He lifted his eyes to the clear sky, and as he waited for his breathing to slow, he spotted, almost too thin to see, a stream of cirrus clouds in the otherwise naked atmosphere, pulled by a wind too high to feel. He envisioned that invisible force caught in white sailcloth and walked quickly away from home, toward the wooded shoreline one mile west of town.
3
White Hill and Misquers, Michigan—March 1999
If there’s not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894), “Winter: My Secret”
At five years old, Lydia Milliken watched her mother leave the house with a strange man, never to return to or contact her family again. John Milliken raised his two daughters alone while he worked in town as a family law attorney. With an unusual level of freedom, Lydia was free to explore the streets, alleys, and corners of White Hill unsupervised, secretly looking for her mother in little fenced backyards, the checkout lines at stores, and the windows of strangers’ homes. Even now, decades later, White Hill was slightly haunted by elusive memories of the woman whose absence had had a far more powerful effect on Lydia than had her brief presence.
When Lydia discovered Mary Stone Walker’s poetry in the town library and realized that this legendary writer wrote about the town and lakeshore that Lydia knew so well, she felt a joy she’d never experienced before, newly identifying not only with the poet’s perceptions, but also with the power of language itself. And when she came to understand that Mary had been motherless, too, this fused a powerful psychological bond with the poet. Hours spent reading Mary Walker’s poetry in the window seat of her tiny bedroom were some of Lydia’s oldest, most beloved memories.
In Mary’s era, there had been fewer female poets who wrote openly about the pain of feeling unseen and unloved. Themes of nationalism, Christianity, romantic love, and death were common, but Mary wrote about everything. It seemed that no remembered moment, no internal experience was insignificant. As a young poet herself, Lydia had held Mary Stone Walker up as an idol, so her adult years of searching with Frank for the vanished woman and any unpublished words she might have left behind felt like an honorable quest.
On this Saturday so many years later, Lydia Milliken was Lydia Carroll, who had gone away at eighteen to Ann Arbor to study literature, then to Boston for an MFA program, finally returning to White Hill to write novels far less complex than the poetry she admired and expected to compose. But the novels supported her, and they supported Nicholas and Frank. Security seemed worth the compromise. Even if her own husband voiced no appreciation of it.
Lydia kicked at a bottle cap on the sidewalk and furrowed her brow. Frank’s opinions about her career hurt, she had to admit; but even more unsettling was the fact that she had reached a point sometime in this past year where she found her romance writing difficult and awkward. She had always been able to do what a professional does and write the novels that fed her family, regardless of her mood or conflicting aspirations. But in the last few months, she had struggled with even the simplest, most familiar writing tasks for her next novel, as if her mind were protesting the entire process.
Approaching Charlotte’s Book Web downtown, Lydia had a flash of the bike shop it had once been, with an aqua tandem bike hanging over the front door. Her older sister, Louise, had saved up allowance money and bought her first “big girl” bike there at ten years old, a bike that was passed down to Lydia and pedaled along this very sidewalk countless times. But today, books about gardening, birds, and outdoor sporting destinations in Michigan were arranged among gardening tools and pots of artificial flowers in the shop’s front window, and an electric camping lantern beamed its light out onto the chilly street.
Charlotte, the shop owner, stood at the counter with a pen held over a stack of papers, and as Lydia stepped into the shop, a wave of coffee and book-scented air flew through the door. Even a simply plotted, thoughtful novel about a bookstore, she thought, would bring such rewarding changes to her writing life.
Charlotte looked up. “Hey, my friend, how are you?” she asked with a wide smile made all the more charming by her slightly crossed eyes behind large, round glasses.
“Just fine, except for a case of writer’s block. Right now, I’m on my way up north to a folk arts festival, but first, I have a question for you.” Lydia sat down in one of the fat, upholstered armchairs at the center of the book-filled room that was one of her favorite places in the world. She and Charlotte had developed a close friendship over the last decade, conversing sometimes until midnight about books, writing, and the mysteries of Mary Stone Walker and White Hill. “So I got to meet Lincoln Babcock this morning. Know him?”
“Sure.” Charlotte put aside her paperwork and stepped over to a kitchenette to refill her coffee cup. “Coffee?”
“No thanks. What a strange character.”
“He’s one of those guys who’s into a lot of different things. Local politics, real estate, church leadership. But not dedicated to any one. You know? Kind of like my brother. I mean, Orin’s fascinating, but he’s all over the page.”
“At least Orin’s likable. Lincoln was not pleasant. I guess one of his hats is as caretaker for the Evans property, Mary Walker’s house.”
“Mmm.” Charlotte gazed at Lydia. “I remember that connection. I think he came on strong a few years ago about erasing Mary from history. Ha! As I recall, he even wrote an editorial or two.”
“Ah, yes. I’d forgotten about that.”
“I believe he said she’s not worthy of being admired because she destroyed an entire family. Something like that.”
“And he expressed that sentiment this morning. I don’t understand how that old drama can still matter to him so much. Or why it ever did.”
“I have a vague recollection that his grandfather became a financial partner of Bernard Evans’s just before Mary vanished and everything fell apart. Some connection like that. So crazy Bernard lost what would have been Lincoln’s inheritance maybe?”
“Huh. Maybe Lincoln’s father was the old guy I saw with him this morning,” Lydia said as the shop door opened.
Three middle-aged women strolled in and sat at one of the café tables, chatting. Charlotte leaned across the counter and took notes as the women listed the coffee drinks and pastries they wanted.
Lydia stood and walked to the front window, gazing at the line of shops across the street, the largest of which was the former general store, now an antique mall. At the other end of the block, the old Stevens Hotel was four stories tall, with windows aimed down Water Street toward Lake Michigan, a feature that had enticed an investment company to purchase it for renovation the year before. So far, the only visible step that had been taken on the project was the sign placed near the road. The small cityscape was so much like it had been in Mary’s time.
“Babcock’s fixation really is curious,” Charlotte said when Lydia walked back to join her at the food counter. “Did you set him straight about Mary?”
“I said that she might have been so troubled that she committed suicide. His response was that that would also be a betrayal of Bernard. Not really interested in her side of things.” They chuckled, then Lydia sighed and sank down into an armchair. “Well, I sure hope she wasn’t that miserable. It would be such a gift to find out that she didn’t take her own life or drown at twenty-five because of some stupid accident. Wouldn’t you love to discover that she escaped this small-town trap and wrote incognito somewhere?”
“Oh my, you know I would!”
In the sixty years since Mary Stone Walker’s disappearance, nine documents containing previously unpublished poetry and several paragraphs of prose had been found tucked skillfully into the structures of various objects Mary had had access to during her documented life
. Two desks, a lamp, a sewing box, and many other items, some of which Mary had mentioned specifically in journals. Then there were also works Mary referred to by title or content but which had never been found in her manuscripts, so they were assumed to be hidden somewhere.
Why she had tucked the poems away was uncertain, but the quirk had created a strange and captivating literary mystery that revived interest in the poet every time a new piece was found. For years, Frank and Lydia had worked to decipher clues about where Mary had been when she’d felt compelled to hide her writings. It had seemed possible, likely even, that the woman had fled White Hill in 1939 and continued writing. The fact that nothing found so far was dated after her disappearance only inspired Frank and Lydia to keep looking, but they had never found a document themselves. Not yet.
“Sometimes I picture The Lost Poems of Mary Stone Walker up there in the window,” Charlotte said as she pulled a box of pastries from a shelf behind her and added three éclairs and two lemon cupcakes to the covered glass plate on the counter. “A whole display of nothing else. It could be as exciting to serious readers as finding more work by any of the classic writers! Wasn’t it the New York Times that compared her to Sylvia Plath?” Charlotte gave Lydia a promising smile and raised both hands. “And there Frank will be, poised to publish that massive book of his. Your family can finally benefit from it. All the research. The endless patience.”
Lydia nodded. Should she update Charlotte on the sorry state of Frank’s endless tome? His original plan had been for his definitive account of Mary’s life, work, and mysterious fate to be written and released in three volumes, and just a few years out of graduate school, he had created an outline for forty-five chapters total. When Nicholas was in elementary school, Charlotte had hosted an event at which Frank read from the opening chapter to a respectably sized audience heavily populated by young female fans from his classes, and at that time, he had seven completed chapters. Ten years later, the manuscript had hardly increased in size: he hadn’t quite finished chapter eight.
If things continued to go on like they had for years, and neither Frank nor Lydia did anything to force change, a surge in Mary Walker’s popularity or a discovery of unknown facts or writings would bring no benefit for the Carroll family. Frank was light-years from having anything like a publishable manuscript, nor did he seem to think about that aspect of his obsession anymore. No, just like every other time it had occurred to Lydia to confide in someone about this issue, it was too embarrassing to bring up.
“By the way, a woman stopped in right before I left for Chicago last week,” Charlotte said. “And since you’re here…”
She grabbed something from under the cash register and came around to sit on the wide arm of Lydia’s chair. It was a large, old scrapbook that Charlotte opened to the first page, where E. Van Zant was written in script. She flipped past three or four pages of newspaper clippings.
“This is an odd collection of things,” Charlotte mused. “I’m not sure what to make of it. Except that I think the common thread may be some sort of personal White Hill networking effort. A lot of these articles are about the businesses located in this region in the early nineteen hundreds.”
“Who does it belong to? I mean, who is this? E. Van Zant?”
“Ethel Van Zant. She was an herbalist here in town for decades. Her daughter was a midwife, and then that woman’s daughter followed in the tradition with a little homeopathic medicine operation up north. In Misquers, I think. It was that homeopathic woman who brought this to me. Walked right in with this single item and no other interest, saying she wanted someone to have it that could understand its value and hang on to it. And I think that means you and Frank, even if she didn’t know it.”
Charlotte leaned close to the paper to peer at a square, yellowed clipping, running her forefinger slowly under the names and pointing to the smallest female figure in the middle of the group photograph.
“That’s Ethel, third one from the left,” she said. “This was a gathering of rural health practitioners showing support for the new hospital. And here’s why I thought you and Frank might be interested. In the article, down here, Ethel is quoted as saying she was the ‘primary apothecary for White Hill’s literati during Carson College’s golden era as one of the finest liberal arts colleges in the Midwest.’”
“Golden era? I haven’t heard that one before. Before it became a community college obviously.”
“Considering that this was 1951 and she is quite old in the picture, I can only assume that she meant Mary Walker’s era, 1920s, 1930s, when the Chicago poets passed through from time to time and Mary’s mentor, Griffin Clark, taught here. Not to mention Mary, of course.”
“You said that the granddaughter has a shop in Misquers?” Lydia felt a tingle of inspiration. “Still in business?”
“It is. I just recently noticed a newspaper ad for aromatherapy sessions there. It’s called Northern Herb Sense,” Charlotte said as she stepped around the counter to her computer to search for the shop’s address online. “Yes. The shop is at 540 Oak Street, Misquers. Oak Street intersects with the main drag.”
“You know…I think I’ll go,” Lydia said. “Why not? It’s on the way to the festival.”
“Looks like the place is open late for tea-leaf readings on Saturdays. Until nine. You’re in luck,” Charlotte said. “Here, take this.”
She handed Lydia the scrapbook.
“Are you sure?”
“Maybe it will spark a new line of research for Frank.”
Lydia nodded, standing up with a flash of agitation. She knew he’d never look at it. He hadn’t even been open to hearing about her conversation with Lincoln Babcock this morning.
“I won’t hold my breath. He prefers his own interpretations of Mary’s written words to the ‘wild, scattered notions’ of other people, as he’s fond of saying. Even if they might be the woman’s peers with some little, gritty piece of real life in their memories that could unlock the entire mystery of her disappearance,” Lydia said. “Don’t get me wrong. I am invested in this search, Charlotte, and I always have been. But I’m so tired of dead-ending in the same old fictions and irrelevant antiques. I just want to know the truth. You know what I mean? There are real things that happened, so there has to be a path of facts, and I’m pretty sure we’re not on it.”
“I understand,” Charlotte said. “I’ve sensed your need to change course for a good long while. It’s time.”
“There’s nothing I’d love more than to regain the old mind-sync that Frank and I used to have for this endeavor. We had so much fun, such stimulating talks about words, writing, love and death and fear… Everything seemed to come together in those conversations when we were analyzing her manuscripts for clues and visiting the places she lived, and for a while the examination of the antiques was a real thrill. I think even now we could get back our partnership by brainstorming how to conclude his book and sell it. Don’t you think that might be possible?”
She searched Charlotte’s eyes as if her friend might know the answer, then looked down at her hands, opening her purse for her keys. “Ah, well. If he isn’t willing to listen to my thoughts about any of this, I’m going to try to trust my own instincts. Bring these years and years of effort together into some kind of conclusion.”
“You are someone who should indeed trust their instincts,” Charlotte said with a gentle smile.
“Well, thank you. We’ll see.”
Lydia blew a kiss in Charlotte’s direction and left the shop to seek Granddaughter Van Zant.
• • •
“Northern Herb Sense” was painted in silver, cursive letters on the door of an old Victorian house at 540 Oak Street. Lydia knocked and then tried the knob. The door was unlocked, so she pushed it open slowly and found herself in a long, narrow room with shelves full of books, candles, crystals, bottles, and dozens of other odds and ends. The exotic
scent of essential oils filled the air. One milk-glass table lamp burned at the cash register, and another light glowed somewhere beyond curtains at the back of the shop.
“May I help you?”
Startled by the voice that emerged from a side room, Lydia looked up from a display case full of jewelry near the cash register. A middle-aged woman wearing a straight wool skirt and a tight, little pink cardigan gave her a brief smile, then raised her eyebrows.
“Are we expecting you?” she asked, confused. A square of brown shoulder-length hair framed a pale face of about fifty years.
“I heard that you’re open until nine for tea-leaf readings,” Lydia said, smiling.
“Oh, I’m afraid not.” The woman sounded genuinely apologetic. “In the off-season, it’s only by appointment. I guess the front door was unlocked because we’ve been going in and out all day. Spring-cleaning, you know. How did you hear about us?”
“Actually it was someone’s visit to White Hill that led to my visit today!” Lydia said brightly.
The woman stepped closer, looking puzzled. “A visit?”
“Someone from your shop visited Charlotte’s Book Web. I thought it must have been you.”
“Oh!” The woman’s expression darkened. “Yes.”
“Charlotte showed me the scrapbook you dropped off.” Lydia started to unzip her briefcase. “I brought it with me—”
“Excuse me, what is your name?” the woman interrupted, cool fingers on the back of Lydia’s hand to stop her from withdrawing the scrapbook. “All this chatter, and I don’t even know who you are.”
The Lake and the Lost Girl Page 4
