Lucy plucked up the other suitcase and began walking with her. “What’s the little box about?” she asked.
As if someone had just poured ice water into her veins, it was now Chelsea’s turn to shudder. How stupid of me to be carrying this, she thought. But I didn’t expect Mother to arrive so early, either.
“Oh, it’s nothing, really,” Chelsea answered. “Just a little something that I want to talk to you about later.”
On entering the kitchen, Lucy surveyed it judiciously. “It’s not so bad as I thought,” she said. “But I still don’t know how you spent the entire summer up here without going mad from boredom. And where’s that handsome new husband of yours?” she asked as she still looked around the kitchen, eying things.
“He has a late shift at the hospital,” Chelsea said. “He probably won’t be home until about nine.” Just then Chelsea felt another chill go through her as she again regretted doing this without him tonight.
Bag still in hand, Chelsea followed Lucy into the living room, where she placed the tin box on one of the sofa end tables. She then carried her mother’s bag into the guest room and beckoned for Lucy to join her there. The two women set the expensive luggage atop the bed.
“This is your room,” Chelsea said. “I hope it will be okay.”
“I’m sure that it will,” Lucy answered. “I’m only here for a couple of nights, anyway.”
Chelsea couldn’t help but look down at the guest room floor, the same floor from beneath which had come Brooke’s journal and photos. The same items from the past that had started it all and were now driving her nearly mad with anxiety. When Chelsea continued to simply stand there staring, Lucy gave her a quizzical look.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No . . . no, Mom, of course not,” Chelsea finally answered. “Come on, let me show you the rest of the place.”
On returning to the living room, Lucy soon noticed the unfinished portrait of Brooke that stood upon the mantel. “And what have we here?” she asked. “It’s a very good likeness, I must say. Do you know who painted it?”
Her mind racing, Chelsea tried to gain some time before answering by putting another log on the fire and then needlessly poking at it with one of the hearth tools.
“No,” she finally fibbed. “It was there when I arrived.”
Lucy stepped a bit nearer. The fire’s warmth felt good, she realized.
“This artist certainly knew his business,” she added. “It makes me wonder why Mother never mentioned him.” Then Lucy stood back from the painting a bit. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an interesting story behind it,” she added thoughtfully.
With that, Chelsea couldn’t help but again glance anxiously at Brooke’s old tin box. It lay no more than two feet away from her mother, and she instantly regretted having placed it there. She considered taking it away but then thought better of it. She wasn’t ready to tell Lucy about Brooke’s story, and moving the box would only invite further interest.
After her short tour, Lucy removed her coat and then accompanied Chelsea out onto the porch. She spied Chelsea’s unfinished landscape and walked over to admire it.
“This one’s yours?” she asked.
“Yes,” Chelsea answered.
“It’s good too,” she said. “You really do take after your grandmother, you know.” She then selected one of the rockers and sat down.
Just then they heard the two dogs begging to come inside. Chelsea opened the porch door and they came bounding in. At once, they happily accosted Lucy.
Lucy smiled and ruffled Dolly’s ears. “Hi there!” she said to Dolly. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Then she looked at Brandon’s setter. “And who do we have here?” she asked Chelsea.
“That’s Jeeves, the Beer-Fetching Wonder Dog,” Chelsea answered. “You remember—Brandon told you and Dad about him during our visit to Syracuse.”
“Ah, yes,” Lucy answered.
When Lucy reached out and scratched one of Jeeves’s ears, he eagerly responded by tilting his head and pressing it harder against Lucy’s fingers.
Lucy smiled. “He seems a good dog too,” she said. “But I still don’t believe all that mumbo jumbo about him fetching beers from the refrigerator.”
Chelsea took a seat beside her mother. “Neither did I,” she answered, “until Brandon made him do it one night.”
“And by the way,” Lucy asked, “what’s for dinner?”
“I thought we’d have Eisenhower’s Eggs Benedict, if that’s all right with you.”
Lucy screwed up her face. “Huh?” she asked. “Eisenhower what . . . ?”
“Eisenhower’s Eggs Benedict,” Chelsea answered. “It’s one of Gram’s wartime recipes. It calls for sausage instead of Canadian bacon, and the sauce is a bit different, too. It’s really good. Brandon loves it.”
Lucy’s expression remained quizzical. “What on earth are you talking about?” she asked. “What wartime recipes?”
And there it is, Chelsea thought before answering. Another indication of the deep gulf that existed between my mother and my grandmother. Just then Chelsea remembered something from Brooke’s first letter to her, and she nodded slightly. “Although it will be many years before you become a woman, I already sense that there will grow a strong bond between us—perhaps even greater than the one I already share with your mother . . .”
“Didn’t you ever look at Gram’s recipe book?” Chelsea asked. “You know, the same one you gave me that day at the house?”
Lucy shook her head. “No, dear,” she answered. “Mom always did the cooking, you know.”
Silence took over for a time as these two different women each thought about the one they had so dearly loved and so recently lost. Over the course of the summer it had become abundantly clear to Chelsea that she and Lucy had loved Brooke in very different ways. Perhaps that’s how it always is with daughters and granddaughters, she thought.
Even so, Chelsea liked to think that Lucy’s love for Brooke had been every bit as strong as was her own. But very soon now, Chelsea would tell her mother everything and perhaps destroy that love forever. As she thought about it, another shiver went through her.
“Is something wrong, dear?” Lucy asked.
“No, Mom,” she answered. “It’s just the chill in the air . . . it gets to me, sometimes.”
Chelsea sat quietly for several moments, thinking. Although her mind was made up about telling her mother, there were some things that she wanted to know first. Things that she missed learning about by having spent the entire summer here rather than in Syracuse. Lucy had seemed better that day when Chelsea and Brandon had visited, and she had in her own convoluted way told Chelsea that she approved of Brandon. And Lucy had been extremely happy at Brandon and Chelsea’s wedding. But given Lucy’s normally fragile state, Chelsea needed to know whether those positive changes she had seen were still present and accounted for. She dearly hoped so, she realized.
“So tell me,” she said, “how are you doing these days, Mom? I know that my decision to stay up here all summer was probably hard on you. With Dad and Gram both gone, you must have been lonely.”
Before answering, Lucy quietly looked out over the restless waves of Lake Evergreen. And when she at last spoke, she greatly surprised her daughter.
“You know,” she said rather absently, her focus still on the waves, “I was wrong about this place. It’s really quite lovely here, isn’t it? After seeing it for myself, I’m starting to understand why you stayed. I’m still not prepared to say that I could live here that long, but perhaps next summer I could come up and visit you for a few days. Provided, of course, that the two of you think you could put up with me.”
Chelsea was stunned. This, again, was a side of her mother that she had never seen. Even when at her beloved house in Syracuse, Lucy had never seemed completely at ease, as if she somehow didn’t quite belong there. But Chelsea was starting to realize that here at the cottage, Lucy was diff
erent. Like when Chelsea first arrived, Lake Evergreen seemed to be working its spell on her, too. As Chelsea came to realize it, her eyes became shiny with tears. Reaching up, she casually wiped them away before her mother could notice.
“I think that would be great, Mom,” she answered. “I’d love to have you here for as long as you’d like.”
Lucy smiled at her. “Then it’s a date,” she said. “And to answer your question about me, I’m doing better, I really am. With your grandmother gone at last, I’ve had to rely on myself more. I don’t mean for physical things and such. No, rather it’s about being truly alone for the first time in my life. And although I’m still quite terrible at it, I’ve even taken up cooking! To be completely frank, when you called me from here to say that you were staying the summer, it worried me. But now it seems that I’ve adapted to being alone. God knows I’m sorry that your grandmother has left us. But in her absence, I’ve seemed to developed a sense of peace that I never had before . . . I don’t know . . .”
Then she looked over at her daughter again and she smiled. It was such a happy and honest smile that Chelsea didn’t completely recognize it, because it was truly the first of its kind from her mother that she had ever seen. Suddenly at a loss for words, Chelsea sat back in her rocker and again briefly closed her eyes against the task that she would soon do.
“So,” Lucy said, “is that offer of some hot tea still good? I must say that I could use it.”
“Sure,” Chelsea said. “English Breakfast or Earl Grey?”
“Earl Grey,” Lucy answered. “For my money, it’s the only kind there is. And you know what else?” Lucy asked.
“What?” Chelsea answered.
“While you’re making the tea, I’m going to take the dogs outside and have a look around. Would that be okay with you?”
“Sure . . . ,” Chelsea answered, trying to steady her voice.
“If I’m not back by the time the tea’s ready, come give me a shout,” Lucy said.
“All right,” Chelsea answered.
After Lucy and the dogs left the porch, Chelsea walked back into the living room and again looked up at Brooke’s unfinished portrait. She could easily remember the journal entry that mentioned the day Greg had begun painting it and Brooke’s inability to sit still. She then also remembered her recent trip to Brooke’s grave site and how she had told her grandmother that there was no need for her forgiveness. And how the two ancient coneflowers Chelsea had placed on Greg and Brooke’s graves had suddenly, as if by some form of magic, been whisked high into the air, only to comingle and finally be forever lost to the winds.
With Lucy gone, Chelsea took a precious moment to sit down on the couch and again open the tin box. There, each item still waited to be shown, its particular part of the story ready to be told. And then Chelsea noticed Brooke’s final letter to Greg, lying on top of the other things.
With trembling fingers, she lifted it from the old box. The envelope was smudged, deeply yellowed, and excessively dog-eared from Greg’s repeated readings of its contents over the many years that he had been forced to live without Brooke Bartlett in his life. And then, quite to her own surprise, at last Chelsea removed the letter from its envelope and she began to read it. It said:
My Dearest Darling,
By the time you find this letter, I’ll be gone. I know that my leaving will be a great shock to you but it must be this way, and I can only hope that you will understand. As I write these words, it pains me more than I can say to imagine you sitting on your porch and reading this unworthy letter, your eyes brimming over with tears. On seeing that my car was gone, you probably believed that I was simply out running an errand or two. But as you now know, that is not the case. For I have left Lake Evergreen forever, and I have vowed to never return.
What happened between us last night was at once the most wonderful yet also the most terrible experience of my life. My overpowering guilt is matched only by my deep love for you, and the two conflicting emotions are tearing my heart in two. And so, I must leave here and never return. For seeing you again would not only bring back all of that pain but surely also fuel the great yearning for you in my heart that I am now forced to hope, over time, will finally lessen. For that is how it must now be between us, my love, and as the years go by, I hope that you will be able to see that.
You were right, Greg. Our being together that way was indeed more about my needing someone during my hour of greatest grief rather than trying to seduce you. And would I have kept on walking into those waves, had you not intervened? I don’t know, and I probably never will. But it will not be an unpleasant burden, knowing that you may have saved my life . . .
To my great shame, I have experienced the deceit of taking one man to my bed while still desperately mourning the death of another. Although it was wrong of me, I know there is nothing I can to do keep it from happening again, save for leaving here. And so now I will have neither of you. Perhaps that is a fit punishment for what I have done; I don’t know. All I know for sure is that the very act of love that I resisted for so long—and which we at last consummated—had the opposite effect with us that it usually does upon two prospective lovers. For rather than join our random hearts, it has in fact separated them forever.
Please do not try to contact me, for my mind is made up about this. Hearing from you in any way will only harm the healing that I must now strive to achieve. But know that I loved you with all my heart, and to my own pain and detriment, I always will. For you see, my love, sometimes in this world there are no answers. There are only choices. And because there is no answer to our dilemma, one of us had to summon up enough courage to make a choice, difficult as it might be.
What we had was brief, I know. Even so, I believe we loved one another more deeply and strongly during our short time at Lake Evergreen than most men and women do during their entire married lives. It is my fervent wish that that sentiment can help to protect your heart from the pain, Greg, and help you to accept my decision, no matter how difficult it will be for you.
Always,
Brooke
Crying fully now, Chelsea carefully refolded the old letter, placed it back into its envelope, and then returned it to the tin box with Brooke’s other things.
My God, she thought, how much she loved him, only to lose him because of that very same ardor. Knowing this story will forever make me closer to her, and also to a man whom I never knew existed and who might well be my grandfather. . .
But in the end, does any of it really matter? she wondered, tears still streaming down her face. Perhaps all that matters, despite whatever bits of their pasts our loved ones might leave behind for us, is the here and now, and how each of us chooses to live it. I have become the woman I am largely because of Brooke’s love and guidance over the years, rather than because of who my grandfather might or might not have been, his identity clouded by an illicit tryst that occurred decades ago . . .
And then, as a portion of Brooke’s letter to Greg revisited her mind, Chelsea understood something else.
“For you see, my love, sometimes in this world there are no answers,” Brooke’s letter from so many years ago had said. “There are only choices. And because there is no answer to our dilemma, one of us had to summon up enough courage to make a choice, difficult as it might be . . .”
And then, suddenly, Chelsea felt as if Brooke’s letter had been intended as much for her as it had been for Greg.
Choices and answers . . . , Chelsea thought. I’ve been searching for answers where there are none. Mother’s knowing of this would do no good. It would serve no purpose. It would not change who I have become or who my mother is . . . It would make no difference at all, save to cause yet more pain in a woman who is at last starting to heal from a lifetime of insecurities. And just like Brooke was forced to do those many years ago, I too must now stop searching for answers and make a difficult choice . . .
Almost as if she were someone else, and before she could yet again surr
ender to her own self-doubt, Chelsea defiantly stood up. And then, her hands trembling nearly beyond control, she gathered up everything from the little box and she quickly tossed it all into the fire.
At first she simply stood there, quite unbelieving of what she had just done. But as she watched the flames begin to consume those very things she had once deemed so precious, she realized that the die had been forever cast. And for the first time since coming to Lake Evergreen and finding her grandmother’s secret treasures, Chelsea’s heart and soul felt truly free.
As she leaned her arms against the fireplace mantel, she closed her weary eyes and smiled a little through her tears.
“Hey in there,” Lucy suddenly called out as she began ascending the porch steps. “Where are you?”
When Chelsea didn’t respond, Lucy walked on into the living room. As she did, Chelsea was barely able to dry her eyes in time. When Chelsea looked back down at the fire, its flames were quickly relegating all of Brooke’s things to ashes. And with their burning, the flames consuming them had grown more vibrant.
As Lucy came to stand alongside Chelsea, she too looked down at the fire. But unlike her daughter, she was unaware of why the blaze had strengthened. As they both stood there watching the dancing flames, Lucy smiled and put one arm around her daughter.
“You know,” Lucy said, “now that I’ve been here at your cottage for a little while, I can understand why you love it so. And somehow, I can sense that a lot of our family’s history was created here, can’t you?”
Chelsea smiled a little as she watched the last vestiges of Brooke’s mementos disappear.
“More than words can say, Mother,” she answered quietly. “More than words can say. . . .”
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More Than Words Can Say
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