables in my back room. Everyone chatted while they gathered up their coats and purses. Next week at this same time they would be back to work on them. The class was a success. Everyone was happy. I was a mess.
The framed photo that I had talked to all these years was between us on the kitchen table. Johanna carefully removed the photo from the frame. “There might be something here,” she said. “Maybe on the back.”
“There’s nothing,” I told her. “Nothing on the back. Nowhere.” And I should know. I’d scrutinized this picture many, many times for clues, a name of a photographer.
She said, “Why don’t you get all the pictures of your parents together and then you can show them to all the people who come into the shop. You could even tack them up on some of the bulletin boards around town. There are so many things you could be doing, Marylee, if you want to find out who you’re related to out here.”
“All the pictures? This is the only picture I have.” I was aware then that she was my friend, yet I had shared with her only carefully selected pieces of my life.
Her eyes went wide. “Really? Well, then, this one then, you show everyone this picture. You make copies. I could help you. We could put it in the paper, even.”
“I can’t. I can’t explain it, I just can’t do that.” I didn’t know if I could explain it properly to my friend, this reticence I felt. I didn’t know if I could explain it properly to myself. It was all bound up in my aunt and her fears. When I was little, she hadn’t even wanted me showing the picture to my friends. When I would ask her why not, her standard response would be, “You don’t know who’s out there.”
I took a sip of my tea. My fingers were shaking so badly, I put the teacup down and stared into its depths. Johanna touched my hand. “How did your parents die?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t have all the information. My aunt wouldn’t tell me. That’s why I’m here. It’s a long story.”
“We have a whole pot of tea, and more where that came from.”
So I told her. I told her I was born here in Burlington and after my parents died, my aunt Rose packed me up in her car and we drove clear across the country until we ended up in Portland, Oregon.
“Aunt Rose was the only mother I ever knew. She’s been gone about a year.” I bit my lip. “Ovarian cancer. I still miss her.”
“Oh, Marylee.”
I swallowed and continued. “But she kept warning me about Burlington. She told me not to come back here.”
Johanna’s eyes were wide. “And she never told you why?”
I took a swallow of tea and shook my head. “She was thrilled when I began going out with he-who-shall-not-be-named. I think she thought that was a surefire way to keep me from ever coming here to Burlington…”
I let my voice drift off and thought about that whole chapter of my life.
“He had stood with me throughout her six-month battle with cancer, he’d been the comfort I needed, my rock. The day after my aunt’s funeral, he proposed.” I said it quietly. “We ended up setting a date a year in the future. I lived that year in a kind of stupor, grieving for my aunt, my best friend and only living relative. I couldn’t seem to focus on wedding plans. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything.
“Three weeks before the wedding he bailed. I supposed it was only to be expected.”
“Oh, Marylee!” Johanna came over and hugged me.
I blinked rapidly to keep the tears at bay. A shiver danced across my skin and I wrapped my arms around myself. It didn’t help. I got up and turned up the thermostat. I glanced out the back window as I did so, and a truck rumbled down the back alley between the buildings on this rainy night.
Johanna took off her sweater. She was now down to a tank top in my warm kitchen, but bless her, she didn’t say anything about the place being too hot. Yet, I could not rid myself of the chill. I wondered if I would ever be warm again, whole again, like a real person.
I continued. “Since I’ve come here, I try to think back. I try to remember this place, but I can’t. I was too young. The first memory I have is of Aunt Rose driving. It was raining. I remember the sound of the windshield wipers, back and forth. For hours I watched them while my aunt kept driving and driving, not saying anything.”
Johanna pulled her legs up underneath her and was sitting yogi-style on my kitchen chair. She was listening intently.
“When I was growing up my aunt was always so jumpy, so jittery. Any time there was a phone call that hung up she’d go crazy, running around locking all the doors and windows. I think we were the first house in the entire country to get a home security system. She was so nervous, my aunt was.”
“Maybe she had a reason to be,” Johanna said.
That statement clouded the air like smoke. I thought of the shadow that had moved across the coffee shop window tonight. Had I seen something? Or had it been a product of my overactive imagination? Was I becoming like my aunt Rose after all?
Johanna got up and tucked a quilt around my shoulders. She asked, “Have you been back to the house you lived in when you were here?”
“I don’t even know where it is.” I paused and looked at the droplets of rain clinging to my balcony window. “When I was about fourteen I went through a sort of rebellious period. I sneaked into my aunt’s desk. She always kept it locked, but I knew where the key was. I was looking for something, anything, a picture, an address, a news clipping about the accident. But I found nothing. I had all her papers all over the bed, and that’s when my aunt came through the door.
“I looked up expecting her to be furious. But she came and sat beside me and held me in her arms for a long time. She just held me and held me. And when I looked up I saw that she was crying, too. I think that was the beginning of us being close.”
“You must miss her very much,” Johanna said.
“We sat there for a while and then she said, ‘I’m only trying to keep you safe. I’ve devoted my life to keeping you safe.’ And then she said, ‘Let’s go make paper instead.’ That was her answer to everything: Let’s make paper.”
“Paper?” Johanna looked at me, nearly spilling her tea.
I smiled, just a little. My aunt used to make paper. She had a special blender set aside just for her papermaking. We used to tear up old pieces of paper and then they would go in this blender with water. We had huge sinks in our basement and screens where we would lay out our pulp until it dried. She sold it by the sheet at markets and craft fairs. I told Johanna this, how my aunt was always saving bits and pieces of paper. She was into recycling before anybody else in the world was. “We would save old magazines and cut pictures out of them.” I stopped, a strange idea niggling its way into my thinking. Had she somehow found that magazine in the trash, somehow took a picture of it, had it developed and then told me it was my parents? Is that how she had done it? But why? And if these two aren’t my parents, then who are they and do they have any connection with me?
I picked up the photo and looked down at it. I had to admit that part of the attraction of this photo was the happiness this couple seemed to possess, the two of them, the way my mother looked into my father’s eyes, the way he gazed down at her. Was this kind of love even possible? When I was a little girl I would make up elaborate scenarios about my parents. I put the photo facedown on the table.
Johanna picked up the photo, seemed to consider it, then said, “The place to begin with all of this is Evan, of course.”
Despite myself I smiled. “We begin with Evan?”
“He’s a photographer, Marylee. You know that.” She leaned back and picked up her mug.
“A photographer’s not going to know.”
She leaned forward. “Sometimes he works with the police on forensics. Sometimes they get him to help them.”
I hated to tell Johanna, but going to see Evan was not in the plans. He’d taken my friend out twice and dropped her. Plus, Evan had been engaged before. Whenever I thought about Evan, I couldn’t help but think of Mark, my own ex-fiancé who’d dumped me when the going got too rough for him.
“He used to be an accountant,” Johanna said. “Did you know that? He dropped that to pursue his art, his photography.”
To me that was another strike against him; he can’t commit to a woman and can’t commit to a career. No, my friend could do a whole lot better than Evan Baxter.
“You should go see him.”
I told her no, emphatically no.
THREE
I had the mirrors dream again that night. I’ve dreamed the mirrors dream, or a variation thereof for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I’m in a fun house and strange mirror faces taunt me. Sometimes I see mirror after mirror, the same reflection of myself going on and on forever and ever into infinity. Sometimes there are broken pieces of mirror and every time I pick them up I cut my fingers and they bleed. Sometimes I stand in front of a mirror and instead of seeing my reflection I see nothing. When I was little, I used to awaken screaming until Aunt Rose came in and prayed with me.
In tonight’s dream, I was walking down a narrow hallway holding a piece of broken mirror. It belonged to one of the ladies in my evening class and I needed to catch up with her, tell her I had it. The edge of it had cut my hand and the blood left a trail behind me. I didn’t care. I needed to find her. In my haste, I walked into a mirror. I turned to go back and was met with another mirror. I was lost and frantic as I tried to find my way out of the maze of my own reflections going in all directions.
I woke up, hot and miserable in the middle of the night. I’d left my heat up and the place was as close as a sauna. I turned down the thermostat. Outside it was still raining and I stood by the front window for a while.
I live on Main Street in Burlington, a busy street of shops and old New England–style three-and four-story houses. Across the street from me is a mystery bookshop in the lower level of a four-story dwelling that once was someone’s grand residence, but was chopped into apartments and shops. Next to that is a consignment shop that features children’s clothing. Right beside me is a coffee shop, and on the other side is a high-end bicycle and ski shop, this area of the country being known for two things, teddy bears and snow.
I focused on the bookstore and the huge cat that always sits in the window. He was there now, a dark mound on the window seat. The cat stretched and I watched its shadow move across the glass. I looked at it. Had it been the cat I’d seen earlier? I sighed and was about to get back to my bedroom when a movement on the street below caught my attention. I went to my bedroom and retrieved my glasses from my nightstand. There was a bobbing pinpoint of orange down below. It took me a moment to realize that this was the end of a cigarette. And the cigarette was attached to a person who was leaning against the back of a bus shelter. I watched him for a few moments, wondering that someone would be outside in the rain in the middle of the night. It took me several minutes to realize that this person was looking up at me. I stood very still, then backed away from the window. I felt rattled, unsettled. Before I went back to bed, I went to the door and made sure it was locked, the security system fully armed. Once the latch was pulled across the French doors I’d be secure. And then, feeling much like my aunt, I made a cup of chamomile tea—her favorite—and drank it in the kitchen.
The photo was still on my kitchen table, propped against the sugar bowl. I thought about what Johanna had said. See Evan? I sighed and looked down at the woman’s face, that hint of a smile not for the photographer, but for the man—my father?—who I’ve always thought was just about the handsomest man I’d ever seen.
I slept again after that, and dreamed that Aunt Rose was my real mother and that I had no father, and she’d forged my birth certificate and made up the story about my parents being in an accident just because she didn’t want anyone to know that I was illegitimate. I got up, peeked around the side of the blind in the half light of early morning, but the cigarette smoker had gone. So had the cat.
Still tired, I went back to bed but tossed and turned until close to dawn, and when I finally did wake up, I had overslept. Since I’d forgotten to set the alarm, I ended up racing to get ready. I couldn’t get my contacts in, so had to opt for a pair of thick glasses with black frames. I had purchased them a few years ago when I’d been in an artsy period, but now in the mirror all I saw were glasses. But my eyes were puffy from lack of sleep and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.
By the time I ran to the café for my coffee, my winking coffee stranger had already been and gone. I had no idea where he worked. I assumed it was somewhere around here, maybe even the mystery bookshop, although I’d never seen him in there when I’d gone in for some reading material.
Where he came from and where he went each morning were a mystery. The only thing I knew about him was that he came in each morning at the same time for a dark roast coffee, which he took black. And, that he winked at me.
I was too late today, but with the way I looked this morning, it was just as well.
It was strange how I missed him, how disappointed I felt. If I believed in omens—which I didn’t—I would have thought that not seeing him meant that this already bad day was going to get a whole lot worse. I walked into my shop, and today for the first time it seemed a desolate place. The rows upon rows of needlecraft kits and yarn and scrapbook supplies and watercolor kits and mirror pieces and mosaic tiles just looked like organized rows of so much junk. I went to the back and looked at Beryl’s mirror tiles picture again. My parents. Or maybe not. But if they weren’t my parents, who were they and how were they connected to me? If they were?
Before she left last night I told Johanna not to tell anyone about this picture. I knew she would respect my wishes. I didn’t need to share the patheticness of my life with anyone else. Johanna had also carefully placed the photo between two sheets of cardboard and put it in a large envelope, still convinced that I would see Evan. I laid that next to my coat. When Barbara came in after lunch, I’d head over to the photography studio and force myself to deal with the infamous Evan Baxter.
I met the morning customers with cheery hellos. I helped two older women from my seniors’ class pick out ribbons for their scrapbooks. I helped a young pregnant woman with yarn and doll faces. She kept going on about her new baby and decorating the room, and that made me feel blue. If my ex-fiancé hadn’t jumped ship I would be married now. Quite possibly I’d even be pregnant. We’d talked about that. We’d wanted children right away. Mark, my ex-fiancé, worked as a computer programmer for a cable company. Everyone in church loved him where he was one of the leaders. He just couldn’t stick it out with me when the going got tough. I sold the young mother-to-be some yellow yarn, a doll form and a pattern, and wished the new family well with a cheerful smile.
A gentlemanly old man named Marty Smythe and his friend Dot, both from my seniors’ scrapbooking class came in and bought two children’s needlepoint sets for Dot’s grandchildren. When I first met Marty and Dot, I figured them for an old married couple. Then one afternoon in the shop when Dot was talking to Barbara about ribbons, Marty whispered to me that he was going to ask Dot to marry him, he was just waiting for the right moment. I thought it was sweet. Barbara told me later that both Marty and Dot had lost their spouses a long time ago.
He looked at me and his eyebrows came together. “You okay?”
I nodded. “I must look horrible. I think I’m coming down with something.” Coming down with something. Right, like a miserable life.
“Well, you take care, sweets,” he said as I rang up the order.
I promised him I would and I watched him leave, the back of him, white hair bunching out under his black woolen cap. Something about the back of his hair under his cap made me start for a moment. I looked, but couldn’t put a finger on it. I shook my head and went back to work.
Just after noon, Barbara came in cheerful and breezy the way she always does.
“How was the class?” she asked, unzipping her raincoat and hanging it in the back. “Oh, I can see how the class was. How lovely!” Barbara’s one of those wonderfully warm maternal types who talk nonstop. I knew she’d have lots of good advice for me if I told her about my parents and the picture questions. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not yet. She stopped her chattering and looked at me. “Are you okay, Marylee?”
I attempted a laugh. “Everyone keeps asking me that. I think it’s my glasses. I don’t usually wear them, so when I do, everyone looks at me strangely.”
“I think they’re very charming. They make you look quite studious.”
I told her that I hadn’t slept well, and that when I’d gotten up in the night someone had been standing down across the street smoking in the bus shelter. “It unnerved me,” I said. “I didn’t sleep much after that.”
“Well I don’t blame you!” Her eyes were wide. “Did you call the police?”
“Last I heard it wasn’t a crime to stand in a bus shelter and smoke in the middle of the night.”
“Still, it would be kind of spooky, I’d say, someone looking up at your window like that.”
I looked down at my hands. “It was just somebody smoking.” But it wasn’t, was it? I had seen a face upturned in my direction.
A little while later, I told her I had an errand to run and left her in charge of the store. I walked the three blocks through a gray drizzle to Evan Baxter Photography. I wasn’t sure this was the wisest thing I’d ever done. After what he had done to Johanna, not to mention to his fiancée, I knew I should probably just steer clear of him.
I was surprised that his store was so close to my own. I had done a bit of walking in the neighborhood, but never in this direction. Usually when I head out I go down Main Street, and then turn right at the ferry terminal and into the waterfront park. Most of the time, when I get to the coast guard building, I turn around and go home.
Evan Baxter Photography is located in an upscale brick building just up from the railroad yard. In the same building is a design studio and a law office. Inside it was quiet and no one seemed to be around. There was a ring-for-service bell on the counter, but I hate those things, even though I have one myself. They sound so impatient and demanding to me. After standing at the counter for a few moments and having no one appear, however, I pressed it tentatively and looked around.
The photos on the wall were arranged as if in a gallery. There were insects on branches, close-ups of flowers and faces. There were lots of faces; old people with expressive smiles, children on swings, wedding pictures, graduation pictures, photos of quilts that caught my attention for a while. I could name some of the patterns: log cabin, cross weave and tessellating flowers. Aunt Rose was also a master quilter and in my apartment I have a small quilting frame, a graduation gift from her. I’m attempting to finish the quilt she started before she got sick.
But the photo that drew me, the picture that caused me to stand there unmoving, was one of a small girl standing beside a campfire. She was young, maybe ten, and wore scuffy pink sneakers and a hooded zippered sweatshirt that was opened to reveal a pink T-shirt. She was pointing at the flames.
I marveled that Evan was able to capture the vivid hues of the fire and how they were reflected in the solemn face of the girl as she pointed.
Close behind, very close behind me was a sound.
“You didn’t get your medium nonfat latte today.” I jumped, turned and found myself face-to-face with my winking coffee stranger. I muffled a gasp, put a hand to my mouth.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s okay. I…uh…” I felt my face flush. “I didn’t hear you. I was looking at the picture.” I was conscious of the fact that I couldn’t look any worse if I tried; glasses, flat hair tied back, red eyes and any makeup I did have on, being long ago smeared off by my sniffles. I hoped desperately that I didn’t have mascara lines running down my cheeks. And then I wondered, what in the world was he doing here, anyway? Maybe he was here buying film on his lunch hour.
“Are you, uh, are you a photographer?” I asked him stupidly. I was backing away slightly, aware, so aware of him standing close to me. I caught a whiff of a kind of musky aftershave.
“Do you like that one?” He pointed at the picture of the girl.
I nodded. “It’s very, um, vivid. The colors. The girl. She sort of, um, reminds me of myself when I was a girl. She looks so sad, somehow.” My voice trailed off. Why for goodness’ sake was I going on about this to a complete stranger? And why did I think he would care?
He said, “That one is sort of special to me.”
It was special to him? How could it be special to him? Someone had started a blender in my stomach.
“You asked if I was a photographer. I try to be,” he said.
I nodded some more. I felt like a bobble-head doll. He was even better looking close-up than across the crowded coffee shop. And what was I thinking with these thoughts, anyway? I needed to find Evan Baxter and get out of here.
“Are you in the market for a camera? Digital, perhaps?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, um…” I swallowed. “I’ll just wait here for the owner. I need to speak to Evan Baxter about something.”
He raised one eyebrow, and then did the wink thing again. “Well, you’re looking at him.”
It took me a moment to figure out what he said. “I’m looking at him?”
He nodded.
“You’re Evan Baxter?”
“In the flesh.” He was smiling broadly.
“You can’t be!”
“Was last time I looked at my driver’s license.”
“But, but…” I sputtered. “I didn’t know you were Evan Baxter.” My hand flew to my mouth. “You really are Evan Baxter?”
He grinned. “I really am.”
“Oh…Oh…”
“I’m glad you like the campfire photo,” he said.
I kept sniffing and feeling foolish. I felt around in my pocket for a Kleenex, but of course I didn’t have one when I needed one. I kept nodding. I still hadn’t managed to say anything. I could almost hear what he was thinking: Why won’t this stupid, simpering woman get to the point?
Time to do just that. I took a breath. “I came in because, well, I need some help identifying a photograph. I’ve been told you might be able to help me. I would pay you, of course. Whatever you think is fair.” I tried to keep my voice businesslike. “I would like to know where a photo was taken, and who took it. This photo I have complemented a short story in a women’s magazine.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got.” He led me back to the counter where I opened up the manila envelope and took the photo out from between the two sheets of taped cardboard. He glanced at it. “You want to know who these people are?”
“No…I…I already know who they are.” I put my hand to my mouth, forced myself to breathe, breathe, and get back to my all-business self. “Yes. Maybe I would like to know that. And I need to know, um, who took this picture and maybe what magazine it was in. This is the original. I want to know…I don’t know.” My voice broke. And at that point I realized that I really didn’t know what I wanted to know at all. Why was I here? What I wanted to know was if anyone in this entire city of Burlington could tell me about my parents, but I couldn’t tell him that. He was a stranger.
He picked up the photo and studied it, and his eyes lingered there a bit too long. I swear I could hear him softly gasp. Then just as quickly, he recovered. When he brushed his curly hair out of his eyes, I wondered if I’d only imagined that flinch.
He bent his head so all of his hair fell forward into his eyes. As he spread out the edges of the photo with his fingers, I unwillingly found myself looking at his hands. I always think hands tell a lot about a man. His were strong and articulate. I could imagine him fiddling with camera settings, adjusting a shot until he got it just right, not being happy until it was.
Stop that, Marylee, I told myself. This guy dropped Johanna without so much as a how do you do. He’s someone you definitely want to steer clear of. So, why was I here, trusting him with one of the most important things in my life?
From underneath the counter he got a magnifying glass.
“This picture looks old,” he said. “The styles. These two look like hippies. It’s artistically done, though. Nice. Romantic.” And he looked at me and winked.
“I think it’s around thirty years old.” I kept my demeanor as businesslike as I could. “I understand you do forensic work for the police department.”
He shifted his position. “Sometimes.” He put the photo down and looked at me. “Okay, here’s what we can do. We can compare it to data banks of stock photos,” he said. “Although if it was in a magazine thirty years ago that might pose a challenge.”
“You said ‘we’?”
“My assistant, Mose, is a whiz at dating old photos. He might be able to help. I’m sure he’ll have some ideas, in any case.”
“I would also like information about certain parts of the photo.” I pointed out some duskiness along one side. “I’d always assumed these shadow things to be trees or some sort of bushes or building, but I don’t know.”
“It’s quite faint,” he said. “It could be just something in the photo itself, or on the paper.”
I nodded.
“We could digitize this, maybe enlarge these shadows, see what we can come up with.”
“By all means.” I handed him one of my Crafts and More business cards. “I’m Marylee Simson.” I tried to sound as professional as possible despite my bleary eyes, bad hair and shaking knees.
“I already know your name.” And he winked at me. “And I already know your shop. It’s nice to finally meet you officially.”
And all the way back to Crafts and More all I thought about was I can’t believe it. I cannot believe it! What am I going to tell Johanna? What on earth am I going to tell Johanna?
That afternoon Johanna called me at the shop between her classes, as I knew she would. I was dreading this. How to tell her? What to say?
“So?” she said.
“So?” I answered.
“So, did you take the picture to Evan?”
“I took the picture to Evan.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what? Isn’t he absolutely irresistible?”
“He’s…” This was going to be harder than I thought. “He’s, uh, he’s got the photo. He’s looking at it…”
“Well, duh, I figured that much,” she said.
I heard the bells chime at my door signifying a customer. “I gotta go. A customer arriveth!”
“You will come to my house tonight and tell me everything that happened.”
It was an order, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll bring my homemade pizza.”
When I hung up the phone I saw that I’d left my apartment key in the door. I pulled it out and pocketed it before heading back out to the store.
There is a back door to this place with stairs leading up to my apartment. I keep that door locked during the day. When you come in either the front door to the shop or the back door, you first have to unlock it with a key, and all the keys are different. Then you have to punch in the six-digit security code. When you get up the stairs to my apartment, there’s another lock, another key and another security-code pad.
All thanks to my paranoid aunt.
For the rest of the afternoon I chided myself. What kind of a friend keeps something like this from a best friend? I should have blurted it right out. Your Evan is the one who winks at me every morning! That’s the kind of guy he is. He breaks off an engagement and then goes out and drops someone after two dates with no explanation and then winks at someone else. What is he doing, just going down the line of available females?
I’d tell her all of this tonight. I started practicing ways to tell her.
We close at five on Wednesdays, so I had ample time to do up my special pizza from scratch. I’d make enough dough for two pizzas and put one in the freezer. As I was working on measuring the yeast and kneading the dough, it felt to me as if I were making a peace offering, something to make Johanna feel better when I broke the news. I’d add sliced tomatoes to the top because I know she likes fresh sliced tomatoes on her pizza.
I was just setting the dough to rise for a few minutes when I looked over at my balcony door and noticed something odd. The pull-across latch was pushed back. Had I unlocked this door? I couldn’t remember. It seemed unlikely, though. I stepped back, stared at it, thought of my key left in my door. Two key-related oddities in one day; I was turning into my aunt.
I opened the French doors and stepped onto my balcony and looked over the railing. My aunt would approve of this balcony. There was no way anyone could climb up here. No fire escape led to it. There weren’t even any balconies close by where you could jump across, if a person was so inclined. Theoretically, I should be able to leave it unlocked and be fine. You’d have to be Spider-Man to get up here. My wicker rocker was undisturbed. I sat in it for a few minutes before the chill evening air drove me back inside to where my crust was happily rising.
At seven sharp I was standing on the doorstep of Johanna’s cute house. She lives just north of the city on a little island on Malletts Bay. It’s only a few minutes from the downtown core where I live, but driving up Coates Island Road is like driving into another country. I drove past the marina on Malletts Bay, with its huge yachts, many of which were already shrink-wrapped in white. Soon, I was told, Lake Champlain would freeze so solid you could drive a truck across it.
Coates Island, where Johanna lives, is a private island of mostly summer cottages. Johanna lives here year-round in the last house, she says, before they quit plowing the road. It’s a place she could never afford on her professor’s salary, but it’s been in her family for many generations. The only downside is that her big family of brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts descends on her all summer long.
Johanna’s place is just like her—funky and cottagey and filled with mismatched dishes and chairs, all bought at garage sales. But instead of looking tacky, it looks as if each piece has been carefully chosen from high-end antique stores. She has this way of assembling a bunch of disparate pieces into a charming whole, and that includes the clothes she wears.
As soon as I entered her house, she came right over and hugged me.
“Evan,” she said. “You have to tell me about Evan! You have to tell me everything!” She looked so cute this evening. Her thick hair was caught up in a scrunchie on the top of her head, like a cockeyed waterspout.
I dropped my jacket on the back of a wooden kitchen chair. “You could do a whole lot better than Evan Baxter,” I told her.
She stopped a moment in her table setting and raised her eyebrows. “What? What happened? What do you mean by that?”
“I just think you could do better than Evan Baxter. That’s all.” I was careful not to meet her eyes.
“Marylee, tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out. Wasn’t he able to help you with your picture?”
“I need to talk to you about Evan.” I placed my pizza on the table. “This is really important. Evan? He’s the guy who winks at me in the coffee shop every morning. The very one.”
If I could have chosen all of the reactions on her part, I never would have chosen the one that she exhibited. Instead of looking horrified, her eyes opened wider and she leaned back against her counter and laughed. It was a gleeful, spontaneous laugh.
“Johanna?” I squinted at her over my glasses.
“Oh, Marylee!” She leaned forward and put her hand on my shoulder. “This is so funny, so totally funny. What a strange coincidence.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Now you know how cute he is.”
“Johanna, you’re not getting it. He’s irresponsible. He takes you out. Doesn’t call back. Winks at me, a total stranger.”
Her back was to me as she poured two Diet Cokes. “Let’s have the pizza,” she said.
She was hurt, I could tell. The laughter was just a cover-up, but I didn’t know what to do or say. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told her. But, of course I had to. Friends don’t keep stuff like this from their friends. We took our slices and Cokes into her front room overlooking the water.
She took a bite of the pizza, proclaimed it wonderful and then said, “Did you hear that Barbara’s son Jared is home from Guatemala?”
I knew she was changing the subject on purpose, but I had no desire to bring the subject back to Evan, so I said, “That’s all I’ve been hearing about.”
I took a long drink of Coke. Through the trees, the gray water of Malletts Bay looked as solid as iron.
Barbara’s eldest son had taken a six-month leave of absence from his police job to work on a mission project in Guatemala. Barbara and her husband, Harold, had invited some of the people his age from church to a supper where he’d be talking about the trip and showing pictures.
“I know Jared,” Johanna said. “You haven’t met him, but you’d like him. He’d be perfect for you.”
Clever ploy, I thought. Get me interested in Jared so she wouldn’t have to worry about Evan and me. I leaned forward and touched my friend’s arm. “Johanna, you don’t have to worry. I am not interested in Evan.” I’m not interested in that type of guy anymore—all charm and no substance, I wanted to add, but didn’t. “And I’m not interested in Jared either. I’ve had enough of men for a while. All men.”
FOUR
For the next two days I studiously avoided Evan. I went for my coffee a whole hour earlier. I knew this wouldn’t last. He had my photo and would be calling. But maybe the few days would give me time to organize my thoughts, and maybe my emotions. My problem was I’d let a morning wink take over my life. I seriously wanted to believe what I had told Johanna last night, that Evan held no attraction for me whatsoever, that no man did. But, unfortunately, I found myself thinking about him more, not less.
On the second day of not seeing Evan, Marty and Dot came in to buy a paint-by-numbers set. “It’s for Dot’s granddaughter,” Marty said. “It’s her birthday tomorrow.”
“How nice,” I said.
“There’s going to be a big party,” Dot added.
“Have a wonderful time.” I put their purchase in a bag and looked at Marty. The other day something about him had seemed strangely familiar. Today that feeling was gone. Today he was just an ordinary nice-looking older gentleman, obviously in love with his lady friend.
One the third day, Evan Baxter came into my shop. I was in the back unpacking boxes of yarn when I recognized his voice.
“Is the lady of the shop in?”
I held my breath.
“Just a minute,” Barbara said. “And you are?”
“Evan. Evan Baxter.”
“Oh yes, of course!” she exclaimed. “My husband, Harold, bought a camera from you some time ago, and talked about your lovely photographs.”
“I remember him.”
“Marylee,” she singsonged. “Someone here to see you.”
I wiped my hands on my Crafts and More apron and went out to the front. As soon as I got there I wished I’d had time to run a brush through my hair. Still, today it didn’t quite look as bad as it had three days ago. At least I’d been up early enough this morning to blow-dry some life into it.
“Hey,” he said. Then he winked at me.
“Hello,” I said.
“I’ve missed you in the mornings.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy for a nonfat latte?”
“I’ve been getting to the shop earlier.” I ran my hands up and down my apron. All of the sentences I’d rehearsed for this occasion had flown completely out of my head. Plus, Barbara was observing this whole conversation with amusement. Since she’d come to work for me, she’d been like a mother hen, trying to hook me up with every available guy she knew, especially with Jared. I hadn’t quite confided in her that since I’d been trampled on and tramped over by Mark, I was interested in no one. Not even her eldest son Jared.
“So, did you find anything about the picture?” I asked him.
He nodded. “You have time for coffee?”
“Right now?” I glanced at my watch. “I’m working now. There’s a lot to do.” I looked around me. The shop was dead. We hadn’t had a customer in half an hour and new boxes of fabric supplies were mostly unpacked.
“You go,” Mother Barbara said, shooing me out. “Have a coffee.” Then to Evan she said, “This young woman is working way too hard. And not sleeping. Plus, there are men outside her door.”
“Barbara!” I shrieked at her.
“No, what I mean is, she sees people smoking down in the street in the middle of the night, so she can’t sleep at night. That would be enough to put anyone off their Wheaties.”
Why, I wondered, had I shared that little tidbit of my life with her?
Evan raised an eyebrow and a worried look crept across his face. “People? Outside your house?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “It was one night. A few nights ago when it was raining. Someone was in the bus shelter across the street smoking.”
“You said he? It was a man?” he said, looking worried.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. But it was nothing. It was someone stepping outside for a smoke in the middle of the night. What’s so odd about that? Most people don’t smoke in their houses anymore, so what do you do when you want a smoke in the middle of the night? That’s all it was. I don’t even know why I brought it up.”
At the time I’d been so sure the person, either man or woman, had been looking up at my apartment, at me, even. But the more I thought about it, the more fanciful that idea became. I needed to steel myself against becoming like my aunt.
Evan and I went next door to the coffee shop. He ordered a house dark roast black and without even asking got me a nonfat latte. He also brought a huge, drippy cinnamon bun to our table with two forks. The two-forks bit seemed a little too chummy to me.
He paid for the coffees, which made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. I had hired him, so I should be paying, right? What does one do in these situations?
“Your sales clerk is an interesting woman,” he told me.
“She’s great. Although she says exactly what’s on her mind. Very blunt, as you may have noticed.”
“That’s refreshing, though. You’ve got a nice shop there. You’ve fixed it up well.”
“Thank you,” I said. I looked at his hands again as they deftly cut the cinnamon bun in two with a plastic knife.
“I was halfway interested in it when it went up for sale,” he said. “I pay rent in the spot I’m in now. It would be nice to own something outright.”
“It wasn’t cheap.”
“I know. That’s why I stayed where I am.” He grinned and I wondered what I was doing here making small talk with Johanna’s soul mate. I had a niggling fear that Johanna would walk in and see us like this. The thought made me uneasy.
He asked me where I was from and all I said was out west. He drank his coffee and said he’d grown up here in Burlington. I thought about the little note of surprise in his eyes when he’d seen the picture for the first time. Even though there was a part of me that still wondered if the picture was my parents, I needed a starting point. Were the couple in the picture connected to me? And why had my aunt lied to me—if she had?
I looked across at Evan and tried to guess his age. He couldn’t be much older than me. Would he remember the accident that supposedly took my parents’ lives? Should I ask him? I shook off that thought. I was beginning to realize just how big the city of Burlington was. I had no idea if I was even looking in the right section of town. Maybe I needed to be in Colchester, or Winooski, or Essex Junction.
He took off his glasses and cleaned them with an edge of the paper napkin. I watched him do that, wondering why his every little motion held such interest for me. I asked, “You said you have information about the picture?”
“I do.”
I waited while he put his glasses back on and placed the manila envelope with the photograph on the table. I reached for it at the same time he did and our hands touched. I pulled mine away quickly. For an awkward moment, neither of us said anything. I cleared my throat, and finally said, “So what did you find out?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a composite.”
“Come again?”
“A composite. I’m thinking that the two people may have been superimposed on the backdrop of the lake. That was how they manipulated photos twenty-five years ago. Now, we have computer programs which do the same thing.”
“So, this might not be Lake Champlain? It might not be here at all?”
“It might not be.”
“How do you know that?”
He pointed. “I’ve enlarged this part of it. Do you see this bush in the foreground? Do you see the shadow it casts? It’s very subtle.”
I looked. “A bit,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Have a look at the couple. They cast no shadow. A computer-generated photo manipulation would have taken care of that. Or a good photo manipulator could manually add a very faint shadow here.” He pointed.
“But…But it looks okay to me. I mean they could be there, couldn’t they? By Lake Champlain?”
He put one finger in the air. “There’s more. Look at their bare feet. If they were standing on the stones like that, the feet of the man, of the woman, too, for that matter, would be making more of an impression on the ground beneath them. Plus, I can’t see people standing on stones with bare feet anyway. Can you?”
“But people could, couldn’t they?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“So, this is a fake?”
“Oh no, it’s not a fake. It’s a real photograph. It’s not some sort of a painting or reproduction, if that’s what you mean.”
That’s not what I meant, but I didn’t tell him what I meant because I wasn’t sure myself.
“What about these shadows along the side?” I asked.
“To me they look like some sort of building. I couldn’t figure it out, but Mose is still working on that.”
I took a drink of my latte. “I have to ask you something. When you first looked at this picture it was like you’d seen it before. Had you?”
He looked down at his coffee and shook his head.
“Then why did you flinch when you looked at it? I know I saw you do that.”
He looked at me. I hadn’t noticed before how blue his eyes were. “I didn’t flinch. I thought it was familiar when I first looked at it, but then I realized I was mistaken.”
“Familiar, how?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Were the people familiar? Did you think you recognized them?” My hands were clasped so tightly around my paper coffee cup that I was in danger of squishing the cup and spilling coffee all over us. I let up on my grip and repeated my question. “Do you know these people?”
He looked me square in the eyes. “No, Marylee. I don’t know who they are.”
I repeated my question. “Then why did you flinch?”
He shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”
I looked away from him. Unbidden tears threatened at the edges of my eyes. Finally, I turned back and said, “You mentioned stock photos the last time we talked.”
“Mose hasn’t found anything yet.”
I nodded.
“This photo must mean a lot to you.”
I didn’t answer him. Instead I took a sip of my coffee. “This photo is connected to Burlington and to me. And I need to find out what the connection is between these people and me.”
“I’ll continue to look into it. It’ll be my number-one priority.” His voice was gentle when he told me this.
“I would like that. Thank you very much.”
We drank our coffees in silence for the next few minutes. He cut another piece of cinnamon bun and said, “I was wondering about something else, Marylee. Would you ever consider going to dinner with me?”
I blinked. Had I heard him correctly?
“I…” I looked at my hands. “No. I don’t know. I’m sorry. Things are sort of, well, complicated right now, Evan. I’m really sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, really, I’m sorry.”
“Well then. Have the rest of the cinnamon bun.”
Suddenly I wanted to be away from here. I made a point of looking at my watch. “I have to get back to my store,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
I got up, grabbed my picture and fled.
Back at the store, I realized I had my picture. I’d told him to keep working on the picture, and here I’d walked off with it. This meant I’d have to somehow come face-to-face with him again if I wanted him to continue looking into where it came from.
And then there was the little matter of paying him for his services. He’d done all this work for me. What should I do? Here I was a supposedly savvy businesswoman who’d managed to come up with enough money to purchase outright a prime piece of real estate, set up a business and do comparatively well, yet I was standing in the middle of my store feeling whimpery. And, if I admitted it to myself, just the teensiest bit afraid. I was getting closer to my parents and I was afraid, just a little, of what I might find when I got there.
“Hey, while you were gone, I…” Barbara began. At the same time the door jangled signifying an incoming customer and for one horrid moment I thought it was Evan. I clasped my hand to my mouth, but the thin little man who entered was nothing like Evan. Barbara recognized him from her knitting club and introduced us. They wandered over to the yarn supplies and I made my way to the back room, the picture of my parents in my hand. I shoved it inside the phone book. I took two deep breaths and came out into my store again.
While Barbara rang up yarn and needles for her knitting compatriot, I waited on two customers, a mother and daughter who inquired about crocheting classes and ended up buying bits and pieces of ribbon and some paper and glue for a scrapbook they were making about their dog.
I waited on customers, straightened shelves and listened to Barbara talk about her sons, all the while looking at the door. Wondering if Evan would come back.
“Hey,” I could hear him say. “You left and took the picture.”
“I know, I know,” I would say. “I’m sorry about running off. Let me get the photo for you.” And I would, and then we’d end up going to dinner. And getting married and living happily ever after.
No. Not going to happen.
When I finally ascended the stairs to my apartment, my phone message light was blinking. Three messages. I pressed the button.
“Marylee? Evan here…” I sat down on my kitchen chair and caught my breath. “I’m sorry if something I said upset you when we were having coffee earlier. I certainly didn’t mean to.”
The second was also from him. “Sorry about the second phone call here, but if you still want me to help with the photo, I will. I would be happy to even if we don’t have dinner. If you want to come by with the photo again, I’ll take another look at it.”
The third message was from my security company. I called the number they left and through a series of voice-mail prompts, I ended up having to plug in my current security password code. I thought that was a bit odd, but complied. This was the second time they’d called wanting this information. I’d given it the first time. But I trusted them. They were a good security company and came highly recommended.
After I erased the messages, I decided I needed to talk with Johanna. She was my best friend and deserved to know that Evan had asked me to dinner. It was only fair, right? I called her, and breathed with relief when she didn’t answer. I hung up without leaving a message.
FIVE
Something loud and irritating was blasting through my dreams. My alarm clock? I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and glanced at the red lights of the digital readout beside me: 2:31 a.m. No, not my alarm clock, but someone’s car methodically honking, the sound that happens if you suddenly press the honk button on your car’s remote instead of Unlock Door. I knew that sound. I’d embarrassingly done exactly that in parking lots more times that I cared to admit. Whoever owned the car in the alley better hurry up and realize that their horn was honking and waking up every sleeping neighbor within a half-mile radius.
And then I sat upright and flicked on my bedside lamp as I came to realize that my car was the only car in the alley. Quickly I fumbled out of bed, entangling myself in the sheets, falling on the floor, then righting myself, locating the light switch and finding my way blearily into my kitchen and to my balcony doors. All the while the car was honking, honking, honking. Yes, my little Saturn was making all that racket.
I’d been told there are only three times when this happens: when you push the horn button, when someone is trying to get in your car, or when it’s a defect in the car itself. My ex-fiancé had had a car that kept doing this in rainy weather, and it had ended up being due to moisture between the car door and the frame. But his was an old car and mine was brand-new! I scrambled around my apartment looking for my car keys.
I finally found them in a dish on my kitchen counter and grabbed them. Did this mean I was going to have to go down the back stairs and outside? I looked out at the rainy skies and groaned at the thought. I would try something else.
I opened the French doors, stepped out onto the cold balcony and, leaning over as far as I could, I aimed my remote at the car and pressed the horn button. Mercifully, it stopped. It was only when I got back into bed that the shivering wouldn’t stop. A few moments later I got up and checked that the bolt was firmly across the French doors, even though I had just done this.
As I lay in bed, finally, with the light still on, I realized just how like my aunt I was becoming: single, alone, frightened. When I was a teenager I had vowed that I would never be like her. I remember coming upon her in the middle of the night drinking tea in the kitchen after a middle-of-the-night wrong number.
“Who could it be?” she’d asked. “Calling innocent people in the middle of the night. It has to be something, don’t you think? Some prowler. I’m going to call the police.”
I’d screamed at her, “It’s just a stupid wrong number! Don’t go postal!”
I slept fitfully for the rest of the night, waking every hour to glance at the digital readout: 3:32, 4:46, 6:02. Thankfully I didn’t dream about the mirrors. I couldn’t have. I didn’t sleep long enough.
Evan was in the coffee shop when I got there the following morning. He winked but I left before he had a chance to come over and talk to me.
Midway through the afternoon, Barbara came out to where I was arranging scrapbook supplies on a top shelf. I thought she was going to remind me for the umpteenth time about the supper meeting at her house in two days with Jared in attendance, but she said, “A box came. It’s not inventory. It’s personal from Portland. I opened it by mistake.”
I hurried to the back. The shoe box was from my aunt’s lawyer and contained a series of sealed envelopes. There was a letter on the top addressed to me:
Dear Marylee Simson,
We are moving from our office and I found this box amongst some papers. A long time ago your aunt, Rose Carlson, gave it to me for safekeeping. I have been remiss in not sending it to you sooner.
Regards, R. E. Hoffman, Attorney at Law
The four envelopes were labeled: First 6 Months, Months 6-12, First House, and Other Misc. Underneath the envelopes was what looked like an old ledger book, faded and worn. I opened to the first page. It looked like a store accounts book, of the kind that I might keep for Crafts and More if everything wasn’t all on computer now. I wiped some of the dried grunge from it with a paper towel. There was no name on the front, but I knew without even looking at it that it belonged to the craft store my aunt had worked at for all of my growing-up years. At some point it might be fun to compare prices and stock with my own store. I put it aside because I wanted to see what was in the envelopes. Eagerly I opened the First 6 Months one. It contained four photos. All were of my aunt and me when I was a small girl. In one of the pictures I was wearing a lavender coat, purple ribbons in my hair and black patent leather shoes, as if dressed for Sunday school. I remembered those shoes. I would have worn them all week if I could. Aunt Rose would make me change into sneakers for outdoor play while I fought and fought to wear what I called my “fancy shoes.”
The second picture was of me on Santa’s lap. I remembered how frightened I’d been of this big bearded man. The two others were of me and Aunt Rose beside a snowman. I quickly figured out that these photos were of the first six months we’d lived in Portland, Oregon.
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