In the end, she bought the khakis and oxfords, some soft cotton shirts and pants for Conn and, after much internal argument, a deep green cashmere sweater. She soothed her conscience with the fact that it had been marked down substantially in preparation for the summer season and tried not to think too much about a cashmere-covered Alasdair as she handed the sales clerk her credit card.
The elderly clerk swiped her card through the slot in the register and glanced at it as she handed it back to her. “Thank you, er—oh, Mrs. Durrell! How nice to meet you.”
Garland smiled, groaning inwardly. There wouldn’t be any escaping that Mariner article, would there? She put the shopping bags in her car and fished a different bag out of the back seat, then turned down the hill toward the Captain Hayes Gallery.
The pale sun warmed the salt-weathered, soft gray cedar shingles of the town’s buildings, making them shine like old silver. Here and there withered Christmas greenery, brown and shedding its needles, looped around the windows and doors of shops that had closed for the winter after New Year’s. But in other windows, signs proclaiming “winter clearance sale—must make room for summer merchandise—BIG savings!” blossomed, as sure an indicator of approaching spring on Cape Cod as robins and crocuses.
Just ahead, three slightly swaying figures stood on the sidewalk in front of the Captain’s Bridge, waiting for the pub part of it to begin serving at noon. Fishermen, most likely, come to drink—and in the men’s room, snort or inject—up their paychecks until their next trip out. It wasn’t surprising that one of the most popular bumper stickers in town read “Mattaquason…a Quaint Drinking Village with a Fishing Problem.” Garland hurried past them, crossed the street, and blew into the Captain Hayes Gallery on a gust of chilly wind.
“Where’s your winter clearance sale sign?” she asked as the chain of Indian brass bells on the door that announced her arrival shivered into silence.
Kathy looked up from the box of pottery she’d been unpacking. Bits of straw were scattered on the floor around her, making the large white room with pickled wood beams look like an upscale horse barn. “Right there by the door, but it’s written in Farsi,” she said, nodding at a small sign written in flowing, curly script and illuminated with geometric designs in gold, turquoise, and umber.
“Is that what it really says?” Garland put down her bag and studied it.
Kathy rested her elbows on the edge of the box. “No. It actually says, ‘This space intentionally left blank.’ I once had a translator overseas who shared my sense of humor. She had her uncle make it for me. So have you been hitting the boutiques, you crazy shopping diva?”
Garland hated shopping, and Kathy knew it. “Not particularly, unless the Five and Ten counts as a boutique,” she replied lightly. Hopefully no one would tell Kathy she’d been buying men’s and boys’ clothes at the Purser’s Shop. “Honestly, Kathy, I couldn’t so much as poke my head in a shop without someone saying, ‘Oh, you’re Mrs. Durrell.’ That darned article in the paper.”
Kathy chuckled. “Local girl makes good. What did you expect?”
“I’m not local. I’m a lowly summer resident.”
“Not any more you aren’t. People know you from the Historical Society and library. Being successful automatically makes you a local. So what’s in the bag, if you didn’t shop till you dropped?”
“Some new summer merchandise you aren’t having a sale to make room for.”
Kathy jumped up from the floor and dusted the bits of straw from her jeans and Peruvian sweater, eyeing Garland’s bag. “Ah! Some merchandise? You have more than one?”
Garland smiled and held the bag out to her, then sat down on one of the old church benches scattered around the gallery. Kathy made little sounds like a contented hen as she held up the now quilted and bound landscape quilt.
“I see you figured out how to use your quilt machine pretty quickly. Dammit, Garland, how did you manage to quilt wind into this thing?” Kathy made her stand holding up the quilt and backed several paces away. “Just amazing. Guess I can put the sign up, then.”
“What sign?” Garland peered around the edge of the quilt.
“This one. Much better than ‘winter clearance’, don’t you think?” Kathy went over to the old desk that served as her sales counter. She held up a small, discreetly lettered sign that read “Quilts by Garland Durrell.”
Garland stared at it until the letters started to blur and look like they spelled something else. That was her. Her name. Her quilts. People wanted to come see her quilts. The ones that she’d made. They weren’t sulking that her quilting took up too much time or clogged their sinuses with dust. They liked them.
Kathy was still talking. “—must say, it was nice of Helen Foster to agree to let the quilt hang here for a couple of weeks before she comes to get it. It’s hard to advertise if I’ve got nothing to advertise with.”
Garland came back to reality. “You mean you already sold it?”
“I told you that I had a standing order from Sonya Feinberg’s friend in New York. And from her friend what’s-her-name as well. Lord, I’ll have to call her and let her know she’s got a quilt if she wants it. If she wants it.” Kathy snorted. “Agreeing to pay a thousand dollars for a quilt she hadn’t even seen yet…I’ll guess she wants it. She knows someone else will be looking over her shoulder, ready to snap it up if she doesn’t.”
“A thousand dollars?” Garland let the quilt slide to the ground and groped for the bench.
“That was the price both of ‘em suggested. Who was I to disagree? Hey, careful with that thing. That’s the first payment on our condos in Maui.” Kathy snatched the quilt from her and folded it carefully. “You heard me, sweetie. You turned some fabric from your stash and a few hours’ work into two quilts and two grand. Now let’s have a look at the rest.” She stepped back, looking expectant.
Garland bent automatically and lifted the second quilt from the bag. Her brain was spinning, trying to take in Kathy’s words. Two thousand dollars? Kathy had sold two forty-by-forty wall quilts for two thousand dollars? “Are you sure about this?” she said from behind the second quilt. “Surely they must have meant a hundred dollars.”
Kathy didn’t answer.
“Kathy?”
“God damn it,” said Kathy’s voice, a moment later. She sounded distinctly shaky. “I should have asked for five thousand dollars each.”
Garland lowered the quilt and looked down at it. She’d used the same idea and scene as the first quilt, but this time the weather was different. Instead of sparkling, dancing waves, fog drifted across the landscape in moist, gray billows. The islands in the background loomed ominously out of the mist. “I like the silver thread I used to quilt some of it with,” she said. “It adds a nice touch.”
“Nice touch,” Kathy echoed weakly. “It’s a damned good thing this isn’t a bed quilt, because whoever slept under it would wake up sopping wet and with galloping rheumatism. My God, Garland, don’t ever make a quilt of hell or we’ll have the pope himself knocking on our door wanting to do an exorcism.”
Garland laughed. “Oh, come on. It’s just fabric. Aren’t you getting a little carried away?”
“Me and the entire Mattaquason Women’s Club and three extremely knowledgeable New York art collectors? I know they’re just fabric, Garland. It’s how you choose the colors of the fabric and put them together and—I don’t know. They’re something else too. They’re like a window into the essence of what they depict.” She stepped forward and touched the surface of the quilt, then rubbed her fingers together. “I could almost swear it was wet.”
“Then you may want scuba gear for this one.” Garland put the fog quilt down and bent to the bag again.
“Another? Busy little bee, aren’t you?” Kathy’s voice was light, but her expression was avid as Garland rose and unfolded the last quilt.
“And?” she asked, holding up Conn’s fish quilt.
This time, Kathy laughed out loud. “Well, that does
it. You’ve just gone and guaranteed your popularity in this town.”
Garland smiled to herself above the quilt. “I did it mostly for fun.”
Kathy shook her head. “Watch this.” She took the quilt, went to the window by the door, and pinned it to the display board there, right over a selection of Indonesian carved teak plaques. Then she went out the door, leaving it open.
“Hey, you!” Garland heard her call to the clump of men still standing in front of the Captain’s Bridge. “Come tell me if this is straight.”
Garland thought about stepping out and murmuring to Kathy that from the look of them, they wouldn’t be able to tell vertical from diagonal. But the men had already shuffled across the street and were peering obediently in the window.
“Mother o’ God,” one of them muttered. “Will you look at that.”
“Wouldn’t mind seein’ the nets look like that, next trip out,” marveled another, rubbing his unshaven chin.
“Is it…does it smell?” asked a third man, rather the worse for drink than the others. He reached under his orange watch cap, scratched, and blinked owlishly at the quilt.
“Probably better than you do!” crowed another. His companions laughed and jostled him, but kept glancing back at the quilt as if they too would have liked to ask the same question.
“Do you think maybe we could borrow that thing when we go out tomorrow?” said the stubble-chinned man to Kathy when the laughter had died away. “It…well, it looks like it would bring the fish into the nets. I could use a lucky trip just now.”
“Ain’t there someone else you should be askin’ about that?” said the orange-capped man with a wink.
An uncomfortable silence met this remark. “You shut your mouth, Joe, and don’t be talking about things you shouldn’t,” the first man who’d spoken finally said. “Is this one of those quilt things my wife was talking about, Miz Hayes? Guess I can see what had her all excited.”
“Oh.” The man who’d asked to borrow it looked crestfallen. “I suppose you ain’t lendin’ it out. But will you leave it up so we can come and look at it, sometimes?”
Kathy’s voice was grave, but Garland could hear the laughter behind it. “I’ll be happy to, gentlemen. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” She came back into the shop, grinning from ear to ear.
“That’s probably the first time most of those men have so much as looked in my window. Now they’ll probably be here every day,” she said. The little llamas on her sweater looked as if they were dancing as she laughed.
“Why aren’t they out fishing?” Garland watched as another pair of flannel-shirted men joined the group at the window, their eyes wide.
“Storm last night, remember? Too rough out there till the waves subside. Come on, help me move some things so I can hang the other quilts and clean up this dump. Things are going to get busy once word gets out.”
“Speaking of the storm, did you hear about those people whose house fell in the water?” Garland followed Kathy and held a small ladder steady while she climbed it, then accepted the baskets Kathy took off the wall and handed down to her. “What an awful thing to have happened. That poor woman.”
Kathy dropped a basket and cursed under her breath. Garland picked it up and set it with the others. “This is getting kind of spooky, don’t you think? First Alasdair and Conn wash up on my beach, then that guy who’d been clamming, and now this, all in the space of a few weeks—”
“Forget about it.” Kathy’s voice was tight and low.
Garland looked up at her in surprise. “What?”
“I said, forget about it. Don’t talk about it. Don’t even think about it.” Kathy climbed down from the stepladder. The llamas on her sweater were no longer dancing.
“But why—”
“Look. Most of the town makes its living through the sea, one way or another, or is closely related to someone who does. They’re a superstitious bunch. They don’t like to talk about things like that. You’ll make enemies if you bring it up, even in passing.”
“Then why did the woman at the library—Mrs. Shirley—”
“She’s only been here a couple years, since they retired down here. She doesn’t know any better.” Kathy hesitated. “Especially don’t talk about your—your former houseguests.”
Garland thought about the bags of clothes in her car and bit back the rest of the questions she had. “All right,” was all she said.
Kathy’s relief was apparent. “Good. So let’s get these babies up on the wall.”
* * *
Alasdair stood by the window of his room, staring out at the sky and whitecap-edged water spread before him. There had been a storm last night and he had lain in bed listening to it, sensing the cries and shouts of Mahtahdou’s creatures that blended with the wind. It had sounded like the night he and Conn…but no. He was in Garland’s house now. As long as they were here within her walls they were safe. Thank Lir she hadn’t been out in that storm last night, dining with the healer.
But maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Not even his grandmother had possessed stronger magic. Some magicians used magical wands or rings. His grandmother had knotted a circle of beach grass that had kept Mahtahdou safely enchained for a century. Garland took thread and cloth and turned them into objects of power.
He and Conn had been beyond fortunate to land on her beach. When they were healed they could slip out of Garland’s house and be back in their world in seconds. He would find his scattered people in their hiding places and resume their fight. There were only three problems: Garland, Conn, and himself.
Mahtahdou had left him for dead but kept his sealskin, no doubt as a symbol of victory over the selkies. Without his skin, how could he return to his people and live a selkie’s life? Without it he was only half a selkie—and only half a lord. Would his people even want him back, lacking as he was?
Then there was Conn. He looked behind him at the child, wrapped as always in his purple shirt, curled in a chair and absorbed in one of the books with colored pictures that Garland had given him. She and his son had formed some mysterious bond that he couldn’t fully understand. What would happen if he took Conn back to the selkie world? With Garland he did things he’d rarely done before—smiling and laughing and…and being a child. Mahtahdou had not only taken Conn’s birthright—he had also stolen his childhood.
He hugged Garland’s robe closer to him. It made him feel less naked, less incomplete. He could feel it—her power, not as strong as when he touched her but there nonetheless, like a cloak. Like…his breath caught. Like a new skin, to shield him in place of his lost one. Garland possessed a power that defied description. Was there some way he could convince her to use it to help him defeat Mahtahdou and free the selkies? Would she believe that Mahtahdou existed if he told her the truth? And even if she believed him, how could she help? How could they harness the power of her quilts?
He gazed out at the long slender island that men called Monomoyick and shifted his weight uncomfortably. His body ached, but not because of his healing wounds. He ached to feel Garland again as he had the other night, all her softness and her warmth under his hands and pressed so lusciously against him. But he never would again—not if he could help it. He must not—must not—let this unexpected desire for her get the better of him. How could he betray the memory of his dead Finna?
Surely when he was stronger, Conn would be able to let go of Garland. And by then he himself would have figured out how to use her power. Then, when Mahtahdou was defeated and he was back in his rightful place, Conn would again be the happy little boy he should be. And he could again take lovers, selkie females who would his ease body’s needs. But never love. Not again. And never the love of a human—
Downstairs, a door closed. A few seconds later Garland practically danced into the room, her eyes shining, and dropped several large paper containers on the floor near him. Conn set his book carefully down, then held his arms out to her.
“Kathy loved the quilts! In fact, she�
��d already sold two of them sight unseen! A thousand dollars each!” she announced.
Alasdair felt suddenly ill. “Sold them?” he asked. “Did she have to?”
“Yes, she did. Hello, sweetheart. Do you like that book?” She sat on the edge of Conn’s bed and gathered him onto her lap. He wiggled into his favorite position, with his head tucked against her throat. Alasdair had begun to envy him being able to do that.
“You don’t understand,” she continued. “I’ve never really earned any money on my own since college. My husband wouldn’t let me. And he didn’t like my quilting, either. Now that he’s gone I can quilt, and it seems like I’ll be able to quilt and make money at the same time. It means…it means—”
He held out a hand to her. “I’m sorry, Garland. I didn’t understand. With your husband dead, you must find a way to support yourself.”
She laughed a bitter-sounding laugh. “Oh, he’s not dead.”
Not dead? “But you said he was gone.”
“We got a divorce. He left me for another—well, I’ll be honest—a younger woman.”
“He left you?” He stared at her clear sea-colored eyes and smooth brow and generous mouth that tilted up at the corners and sturdy, curvaceous body. How could any man have left Garland?
Garland’s laugh this time was much less bitter. “Thank you. That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s said to me since Rob…well, since the day I found you, anyway.” She smiled. “Now I’ll go unpack the groceries, and then let’s try on the clothes I bought you. You too, pumpkin,” she said, bouncing Conn on her knee then setting him back on the bed and rising. “I want to get busy on another quilt before I leave for dinner.”
“Are you going out again with the healer?” Alasdair hadn’t been able to call him “Rob” the way Garland encouraged him to. He knew that the healer was in love with Garland and didn’t like his continued presence in Garland’s house.
Skin Deep Page 11
