Hayden was right, I thought as I sat on the bed in our room the next morning. Sugar Hawley was crazy. And because of that, despite his confident assurances that he would get those paintings for me I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. I glanced around the room, stopping at the crack in the ceiling, as I listened to him talking on his cell in the bathroom.
“I think we’ve got a good shot at winning the motion,” he was telling another attorney from our office. “And that’s what I told Elizabeth. She understands, but they’ve got a new regime over there now and everything’s up for grabs.”
I poked my head into the bathroom and pointed to my watch. It was eleven fifteen. We were supposed to be at the Porters’ house at eleven thirty so I could show Hayden the painting and take some photos of it.
He put his hand over the phone and whispered, “You’d better go without me. Ashton Pharmaceuticals. Another mess.”
“Are you sure?” I whispered back, disappointed.
He nodded. “Take lots of pictures. The people from the Times might want to see them, too.”
The people from the Times. Oh, God, they were arriving tonight and had scheduled Hayden and me for an interview and photo session tomorrow morning. I picked up my camera and walked downstairs, trying to think of other things.
I sat in the car for a minute, staring at the dashboard. Then I began browsing through my music selections, looking for something to distract me. Finally, I chose Ella Fitzgerald singing “Skylark” and let her honey-layered notes drift out the window as I headed toward the Porters’ house. Gran loved Ella; I loved Ella. Her voice and the comforting sounds of the Nelson Riddle Orchestra were perfect medicine for my nerves.
I spent about a half hour at the Porters’, talking to Susan and her husband and then photographing Gran’s painting. It was just as I remembered—vibrant and almost magical, lovingly depicting Gran and Chet, the oaks and the barn. By the time I left I was in a much happier mood.
On my way back to the inn, I drove past Kenlyn Farm and, seeing the opening in the wall and the dirt road leading inside, found myself turning in. The sun flickered off my car as I kept my wheels in the flattened-brush path that Roy’s tires had made the day before. Parking near the wall, I began to walk up the slope where Roy had driven, my feet in the trail of the truck tires.
At the top, I put the camera’s viewfinder to my eye and slowly turned, the way my grandmother had taught me. From every vantage point something remarkable filled the screen—clusters of wild red columbine, fallen boulders forming geometric designs against the wall, crusty green lichen gnawing on rocks, a Baltimore oriole popping from a thicket of brush, and, at my feet, a grasshopper clinging to a stem of purple aster. I could spend a day here and barely scratch the surface.
The sun felt warm on my shoulders as I bent down to capture the blossoms of yellow star grass, the feathery purple petals of spotted knapweed, and the lacy wings of two yellow jackets as they alighted on tiny white blooms of Labrador tea. By the time I finished taking photos of a monarch butterfly resting on milkweed, I realized an hour had passed.
I began to walk back down the slope to the car, enjoying the conversation of birds, the aroma of lanky grass and wildflowers, the earthy scent of the ground under my feet. To my right I saw the grove of trees and the lone oak against whose trunk Roy had stood two days before.
That would make a nice photo, I thought—the single tree with its craggy bark and umbrellalike branches and the other trees clustered behind it, like children lagging behind a parent. I walked closer, placing the viewfinder to my eye, moving my head to the left, to the right, adjusting the aperture and zooming the lens in and out to compose the shots I liked the best.
You have to look at a thing from all angles before you can really see it, Gran said. I moved around, taking photos of the tree and the grove from different vantage points, until I saw something that made me stop.
In my viewfinder I had placed the lone oak tree on the left, with most of the grove behind it on the right. And in the far right corner I noticed something I hadn’t seen, couldn’t have seen, two days ago. Half buried in the wildflowers, I saw what looked like the remains of an old stone foundation. The position of the tree, the grove, and the foundation were lined up in exactly the same way the tree, the grove, and the barn were lined up in the painting in Susan Porter’s attic. I knew that was where the barn had once been, right there in front of me, where part of the foundation was still visible. The only things missing from the scene were Gran and Chet.
The tingle going up my spine worked its way into my arms as I edged closer. Sections of three crumbled walls emerged here and there from the carpet of wildflowers. The boulders peeking through the growth were gilded with large yellow and green patches of lichen, as though someone had splashed paint over them in a moment of creative frenzy.
I stood there, the field humming around me, and I thought about Gran and Chet Cummings. I could feel her spirit in the soil under my feet, in the sun-baked boulders that had once formed the base of the barn, in the stalks of wildflowers that brushed against my legs like memories calling out to me.
I stepped into the foyer of the Victory Inn, camera in hand, excited to tell Hayden about my discovery at Kenlyn Farm. A woman in ivory pants stood across the counter from Paula, her ash blond hair neatly styled in loose waves, a pair of jeweled sunglasses perched on top of her head. She had a small ostrich suitcase by her side.
I blinked in surprise. “Mom?”
My mother turned. “Darling!” She headed toward me, arms outstretched, gold bracelets jingling as she kissed me on both cheeks.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” I looked her up and down, not quite believing she was there.
She took a step back, scrutinizing me. “You’ve changed your hair. It’s so…different.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Really?” I laughed. “I probably just forgot to brush it.” All of a sudden I was eleven again. My fingers scurried through my scalp, trying to create a part. “So why are you here? What—”
My mother stared at me as though I told her I’d kidnapped her yoga trainer. “Sweetie, you’re getting married in three months. This isn’t the time to stop caring about your appearance.”
Paula cleared her throat and Mom and I turned. “So do you want to put this on a card?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” my mother said, opening her wallet.
Paula took the card, a virtually clear piece of plastic, and held it to the light. She narrowed her eyes. “Never seen one of these before.”
I turned to Paula. “They’re not very common,” I said, feeling the need to explain. “You don’t apply for it. Actually, you can’t,” I said. “The company chooses you.”
Paula drew her head back in surprise.
I pulled Mom aside. “Would you please tell me what you’re doing here?” I whispered. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll need a driver’s license, too,” Paula added.
My mother placed her license on the counter. Then she turned to me and crossed her arms. “Why am I here? Ellen, that ought to be obvious. You haven’t returned my calls for days.”
I tried to avoid her gaze. “I sent you some text messages.”
“I called you,” my mother said. “More than once. And I expected a call in return. You know, that old-fashioned custom where you actually hear the other person speak.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Things just got a little busy.” I tried to smile as she stared at me, doing her sixth-sense reconnaissance, attempting to figure out what wasn’t adding up.
“So where is my mother’s room?” I asked breezily as Paula took one last look at the transparent credit card before handing it back to Mom.
“I put your mother in room twelve,” Paula said. “Right across from you.”
“Lovely,” Mom said, eyeing me. “We have so much to catch up on.” She wasn’t smiling.
Paula’s eyebrows rose like a pair of trained dogs. “I guess so,” she muttered.
My mother took out a gold compact. “I’m going to my room to freshen up,” she said, looking in the mirror and fluffing the back of her hair. “Then you can take me out for a latte, which I desperately need, and you can tell me all about what’s really going on here.”
What’s really going on, I thought. That would take a lot more than a latte. “I’m going up, too,” I said. “I need to talk to Hayden. I’ll tell him you’re here.”
“Hayden?” My mother’s gaze turned from the mirror to me. “What a surprise. I didn’t know he was here.”
“He settled a case,” I said. “It’s a long story.”
“Wonderful,” my mother said. “Let’s go say hello.”
Paula handed my mother the receipt. “Actually, Mr. Craft’s not up there. He went out a little while ago with two other guests. A man and a woman. A looker, too,” she said, glancing at me.
“It’s Croft,” I said, correcting her.
A man and a woman. She had to be talking about the Times people. “Are they from New York?”
“Sure are,” Paula said, glancing at her guest register.
“Those are business associates,” I said. “From the New York Times.” A looker, indeed. I wondered what Paula’s imagination was churning up. She had too much free time on her hands.
Mom closed her compact and then leaned in and whispered, “Why is Hayden talking to someone from the Times?”
“That’s a long story, too.”
“Great. I’d love to hear it.” She pointed to her overnight bag. “Can someone please take that up to my room?” She glanced back at me. “And I wouldn’t mind a scone or a croissant or something like that. I’m famished.”
“I’ll take you to the Three Penny Diner.”
“A diner?”
“They have great apple cider doughnuts.”
She cocked her head. “Since when do you eat doughnuts?”
The diner was practically empty when we walked in. I led the way to a table by the window. “Isn’t this pretty? You can see the ocean.”
Mom pulled out one of the worn wooden chairs and sat down. She eyed the mini jukebox and green Formica table. “Interesting,” she said, taking in the vinyl phonograph albums on the walls and the black-and-white photos of Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Platters, and other 1950s bands. “I feel like I’ve gone back in time. Do you suppose that’s the intent?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Mom. I guess the owner just likes it this way.”
A waitress with thick gray hair, almost like animal fur, handed us menus and disappeared.
“No latte?” my mother asked as she scanned the choices. “And no croissants, either.”
As she studied the menu, I watched a cluster of children on the beach, playing with shovels and pails, and a group of teenagers congregating by the wall. I thought about Gran and wondered if she had run along that beach under the Maine sun as a child or sat under the moon on the seawall with Chet.
The waitress returned and Mom closed the menu. “I’ll have a cup of coffee and one of your blueberry muffins.” She sighed and looked at me. “Your grandmother was such a good cook. Her blueberry muffins were extraordinary.”
“Yes, they were,” I said, and I was back on Steiner Street again, Gran and I taking muffins from her tins and placing them on a wire rack to cool, the smell of baked sugar hanging in the oven-warmed air, the muffin tops covered with rivers of blue where the berries had melted from the heat.
I turned to the waitress. “I think I’ll have a muffin, too,” I said.
Mom clasped her hands and placed them on the table. “Ellen, since we’re talking about your grandmother, there’s something I wanted to tell you.”
I looked up.
“It has to do with the trust.”
The trust. Gran told me a long time ago that she’d set up a trust for me, but I didn’t know the details or whether it even still existed. “There is a trust?” I said.
“Yes, of course,” Mom said. “In fact, I met with Everett a couple of days ago.” Everett was Gran’s estate lawyer. My mother leaned across the table. “There’s a fair amount of money in that trust, Ellen.”
The waitress set down our coffee mugs. I caught the faint scent of pecans.
“It’ll be just a minute on those muffins,” she said. “They’re coming out of the oven now.”
I poured some milk into my coffee and began stirring it. “What do you mean?” I asked my mother.
Mom lowered her voice to a whisper. “Six million dollars. In the trust.”
I stopped stirring and stared. “What?”
She didn’t blink. “I’ve seen the investment statements.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, I’m not, Ellen.”
I couldn’t speak. Gran had left me six million dollars. Six million dollars. I didn’t know what to say. I made a good living, and so did Hayden. But a six-million-dollar trust…well, that was like a security blanket. A big security blanket.
I shook my head. “I don’t know what to say.” I pictured my grandmother in Everett’s office, sitting tall in one of his mahogany chairs, the sheaf of trust documents on the table in front of her. I could see her holding a fountain pen, her hand scurrying across the pages, leaving a trail of signatures in bright blue ink. “I wish she were here,” I said, a heavy feeling in my chest. “So I could thank her. She did so many things for me and she’s still doing them. I miss her.”
My mother reached across the table and took my hand. “I miss her, too.”
“I didn’t get to thank her for this.”
“Yes, you did,” my mother said. “You thanked her by how much you loved her.”
We sat in silence as the waitress placed our muffins in front of us. After a while, my mother began to cut her muffin into small pieces. Then she took a bite. “Mmm,” she said. “You know, this is actually quite good…although it’s not as good as your gran’s.”
“Here’s to Gran,” I said, raising my coffee cup. Mom raised hers and we tapped our mugs together. “Here’s to Gran,” she said.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” my mother said as we finished eating. “How did you end up in that strange little…what is it, a bed-and-breakfast? The room doesn’t even have a mini fridge.”
Next she’d be asking why there wasn’t a spa.
She inspected the nails of her right hand. “I wanted to get a manicure. And maybe grab a massage. I pulled a muscle in my leg playing tennis last weekend and it’s very painful.” She began rubbing her calf.
Oh, my God, she did want a spa. “I hate to tell you, but the spa is closed for renovations,” I said. “They’re going to reopen it when they reopen the fitness center…and the golf course.” I started to smile.
My mother smirked. “Okay, I get it. No spa.” She looked around the diner and then out the window. “This really is a small town, isn’t it?”
“It’s small,” I said, “but there are some nice things here. They have a—”
“I’m sure it’s all very sweet,” my mother said, leaning toward me, “but I’m dying to get you back home. We have so much to do before the wedding and so little time. I can’t imagine what’s kept you here.”
She opened her purse and removed a checklist. “Let’s see.” She ran her finger down the page. “We need to schedule the final fitting for your gown…and for the bridesmaids.” She paused. “And review the floral arrangements one more time.” She turned over the paper. “And, of course, get those invitations addressed.” She circled something with a pen and then put the list on the table. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. Beezy and Gary Bridges are definitely coming. They’re postponing their safari so they can be at the wedding.”
I struggled to remember who Beezy and Gary Bridges were as images of the wedding took shape in my mind. Saint Thomas Church, ten bridesmaids, ten groomsmen, three hundred guests, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health. I could feel my throat tighten. It was all so…final.
“That’s nice of them,” I said, trying to sound excited. And then, recalling who they were, I added, “I thought they were going to get a divorce.”
Mom twirled one of her bracelets around her wrist. “Yes,” she said cheerfully. “They were. But they decided to get a new house instead.”
I nodded, trying to understand that logic, as Mom placed her coffee cup on the saucer with a little clink.
“So tell me,” she said. “Why are you still here, and why didn’t you call me back? How could it take so long to deliver one letter? And why is Hayden here? What’s going on, Ellen?”
I wondered what to tell her and where to start. The painting in the attic? Lila Falk? Sugar? I wasn’t about to mention the dock. That would send her into a tailspin.
I told her about delivering the letter to Roy and discovering that Chet Cummings had passed away. Then I told her about all of the paintings and the places where I had found them, ending with the visit to Sugar Hawley.
“Did you know Gran was a painter?” I asked.
My mother drank her coffee. “I find that hard to believe, Ellen. I think someone else must have painted them. Your grandmother wasn’t artistic.”
I leaned across the table. “Mom, I’ve seen the paintings. Sailboat races, portraits, a blueberry farm that used to be owned by Chet Cummings’s family. She painted all of them. And if you don’t think she was artistic,” I said a little defiantly, “then you should have been there when she taught me about photography.”
My mother listened with halfhearted interest. “I think if she was that talented, I would have known.”
“I’ll take you to the Porters’ and to the historical society, and you can see the paintings for yourself,” I told her. “Then you’ll know.”
The waitress appeared with a pot of coffee. “Refill, ladies?”
“No, thank you,” Mom said.
“I’m fine,” I added.
The waitress glanced at me and then did a double take. She kept staring. Finally, she walked away, but a moment later she came back with something rolled up under her arm.
“Yep, I thought so,” she said, looking at me with her head cocked. “I thought it was you.” She nodded. “I was hoping you’d come in here so I could get your autograph.”
“My auto…” I tried to speak but my voice caught in my throat.
“Yeah, I saved this copy just in case.” She unrolled an issue of The Beacon Bugle and placed it on the table. There, on the front page, was the photo of Roy and me, ocean water up to my waist, white T-shirt plastered to my skin, my arms tight around Roy’s neck, my lips firmly planted on his.
I shrank back.
The waitress placed a pen in front of me. “You know, there’s not one copy of this issue around anywhere. It just sold right out. Isn’t that amazing?”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“Would you sign it for me?” she asked. “Could you put ‘To Dolores, with love from the Swimmer’?”
“What is this?” Mom asked, turning the newspaper toward her and putting on her reading glasses. She covered the side of her mouth and whispered, “And why does she want your autograph?”
“Maybe I’d better explain something,” I said. My mouth had gone dry. I could feel the bottom dropping out of my stomach.
“The Beacon Bugle?” My mother smoothed out the crease. Her eyes darted up and down over the page.
I held up my hand. “Mom, I really need to talk to you about this. Could we please go back to the—”
“Right there,” the waitress pointed to my picture. “Could you sign it right there, by the photo?”
My mother saw where the waitress was pointing. She began to read the caption. I wanted to grab the paper and run, but my feet wouldn’t move. Nothing would move. All I could do was sit there and feel the cold sweat breaking out on my back.
Mom pushed her reading glasses farther up the bridge of her nose as she looked at the photograph. There was a frightening second of silence and then a shriek. “Oh, my God!”
She brought the paper close to her eyes and then back to arm’s length, as if the proper distance might change what was printed or, better yet, make it disappear. “It’s you! Ellen, what are you doing in this newspaper? And who in God’s name is this man you’re kissing?”
“I told you I needed to explain.”
My mother’s eyes were wide with alarm and her face had lost all its color. I grabbed the pen and scrawled “To Dolores, with love from the Swimmer” next to the photo. “Take this out of here, please,” I said, handing the paper to the waitress. She scurried away, thanking me several times.
“I think I need another coffee,” I said.
“I think I need a Scotch.”
“You don’t drink Scotch, Mom.”
“This might be a good time to start.” She looked at me, steely gray lie-detector eyes sizing me up. “What’s going on? You were drowning? Who was that man?” With each question, her voice went up about four notes.
I raised a finger. “Just to clarify something—I don’t think I was really drowning. They got that wrong. I was just a little—”
“Is this why you didn’t call me? Because you’re having an affair with this man? Oh, my God.” She looked up toward the ceiling, rubbing her forehead.
“No, Mom. Listen. I’m not having an affair. I can explain. I fell through this dock and—”
“A dock?” She sat up straight.
Oh, God, why did I mention that? “Yes, but I was fine, really. It’s just that there was a rip current and it took me—”
“You got into a rip current? Ellen!”
Somehow the truth was coming out, whether I wanted it to or not. “Mom, I told you I was fine. The guy in the photo…he swam out and brought me in.”
“When did all this happen?”
“My first day here.”
She leaned across the table, lowered her voice, and demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Well, now I am worried.”
“I’m all right.”
“It doesn’t matter. You still should have told me.” My mother gave me an uncomfortably long look. “And what about the man? This hero, as they call him in the paper? What’s going on with him?”
“Nothing’s going on, Mom.” I waved her off.
“That photo didn’t look like nothing to me.”
“That just happened,” I said. “I think I was so glad to be back on the ground that…I don’t know.” I glanced out the window, to the place where the blue drift of the ocean met the sky, and I thought about Roy setting me down in that water, my feet against the grainy sand, and how I put my arms around his neck, my mouth on his, and how he tasted like salt and late afternoon sun. “It just happened…and then it was over.”
My mother raised her chin and peered at me through half-shut eyes. “You’re not giving me the whole story. There’s something more going on.”
“No, no. There isn’t. We’re just…we’re just friends.” I looked down and ran my finger around the rim of my coffee mug. “Well, I think he’d like to be more than friends, but he knows I’m engaged. Now he knows, anyway.”
My mother lifted an eyebrow. “Now he knows?”
“He didn’t know the night at the Antler. When I fainted and he caught me…” I stopped, realizing again I’d said too much.
My mother gasped. “You fainted? Ellen!”
I raised my hands. “I was fine, Mom. He caught me. It was lucky he was there. And then we…kind of danced, and, well, he’s a nice guy. He really is. There’s something charming about him.” I thought about the Antler and the two-step and how easily I floated across the floor in Roy’s arms.
“And that’s all?” my mother said. “That’s everything?”
I glanced toward the beach and saw a boy unfurling a kite. The blue plastic shape fluttered and flapped in the wind as he gradually let out the string. I could feel my mother’s gaze boring into me. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I do find him kind of attractive.” I clasped my hands under the table. “But I think it’s just because I’m getting married in three months, and it’s nice to know I can still get attention from men.”
My mother didn’t move a muscle. I wasn’t sure she believed me.
I looked away, toward the beach again. The boy’s kite rose into the air as he held the end of the string. My mother didn’t say a word. A wall of silence slipped in between us.
“Maybe that’s not quite true,” I finally said. “Maybe something else is going on. But I don’t know what it is. I’m not in love with him or anything…I love Hayden. But there’s something about Roy…and I can’t…”
My mother’s face had gone white. “Oh, dear God. Ellen, who is this man? Where is he from? Who are his family?”
“He’s from Beacon, Mom.”
“He’s from Beacon?”
“He’s Chet Cummings’s nephew.” I told her how I’d gone to Chet’s house several times, finally running into Roy and finding out that Chet had died and that Roy was his nephew.
“And what does this man do?” my mother asked.
“He’s a carpenter. He builds houses.”
She blinked. “A carpenter. With a tool belt and a pickup truck? That kind of thing?”
“That pretty much covers it.”
She looked away, as though she were staring at something far down the shoreline. Maybe it was the yellow dog racing into the water or the woman and the little girl at the ocean’s edge. Or maybe she wasn’t looking at anything.
Finally she got up from her chair and moved to the empty seat beside me. A patch of sunlight flickered against the Formica table. My mother put her hand on mine. Her eyes were soft, like blue sea glass. “Do you love Hayden?” she asked.
I nodded. “Of course I do.”
“And do you still want to marry him?”
“Yes, yes.”
My mother nodded. “Okay, sweetheart, I see what’s going on here, and it makes total sense.” She had that all-knowing-mother look, which made me feel like I was six years old again. “I can tell you that you’re having a perfectly normal reaction.” She pushed a lock of my hair over my shoulder and smiled. “Thank God, because now we can both breathe a sigh of relief.”
“What are you talking about? Normal reaction to what?”
She sat back in her chair. “Didn’t I ever tell you the story about Cici Baker?”
“Who?”
“Cici Baker. My old tennis partner. Don’t you remember her?”
“Oh, yes, I think so.”
“Well, about five years ago she found out she had cancer.” My mother squinted at me. “I’m sure I told you this.… Okay, anyway, she went to a doctor…oncologist in Manhattan…Sloan-Kettering. He absolutely saved her life, and after that she developed a mad crush on him.”
“On her oncologist?”
“Yes, of course. And he wasn’t at all attractive—short, stocky, and I think he had one of those hair weaves.” My mother grimaced. “But Cici didn’t see any of that. He saved her life. She worshipped him.”
“So what happened?” I asked. “Did they end up getting married?”
“Married? No! Turns out the man was gay.”
I crossed my arms. “Well, what’s your point?”
Mom put her hand on my shoulder. “Two months later she’d forgotten all about him. My point is that it’s normal to become infatuated—maybe even think you’ve fallen in love—with someone who saves your life. It doesn’t really mean anything.”
I watched the color return to my mother’s face as I reflected on the sequence of events from my fall through the dock to hitting the water to the moment Roy appeared to finally feeling the sand beneath my feet when he pulled me onto the beach and I gave him that…kiss. Was my attraction to Roy just based on what he’d done to help me that day? If Cici Baker thought she had fallen in love with her oncologist…I mean, the man had a hair weave.
My mother stared at me. “Ellen, you are not in love or interested or anything else with a carpenter from Beacon, Maine. Believe me, you’re not.” She smiled. “You’ve worked far too hard to get where you are. This is a momentary infatuation with a person who helped you out of harm’s way. Don’t give it any more stature than that.” She put her hand under my chin. “Everything is going to be fine. Trust me.”