“Not me. Musta been Ollie.”
They both looked back toward the chair.
“Don’t look at me,” Oliver grunted, and gestured for Zee to resume his work.
Chelsea took a minute to look around. The barber shop was clean and bright. It smelled of shave cream and coffee, a not unpleasant combination. “This is a nice meeting place. I can understand why you come here every morning.”
“Fact is,” George said, “we come here for privacy. Don’t get much of that later in the day. We’re busy men.”
Busy men indeed. She smiled. “Then I won’t take much of your time. There’s something I’ve been wanting to know, and since I don’t seem to be getting answers on my own, I thought perhaps you gentlemen might be able to help me. You’re the town fathers. If anyone knows, you should.”
“Knows what?” Emery asked.
“Who my parents are. You all know I was born here. I turned thirty-eight last Tuesday.”
George gave her a once-over. “Didn’t think you were so old.”
“Lord sakes,” Emery muttered before saying to Chelsea, “So?”
“So thirty-eight years ago, someone in this town had a baby and gave it up for adoption. The town’s not so big that word wouldn’t get around. Someone knows something and isn’t talking. As I figure it, when people are afraid to talk it means that someone important is involved.”
Emery shook out a handkerchief and took off his glasses.
George slid his hands under his suspenders.
Chelsea looked from one face to the next. She couldn’t imagine that Emery was her father. Town Meeting moderator, postmaster, proprietor of the general store—he was a pompous and shallow man. He was also the father of Matthew and Monti, a double black mark against him.
She couldn’t imagine George as her father, either. True, he was a businessman and not a bad one at that, but he had a mean streak. And he was a lecher.
Of the three, Oliver was the least offensive, which wasn’t saying much. He was ill-tempered and stubborn. He had a feel for granite, but none for business. He was narrow-minded when it came to women, and unfeeling when it came to Donna, and what he’d done to Hunter was indefensible. Then again, he had sent Hunter to college. He had bought him a house. He had given him a comfortable salary and seen that his material needs were met. And if the issue was half siblings, Chelsea would choose Hunter and Donna any day.
“Okay,” she said to the three, “let’s try this. Hunter Love was born on the same day as me. Same day, same town, same year. From what I understand, his mother’s pregnancy created a stir. Didn’t my mother’s?”
Emery polished his glasses.
George patted his stomach in time with an imaginary tune.
Zee scraped the stubble from Oliver’s jaw.
“If another woman was also pregnant, wouldn’t people have noticed?” Chelsea prodded. “Eight hundred in population at that time, and no one noticed that two women were pregnant, out of wedlock, at the very same time?” The out-of-wedlock part had been a recent conclusion. If everything had been on the up and up and her parents had been married, her birth wouldn’t be such a closely guarded secret.
Emery slipped his spectacles onto his nose.
George rocked back on his heels.
Oliver remained silent.
“Two odd situations,” Chelsea tried a final time, “one baby whisked away hours after a birth that no one, no one, can remember, the other kept hidden away for five years before anyone even knew it existed. People thought Katie Love was giving her baby up for adoption, but she tricked everyone. Was there baby swapping here? Why won’t anyone talk about it?”
Silence.
Actually, she hadn’t expected anything else. Emery, Oliver, and George were a tight threesome, reinforcing one another through thick and thin. She hadn’t been so naive as to think that confronting them personally would make a difference. She had intruded on their sacred morning ritual for the sole purpose of making a statement.
With care, she unfastened the front of her large parka.
“Lord sakes, she’s got the baby here,” Emery called.
“Modern women,” Oliver grunted from the barber’s chair.
Abby, who was strapped into a snug-fitting sling against Chelsea’s front, slept on. Chelsea proceeded to unfasten the top two buttons of her blouse.
George’s eyes widened.
“What’s she doin’?” Emery asked.
“Don’t know,” George said, “but whatever it is is a far sight more interesting than what she was sayin’ before.”
Chelsea removed the silver key, newly polished and suspended from a chain as delicate as the frayed red ribbon had been. Holding the key prominently, she approached the men.
“Has either of you ever seen this before?”
“Not me,” Emery said.
“Me neither,” George said.
She went to the barber’s chair. “Oliver?”
Oliver slitted open an annoyed eye. “What is it now?”
“Have you ever seen this key before?”
“ ‘Course I have. Nolan’s been showing pictures of it round town for weeks.”
“The key itself. Have you ever seen it before?”
“No,” he said, and closed his eyes.
“Zee?” she prompted.
Zee, who was taking care with the straight blade on Oliver’s throat, shook his head.
She tucked the key back inside her blouse, buttoned the blouse, and had started to refasten her jacket when the wall clock clicked. As she watched, two cymbalists emerged from tiny houses on either side, clapped their cymbals four times, and returned to their houses.
“That’s wonderful,” she told Zee.
“The children like to wind it,” Zee said in a heavily accented voice.
She approached the clock, which hung at eye level, and looked for a key. She felt Emery and George watching, guessed that Oliver was, too. When no key sat in clear sight, she ran her hand over the top, then the bottom, of the clock. She hit pay dirt when her fingers moved behind one of the cymbalists’ houses.
After removing the key from its hook, she held it in the palm of her hand. Its bow was a pair of cymbals clamped together, its blade as devoid of serrations as that of her own key. Her key was silver, this one brass, but there was no mistaking that both had been crafted, if not by the same artist, of the same school.
Zee had seen her key before. Whether or not the other men had, he was taking his lead from them. Further questioning at this time was pointless. It was enough that he knew that she knew.
With reverence, almost as though by winding Zee’s clock she was putting her own key to use, she slipped the smooth blade into the hole on the side of the clock. She had to turn it before it fit in all the way, but then it was easy. She pushed the bow around once, twice, a third time. She removed the key, spent another minute in admiration of the craftsmanship that had made it, then carefully slipped it back onto its hook behind the cymbalist’s house.
She went to the door. With her hand on the doorknob, she looked back. “Next time I’ll bring doughnuts. So long.”
JUDD AND CHELSEA TALKED THROUGH THE POSSIBILITIES, BUT it was hard to concentrate for long on who Chelsea’s parents might be when their time was filled to brimming with work, the baby, and each other.
It struck Judd that he was happier than he had ever been. The pain of Leo’s death was fading, leaving memories of Leo in his prime, and filling the space that Leo had taken for so many years were Chelsea and the baby.
Judd adored the baby. Having children had always been a vague goal of his, but he hadn’t anticipated the actual pleasure of it. At first he attributed it to his having helped bring Abby into the world, but as the weeks passed he changed his mind. Caring for a baby was hard work. If his devotion was related solely to one snowy night’s adventure, it would have been long since exhausted, but the reverse was true. The bigger Abby grew, the more he enjoyed her. She was a beautiful child with delicate
features and auburn fuzz that was fast turning to silk. From the start she’d been a good sleeper. From the start she’d had a sweet temperament. Now she recognized him. She smiled when he came to her crib—not at all the gassy, Oliver-type smile that she sometimes gave, but a real, honest-to-goodness, sweet, gummy smile. He knew how to quiet her when she was upset, knew how to play with her and make her laugh. She was holding her head well and looking around at will. She looked at him second to Chelsea, even when there were other people in sight. He loved that. It made him feel as though he belonged.
Chelsea made him feel that way, too. She loved him. It was obvious in everything she did, and he loved her right back, more than he had ever loved another woman. A here-and-now sentiment, she had called it. Increasingly he wanted it to be more, but therein lay the dilemma. At the end of the year there would be changes. He didn’t know where those changes would lead, whether he and Chelsea would be together or separate and whether, if the latter were true, their love could survive.
The irony of it was that now that he was finally free to leave, he was enjoying his work at the granite company more than he ever had. What with the business Chelsea brought in, there were constant challenges. There were detailed contracts to negotiate, more materials to order, more manpower to balance, delivery schedules to set, and public relations to do. He was increasingly spending his time in the office, which suited him just fine, since Chelsea and Abby were directly overhead. Hunter was the one shifting from site to site now, overseeing things just as Judd always had.
Hunter was also the one who drove Oliver around during the day.
“You gotta be kidding,” Hunter said when Judd first suggested it.
“It makes sense. I’m in town. You’re the one with Oliver when he wants to go places. For me to come all the way out and pick him up when you can do it in half the time is crazy.”
“He won’t want me.”
“He won’t have any choice.”
The alliance wasn’t an easy one. Stories came back to Judd about arguments the two men had, some so petty they were amusing. Judd figured that simply to keep from killing each other, they would eventually reach a truce.
What he was hoping for was the development of a little mutual respect. Oliver knew his granite; Hunter knew his men. Each had something to offer the other, with a little bending. Unfortunately, bending didn’t come easily to either one.
Of the two, Hunter had the legitimate gripe. He was convinced that Oliver was his father and was bothered that the man wouldn’t admit it. Lately it bothered him even more, if the stories coming back from Crocker’s were true.
Once upon a time Judd would have been at Crocker’s himself, listening to Hunter’s slurred threats and accusations. Since he’d been with Chelsea, he rarely made it there more than once or twice a week, and then only to catch up with friends and keep tabs on his team.
Crocker knew where to reach him, though, and reach him he did that night in mid-April. Judd had just brought the baby to Chelsea for the last feeding of the night, the most quiet and intimate one, the one he liked best, when the phone rang. Twenty minutes later he found himself sliding into a booth across from Hunter.
“I hear there was a little trouble.” There had been more than a little, if the splintered glass being swept up by Crocker’s broom meant anything.
Hunter, who had been staring fixedly at the beer stein between his hands, raised nothing but his eyes. They were glazed. “Not my fault,” he said, and lowered his eyes again.
Judd gestured for a beer. “Whose fault?”
“Flickett’s.”
According to Crocker, Ned Flickett had gone home with a broken nose, Jasper Campbell with a cracked rib, Johnny Jones with a fat lip. Hunter had a bruise on his cheekbone, but no more.
“Sonofabitch,” Hunter muttered. “Said I kiss up to th’old man.” He snorted. “Fuck him.”
Judd sat back in the booth. Ned Flickett must have had plenty to drink to say that. A sober man would know better.
“Like I’d kiss up,” Hunter went on in the same private muttering that always accompanied his binges. Once the underlying anger was released through fists or hurled furniture, he was a harmless drunk. “Don’t need to kiss up. Job’s my birth-r-r-right.”
Judd nodded his thanks when Crocker delivered his beer, and took an easy drink.
“Not’at he’d ever say it. Bastard keeps his ol’ eye on me. Juss waitin’ for me to trip up. Gotta be better’n anyone else at all the stink’n quarries combined.” He brooded over that for a minute. “Gonna blow up the place someday. Gonna blow up all of ’em.”
Judd had heard that before. It was one of Hunter’s favorite threats.
“I could do it,” Hunter muttered. “Got the stuff. Know jus’ where to set it. What’d th’ole man say to that? Huh?” One eye drifted shut, then came open again. “Prob’ly say the same thing he alw’ys does.” His voice rose in a mocking rendition of the refrain that even Judd knew by heart. “You’re no good, Hun’er Love. Got no brains at all. Don’t know why I even bother’a keep y’around.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and leaned toward Judd. “He keeps me around ’cause of my mom. Set ‘er up in a shack, gave her music, an’ left ‘er ‘lone.”
Judd knew about Hunter’s love of music. He knew where it had come from. As he watched, though, he felt a twinge of unease when he saw what looked liked tears. He’d seen many a man crying drunk, but never Hunter.
“She lost ‘er. Broke her heart, losin’ ‘er did.”
Judd frowned. “Lost who?”
Hunter sat back. “She’d cry ’bout it at night, an’ when I was bad. Wanted to trade us, only it was-s-s too late.”
Judd was thinking about Chelsea’s theory, the one about Katie making a deal with another woman in town to give that woman’s child up for adoption so that Katie could keep her own. At the time Judd had thought it was off the wall. Now he wondered.
“Wanted to trade who?” he asked, but Hunter was in a world of his own.
“Sh’used to cry ’bout it when I had a birthday. She’d remember her most then. Two. Two. Alw’ys two candles. An’ I’d have to blow’m out. I didn’t want to. I hated ‘er. But I did it, ’cause if I didn’t I’d go in the hole.”
He raised his eyes to Judd. “I ever tell you ’bout the hole?”
Judd felt a chill. “You told me.”
“Not ’bout the hole.”
“You told me.”
“Wors’n a closet. Dark an’ long an’ nothin’ but dirt. Musta hid hundreds a run’ways down there. I alw’ys thought there’d be bones, only I never found any.” He made a sputtering sound. “Couldn’t find any ’cause I couldn’t see nothin’ in the dark. Ve-r-r-ry dark. An’ long. Very, ver-r-ry long.”
He studied his beer. Judd knew he would take no more than another swallow or two before he nodded off. Then it would be up to Judd to get him home.
Hunter looked at him. “You ever wanted a sister?”
Judd shrugged. “Never thought about it much.”
“She’d be a good sister.”
“Who?”
“Chels-sea.”
Judd chuckled. The last thing he wanted Chelsea to be was his sister.
Hunter wagged a finger. “Dirty thoughts. Shame on you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s that time of night.”
“The baby looks jus’ like her.”
Judd could see resemblances—the coloring, the fair skin, the wide-set eyes—but more and more he saw Abby in Abby, no one else. At three months she was developing her own little personality. Even Chelsea, who had a thing with resemblances because she had grown up without, agreed.
Hunter pointed to his chin. His finger landed twice, once on his cheek, once on his jaw, before it hit its mark. “Here. She looks jus’ like her here.”
“Her chin?” That was the last place Judd would have said.
Hunter nodded. His eyes drifted shut, then opened again, but barely. Sounding groggy, he said, �
�I got pi’tures.”
Judd took a final swallow of his beer and set it aside. He pushed himself from the booth and reached for Hunter’s arm. “I’ll bet you do,” he said. He tugged just enough to get Hunter moving and held on just enough to keep him walking.
“You think I’m s-s-soused,” Hunter said.
“It’s occurred to me.”
“I’ll show you pi’tures,” he promised, but it was a promise destined to be broken, because by the time they reached his house, he was sleeping, and by the time he woke up in the morning, the events of the night before had been left behind in a blind beer blur.
MAY ARRIVED, AND THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE AIR ALONG with the scent of flowers on the green. Since nearly everyone in town was touched by Plum Granite, nearly everyone in town knew that in one more month the fate of the company would be decided. Nearly everyone knew about the contracts that had come in. Nearly everyone knew that another dozen more men had been added to the payroll. The cutting and polishing shed was operational round the clock now. Life was so busy at the quarries that the granite dust never quite seemed to settle.
It was Chelsea versus the natives in what had evolved into a friendly rivalry, what with so many allegiances blurred. Judd was a native, yet he was living with Chelsea. Hunter was a native, yet he was a frequent guest at Boulderbrook. Wendell Hovey was a fan of Chelsea’s, as were all his closest friends, and if it were put to a vote, though their husbands spent their days keeping production up with demand, the female half of Cutters Corner would have elected Chelsea selectman hands down.
Chelsea didn’t aspire to holding political office, but she was thoroughly enjoying being part of the Notch. When she drove down the street, people waved. Doors opened when she passed. Friendly greetings were exchanged. She tasted the charm of the Notch to its utmost and—totally aside from her feelings for Judd—couldn’t begin to envision leaving town and never returning. She liked the land, the air, the people. She even liked the parochialism, which seemed more habit than anything else. The people of Norwich Notch were, on the whole, surprisingly modern. She was comfortable in their midst.
This particular day was bright and sunny enough to lure Chelsea to the town green for a midmorning break. Abby was in the carriage, little arms and legs waving, eyes wide on the passing scenery. Several other mothers were there with young children. They made room for Chelsea on a bench in the sun.
The Passions of Chelsea Kane Page 44
