Frank’s eyes gleamed, and he smiled as he stared at the antique. Nicholas watched him think, run his hands through his hair, and finally approach the armoire and gently open one of the drawers. Frank was captivating to watch when his mind was engaged, but the intensity of his desires was unnerving, so when at last he turned to his son with a large smile, Nicholas was filled with a familiar relief. He smiled in return, breathed deeply, and asked, “What do you think, Dad?”
“I think… I really think this one might have been used by Mary on a daily basis for a while, Nicky. When I read the letter she wrote to Dr. Sherwood at Hope College, this was almost exactly the design I pictured in my mind when she was describing the cherrywood armoire at her aunt’s friend’s house where she was staying. And there’s every indication that she was writing a great deal of poetry that summer.”
When Nicholas looked back at the antique, standing like a significant historical figure there in their own shabby barn, and envisioned it without flaws—ensconced in some cozy Michigan bedroom, full of a poet’s clothes, her writing papers, pens, maybe purses and white gloves—he easily entered his father’s dream, as he had many times before. He asked, “So when are you going to start examining it?”
“Today, for sure. Later today, after I break the news to your mother that I had to get it!” He laughed, Nicholas laughed, and Frank put his arm around his son’s shoulders, gazing down at him. “Look at you! Almost as tall as I am all of a sudden! You going to have time to help me?”
“Yeah, of course! After we go to the folk arts festival with Mom.” Frank said nothing in response, although Nicholas waited, continuing to look at him. “Remember, Dad?”
“What?”
“The folk arts festival near Traverse City. Every March.”
“Traverse City… Christ, that’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive! Is that today?”
“Today and tomorrow. We’re staying at that cool old motel. The one with the round pool and the pinball machines, remember?”
“So it’s a whole weekend deal?” Frank’s face darkened. “That’s too much time. I can’t make that kind of commitment for a folk arts festival. Your mother shouldn’t make plans like that for me. Or for you either, for that matter. I don’t think I wanted my mother planning my weekends when I was your age.”
Frank winked at Nicholas, who glanced uneasily toward the road where his mother would appear soon. “I don’t mind festivals. They’re usually okay. She’s been talking about it all week.”
“Oh, she doesn’t need us to go,” Frank said lightly, heading toward the house. Nicholas followed. “Give her some time to herself, Nick. You can help me here. This ought to be fun.”
Nicholas said nothing. His eyes caught on a snow-streaked patch of mud in the perpetual shade on the north side of the house, not ten feet from sunlit jonquil shoots. After interminable Michigan winters, attending the show full of colorful artwork and live music had become a welcome family tradition.
“It will be great, Nicky. We can examine every possible hiding spot in that armoire. We’ll boil up some hot dogs for dinner and pop popcorn. Just the two of us.”
They headed toward the house. When his father glanced back for his son’s nod, Nicholas forced a small smile as his mind clouded with frustration. His parents would certainly end up in a fight about this, and then maybe no one would go out of town at all. He’d be stuck in the house with two irritable jerks. “I don’t know, Dad. It’s the weekend—a good time for a festival, it seems like. But also, I haven’t hung out with Joe or Kevin for, like, two weeks.”
“Well, see, there you go. They can help us! Call ’em up.”
“Examining old furniture isn’t exactly fun, you know.” His father raised his eyebrows. “For them, I mean.”
Moments after the back door bounced shut behind Nicholas and Frank, the front door opened and his mother called into the shadowed rooms, “Anybody home?”
“We’re in the kitchen. Want coffee?” Frank answered cheerfully as he measured out coffee grounds and water.
“Whew!” Lydia walked into the kitchen, set her purse, briefcase, and camera bag on the counter, then leaned against the sink to look out the window just as Nicholas had done an hour before. “No, thanks. It’s been a very long morning full of coffee already.”
“That so? Where you been?” Frank flicked the coffeemaker switch and focused on Lydia.
“Where have I been? You’re kidding! I went out on a little photo shoot, and then, remember, my agent’s passing through, so I met with her…which I’ve been talking about—”
“Right, right.”
“—for weeks.”
“So, any good news?”
“No. She said that the new Asquith editor sees my talents differently than I do.”
Frank gave a laugh. “They’re idiots. I keep telling you.”
“Yes, you certainly do. It doesn’t help. I wish you would stop. Their position doesn’t make sense. A year ago, we all agreed that this year would be a good time for me to branch out into mainstream fiction, and that’s part of the reason I put so much time into doing three romances last year instead of two. We agreed.”
“The publishing industry is in constant flux. Nothing’s predictable. You know that.” Frank gave her a few shakes of his head and a small smile.
“But I’ve been with Asquith House so long. If they won’t give me a chance with something else, who would? I’m not asking to forgo the romances entirely. I’ve got one in the works. This is highly unprofessional of them, in my opinion.”
Nicholas poured himself a glass of orange juice and sat down on one of the wooden chairs he had been using since he was a toddler. The set of six, with the table, had been a gift from his mother to herself and his dad when she sold the movie rights to her first romance novel, A Dream Remembered, when Nicholas was a baby. The chairs were finely crafted pale birch with inlaid mahogany designs, and many times his mother had proudly pointed out that they were nearly unique in the Carroll household: furniture purchased for the use of the family, with no possible link to the vanished poet.
Nicholas tipped his chair back to listen to his mother talk about her meeting at the Blue Sky Diner downtown with her agent, envisioning the scene that she recounted with her characteristic flair. He would sit right here and wait for the subject of the trip to come up—and then make sure she knew he wanted to go. Leaving town with her was the only way he was going to get out of another night examining furniture with his father, and he’d had enough of that this winter to last the rest of his life.
“Well.” Frank crossed his arms and leaned down onto the counter to focus intently on Lydia’s face with a professorial attitude. “You know you can’t depend on them or wait for them to come around. How many times have we talked about this over the years? For better or worse, you chose the genre novel path. You have the obstacle of being known almost exclusively for romance writing, right? That’s just how it is, but that isn’t all you are. Or, at least, not all you once were.”
“You’re right. It isn’t all I am. Though I don’t want to jinx the romance writing. We’ve all benefited from it.”
“But the price? You have the obstacle of an agent and editor who think of you as having certain limitations, so you have to either change their perspectives or get them out of your way and find others. You’re still partly in charge.”
“I know. That’s true.” Lydia’s energy rose with Frank’s attention. “Yes. I’m thinking all the time about how to change my course. And”—Lydia set her hands flat on the counter and paused—“I have a confession, Frank. Listen. Lately, I have been revisiting the idea of having our own press.”
Nicholas hadn’t heard this line of conversation before. His gaze shot to his father, who pulled back from the counter with an attitude Nicholas recognized but couldn’t put words to.
“That’d be cool,” Nicholas said with a sm
ile that he hoped would make his mother feel good.
“I know, wouldn’t it? Imagine the freedom!” his mother went on with an expansive gesture of her arms. “Not only to publish whatever we believe in, but also to push our standards through the roof!”
“Some truth to that.” Frank nodded as if deep in thought, then walked to the broom closet where he began hunting through a stack of shoe boxes.
“It’s just gotten so hard to listen to Barbara saying those dismissive things again and again about expanding my repertoire, which is the only vision for myself that I see a future in.”
She watched Frank. Nicholas wondered if there were any more doughnuts in the pantry, and if he could get up to look without his father asking him to do something for him.
“You know what I mean?” Lydia prompted. As if she’d read Nicholas’s mind, she fetched the box of doughnuts, took one out for herself, then placed it on the edge of the counter near him.
Frank kept rummaging and said nothing.
“What are you looking for, Frank?”
“This…thing,” he muttered. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No one involved wants to take even the slightest risk, but I don’t know why that surprises me. It’s a business that always proves itself to be more conservative than I wish it were.”
“Any publishing venture is risky,” Frank said, standing up and pointing the handle end of a small tack hammer toward her. He cocked one side of his mouth. “Don’t think your own wouldn’t be.”
“Risky, oh yes,” she said. “I’m ready. Because I’m risking literary death if I don’t take myself seriously.”
“Remember, romance novels are the only fiction you’ve written. For quite some time. Sounds like you may be taking yourself a bit too seriously.”
“Well, thanks a lot.” Lydia’s pale face closed up, her mouth twisting as if to stop her own words, and Nicholas felt a pang of the hurt he knew his father’s jabs like this caused. She aimed her gaze out the window. After a few seconds, she squinted and asked, “Did we leave the barn door open all night? Or have you already been doing something in there?”
Frank rose to his feet, red-faced from exertion, and took a tiny screwdriver to the loose handle of a jeweler’s magnifying glass. “Nick and I had to put the armoire in there.”
“What armoire?”
“I told you about it.” He glanced at her, then back down at the magnifying glass, his tone mildly annoyed.
“No, you didn’t. What armoire? Something new?”
Frank set the screwdriver and magnifying glass down on the counter with exaggerated patience. “Of course it’s not new. It’s probably over a hundred and twenty years old.”
“You know what I mean. Where did it come from?” She looked over to Nicholas, then back at Frank. Nicholas tipped his chair silently down to the floor and took his glasses off to wipe the lenses.
“Nancy’s place. She went to an estate sale last week.” Frank pocketed the glass and walked to the coffeemaker.
“Wait, wait, wait. Hold it. You bought another armoire. How much?” The fingers of Lydia’s right hand started to work over one another, as if trying to remove dried glue.
Frank exhaled loudly without looking at her as he poured a cup of coffee. “The cost… Is money really the point here?”
“Come off it, Frank. You just bought that other thing last weekend, that steamer trunk. Overpriced, as you finally admitted. And yes, someone has to think about our budget.”
“Here we go,” Frank mused, shaking his head slowly. “The work of finding an answer to one of the most important mysteries in women’s literature has ceased to mean enough to you to back me up while I take it on.”
Nicholas stood up slowly, planning to slip out of the room, but his father rapped him on the shoulder.
“Stay here, Son. I want your help in a minute.”
“I have homework I should do,” Nick said too quietly to be heard. He knew how this conversation was going to go; he didn’t need to listen to it again.
“Oh, Frank, come on,” Lydia said warily. “You know quite well that I, more than everyone else combined—except you, Nicholas—have been fully involved in this enterprise from the start. From before the start. You never would have paid any attention to Mary Stone Walker if not for my interest in her years before you’d even heard her name. The truth is, I’m the reason you’re here teaching about her!”
“Lydia, that’s just silly. You don’t think the quality of her poetry would have led me to her eventually? Not to mention her beauty, the intrigue of her disappearance?” He smirked, then continued as if talking to himself. “Definitely taking herself too seriously.”
“You know how it was,” Lydia said. “Our conversations literally gave birth to this quest of yours.”
“Lydia, my dear, you are overestimating your effect on my life,” Frank said casually, almost sweetly.
Nicholas looked down at his hands. There were dark scuffs on his palms, dirt from the armoire. He clenched them shut.
“I see,” Lydia said in a subdued tone after a moment. “Well. Speaking of the intrigue of Mary Walker…lately, I find myself thinking about things like your trunks, your armoires…you know, our search that never bears fruit. And then I cross paths with someone like Lincoln Babcock. Do you know him?”
“Maybe. What’s the relevance?”
“Well, I met him this morning.” Lydia seemed to be expecting a strong reaction from Frank, but he thumbed obliviously through the contents of his wallet. “If you know who he is, then please tell me why we haven’t interviewed him about Mary Walker and the Evans family. You’ve never even mentioned him to me.”
Frank shook his head as he shoved his wallet into a back pocket of his jeans and shifted his jaw.
“Lydia. You have not examined my research notes in quite some time, nor sat in conversation with me about my latest thoughts. So this is no longer our search, and we don’t interview people like Babcock because I have standards. You don’t know the reasons why I choose which leads to follow, although you knew at one time. It seems to me that Mary Walker issues are not part of your life any longer.”
“Are you kidding?” Lydia interjected, slapping her hand on the counter, but Frank ignored her.
“I am the one in possession of the big picture. I am the one continuing the work—not you. If I thought it would lead to any new and genuine knowledge, I would go to Babcock this afternoon.” Frank gave an expression of interested innocence.
“So as far as you’re concerned, I’m suddenly not part of this thing we’ve shared forever?” Lydia’s voice was shaking slightly, and when she glanced at Nicholas, he knew that she wished he wasn’t there to witness this scene. “You’re so mean sometimes.”
“Oh, Lydia, grow up.” Frank pretended to lighten his tone, nodding his head once toward the barn as he pulled his coat off its hook. “If the search still matters to you, then come take a look at my latest acquisition.”
“The search matters to me,” she said flatly. “That’s what I’m trying to say. It matters to me.” She stared past him out the window.
“So come on!”
“The search matters to me so much that I want to pursue some form of gathering information other than prying apart antiques.” She took a glass out of the cupboard, filled it with water, and held it without drinking. “The way this is going, it’s likely to continue for the rest of your life without results. But…maybe that’s how you like it.”
Again, Lydia watched Frank’s back, waiting for a response, but he silently bent down to tie the laces of his boots.
“Besides, we have made other plans, and we should get going.” Her face was still tense as she gave a noisy sigh, took a sip of water, then poured the rest out. “I just have to gather a few things. I hope you’re remembering the folk arts festival?”
Frank straigh
tened and forced an exasperated laugh.
“Look, I’ve asked you before not to arrange things for me. I don’t have time to spend two full days on nonsense. I’m going to run some errands in preparation for this evening, including getting the hot dogs you”—he pointed at Nicholas—“are going to cook for us.”
He opened the back door and tugged it shut behind him, walking across the grass toward the barn. Nicholas could hear him whistling.
“Wow. He’s a real downer sometimes,” Nicholas said, then injected some enthusiasm into his voice, hoping it would help switch his mother’s thoughts to the trip. “I’ll get my backpack so we can go. It’s ready and waiting.”
“Oh. No. That’s okay, Nicholas. You can stay here,” Lydia said distractedly. “I’ll go alone.”
“But I want to go, Mom. I’d rather go. Please.”
She took a deep breath and glanced at him before she started fussing with items in the kitchen sink. “You’re nice to say that…but let’s just make a different plan. I’ve got a lot to think about.”
“So my plans get trashed because of another stupid piece of furniture?” His voice shook with irritation. “It’s not fair! I wanted to go.”
“Well, I’m really sorry.” She looked into his eyes, and he could see that she was. “But the weather’s not great, and now Dad needs your help.”
“No he doesn’t! He really doesn’t. You know he only drags me into his stuff to keep him company. I just run around getting things for him,” Nicholas said, watching his mother dry her hands and pick up her briefcase. It was so obvious that she just wanted to avoid another confrontation with his father. Over and over, he was dumped off in the middle like some object without feelings.
“We’ll find something else to do soon,” she said unconvincingly.
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered angrily, and he put on his coat and went outside. “Same old, same old thing,” he said to himself as he walked away from the house. He ducked out of view of his father, who was holding a tape measure across the back of the armoire in the barn. It was too early to knock on a friend’s door, and lately, he had begun to feel even lonelier around all of them anyway. How could he talk to people about stuff like movies and sports and girls when it felt like his world was crumbling and he was never calm? No matter where he was or what he was doing, thoughts raced in his mind constantly, spinning into tight wires of dread and fear.
The Lake and the Lost Girl Page 3
