“Then take these with you.” Willy divided the stack of towels in half and handed one pile to him. “Save me a trip.” She looked from one to the other. “Any decision on what to do about Albert yet?”
“We’re thinking about that spot you mentioned,” Reid said.
“Near Little River.” She set the rest of the towels on the dresser beside the box. “There’s a small white church on the bluffs, and right next to it is a field. Just hop over the fence and you’re there.”
“Hop the fence?” Vicky asked.
“More like step over it,” Willy said. “The church hasn’t kept it up well so it’s not much of a challenge. I’ll draw a map for you, but it’s not hard to find. I’ve passed the spot plenty of times in the past fifty years, and unlike Seaport, nothing much has changed.”
Vicky saw her glance over at the box, watched her hesitate a moment before reaching out. Laying a hand on the box as if to confirm that this, like the key, was real.
“If there’s anything else you need,” she said, and turned, head up, spine straight, the efficient hostess again until she spotted Albert’s treasures on the bed and the line of her shoulders rounded almost imperceptibly “He still had a chicken,” she said, and sank down on the bed, her smile small and a little lopsided.
“I’ll see you later,” Reid whispered to Vicky.
“Six o’clock,” Willy said, absently sifting through the pile as he went out into the hall. “You know what’s missing?” She looked up at Vicky. “The x-ray glasses.”
“I never knew he had any.”
“Oh, they were my favorite,” Willy said. “Probably because my mother was so appalled when he said he could see right through her.” She chuckled and reached for the whoopee cushion. “He could, too.”
Vicky looked over at the door. “Would you excuse me a minute,” she said. “There’s something I forgot to tell him.”
“Of course,” Willy said and waved her away.
Vicky stepped into the hall just as Reid opened the door to his room. “Reid,” she called, and felt her heart jump when he turned. “I’m sorry.”
He tipped his head to the side. “About what?”
“North Star, the cats.” She hesitated. “Everything.”
“Me too,” he said softly and went into the room, leaving her alone in the hall.
THIRTEEN
Willy looked up as Vicky came back into the bedroom.
“Do you know what else is fun,” she said, picking up the fly-in-the-ice-cube. “A few of these at a wedding. Well-spaced throughout the room.” She tossed the cube into the air and smiled as she caught it. “My sister still has not forgiven me.”
“Sounds like you and Albert had some good times,” Vicky said, watching Willy set the cube down and slide the chicken to one side. Mixing Reid’s half in with hers, as though that was how everything belonged. Together, a set.
“The best times,” Willy said, picking up the boutonniere and running a finger over the plastic petals. “But he wasn’t at the wedding. If he kept to his schedule, he would have been in London by then. I often wondered how long it took him to miss those ice cubes.”
She laid the boutonniere down, the smile fading as she rose, becoming Dr. Foley again. “You’re all settled in, then,” she said. “The fish, too, I see. Which reminds me, George sent another care package.” Willy pushed a hand into her pocket and pulled out a small bag. “He found some plastic seaweed. Apparently, you drop the whole thing in and it softens up into something fish like. If you stayed another day, I’m sure he’d find the filters, the lights, and the treasure chest with a pirate skeleton inside.” She gave Vicky a wry smile as she handed over the weed. “George is the world’s worst pack rat.”
“I’d say he’s the world’s best.” Vicky dropped his latest find into the bowl and stood back while the goldfish poked her nose into it, tried to eat it, and eventually decided to hide inside of it.
“This fish is not going to want to leave. Not that I’d blame her. You have a lovely home. The kind I’d like to have myself one day. But I’ll be starting out with something a little smaller.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Willy said, crumpling the seaweed bag and tossing it into the wastebasket. “To tell you the truth, George chose this house. He’s the one with the love for architecture and gardening. When I first saw it, all I could see was a lot of work.”
“Now you sound like Reid. Say the word house and he somehow hears millstone.”
“He must have spent a great deal of time with Albert.”
“From an impressionable age.” Vicky sat down on the bed and rolled the eyeball to one side. “Learned everything from a man I loved but never understood. And I have no idea how to get around that.”
“Sometimes you can’t,” Willy said, with more understanding than Vicky had expected. “To a certain extent, they’re right, too. A house can eat away all your money and steal every spare moment. No matter how hard you try, there’s always one more thing to fix or replace. A piece of fence, a pump—”
“A roof,” Vicky said, and so what?
Maintenance was part of the package, the investment. Like in-laws and marriage. Sleepless nights and children. Reid and confusion. “You obviously don’t feel that way anymore,” she said to Willy.
Willy laughed. “Good lord, no. Not for years.”
She looked around the room, her eyes lighting on a toy here, a pillow there. “It took a while, but I came to appreciate the house for what is was. The design, the history. But George was the one who really kept things going. Always puttering, adding something. When the girls were small, he built a storybook garden in the backyard with the three bears’ cottage and a path through the trees.”
“Kids need a place to play,” Vicky said, sliding the sea monkeys over with the eyeball.
Willy nodded. “Our girls have some wonderful memories of this house.”
“Roots,” Vicky said, gathering up the chicken, the whoopee cushion, the fly-in-the-ice-cube.
“Sometimes I worry that he does too much,” Willy said and glanced over at Albert. “Maybe it’s time to take a serious look at those holiday brochures he keeps bringing home. Have some fun. Be like Albert for a while. Of course we couldn’t just pack up and go the way he did. George would probably do some research first, read every review and come up with an itinerary.”
“A practical man,” Vicky said. “Stable, solid.” She held out the ice cube to Willy. “Would you like to keep this? For old time’s sake?”
A grin that could only be described as wicked spread across her face. “I certainly would,” she said, bouncing the cube in her hand. “My sister will be here for the Fourth of July. She’ll be drinking a toast to Albert without even knowing it.”
The sound of an engine starting up drew them both around to the window. “That will be George, fitting in the hedge clipping before dinner.” She carried the cube to the window, drew back the curtains. “He likes to do the topiaries on the weekend.”
“A predictable man,” Vicky said, arranging the rest of Albert’s legacy into two piles before following Wily to the window.
“Just like European trains.”
He came around the corner astride a ride-on lawn mower, rumbling across the grass with a cart bouncing along behind. He still wore his work clothes, but had added a baseball cap. While she couldn’t hear him, Vicky could see by the set of his mouth that he was whistling while he worked.
He looked up, as though he’d sensed Willy there at the window and lifted a hand in salute.
Vicky couldn’t help smiling as he passed. “What’s in the cart?”
“Hedge trimmer and clippers. He hates the fact that he needs to carry his tools that way, but we’re getting old. And he shouldn’t be doing this now.”
George came to a stop in front of the bush shaped like a duck. He climbed off the mower and circled the bush, pausing now and then to touch a branch or ruffle the leaves, giving the duck a thorough going-over.
&nb
sp; “Did he shape those himself?” Vicky asked.
“He did the duck on Janice’s fifth birthday and on Adrienne’s fifth he did the rabbit. I have always been glad we didn’t have more children, or my front lawn would look like a menagerie.” She leaned closer to the glass. “There’s Reid. Is he interested in topiary?”
“No, but the sound of an engine will always draw him out.”
Vicky leaned in with Willy. Sure enough, Reid was down there, strolling across the grass toward George.
George shot him a friendly grin, reached into the cart and pulled out a small pair of clippers. Reid motioned to the duck, George laughed and the two of them walked slowly around the bush—George gesturing, Reid nodding, and every once in a while, stealing a peek at the ride-on lawn mower.
“Looks like George is giving him a crash course whether he likes it or not,” Willy said.
“I’m sure he’s enjoying himself,” Vicky said, but if she’d been alone she would have opened the window to eavesdrop. To hear what Reid was saying, not at all fooled by his sudden interest in topiary, and not a bit surprised when the two men turned and walked back to the ride-on. George unhooked the cart, motioned Reid to sit, and showed him the gears. Stood back when Reid started the thing up and gunned the engine, as though it were a racing car and not a lawn mower.
He hunkered down over the steering wheel, said something that made George laugh, and he was off. Roaring across the yard with the blade up, thank God, while George raised his clipper in the air and cheered him on.
Reid adapted to the machine quickly, performing a figure eight around the topiaries and a three-point turn between the pond and the swing. Following that up with a series of sharp turns around the pines, discovering the exact point at which the machine would start to tip.
Willy put a hand to her chest. “He is so much like Albert it’s frightening.”
“You should have seen the two of them on snowmobiles,” Vicky muttered.
Reid came back along the front of the house and stopped beside George. His face was animated, his gestures broad and the next thing she knew, George was climbing on with him and the two of them were rumbling away, all of the tools left behind with the cart.
“He is such a bad influence,” Vicky said.
Willy’s hand was gentle on her arm. “Your children must really enjoy him.”
“Everyone enjoys him,” she said, but wasn’t ready when the mower came round again, both Reid and George sending them a Royal Wave on their way by.
“I’ll bet he keeps things interesting,” Willy said.
“Like a fly-in-the-ice-cube.”
“Or a key in a shell.” Willy put a hand into her pocket and came out with a small shell, bright yellow, maybe two inches long and shaped like a tube. She handed it to Vicky. “Go ahead,” she said. “Look inside.”
The shell was smooth and warm, and it rattled when Vicky lifted it to her eye. She peered inside, and sure enough, there was Albert’s little silver key. She smiled, delighted. “What is this?”
“When you asked me earlier what that key opened, I meant to tell you the story. But I was so caught up in the pictures, I only thought about it again after you’d gone upstairs.”
Vicky tipped the key out into her palm, and looked back into the empty shell. “You know what it’s for, then.”
Willy shook her head. “No idea. Albert found the shell, with the key inside, on the beach at low tide. It was the strangest thing you ever saw. Of course, he came up with a story for it right away. You know how he was.”
Vicky thought of all the stories and limericks Albert had made up over the years, including the ash-scattering instructions, complete with chant. “I know how he was.”
“Then you’ll understand why he swore this key did not come to be on our beach as a result of a hole in someone’s pocket.” Willy took the shell and the key, and held one in each hand. “According to Albert, this key had been traveling for centuries. Secured inside this shell by a queen who was forced to marry a king for political reasons, although her heart belonged to a humble sailor.” She glanced over at Vicky. “He’d been at sea for months, of course, so he didn’t know what was happening or he would have rescued her right away.”
“That goes without saying.”
Willy nodded and continued. “The queen was brokenhearted to say the least. She sent messages in bottles and with pigeons and had the royal boats on the lookout day and night for the sailor’s return. But sailors are unpredictable, and this one was no exception.
“As her wedding day drew closer, the queen was overwrought. So she went to the Royal Metalworker and had him make her a key. The key to her heart.” Willy held it up. “This key to be exact.” Willy kept her eyes on the key, her voice soft and compelling. “On the morning of her wedding, the queen brought the key to her lips.” Willy kissed the key. “Bid it find her love, dropped it inside this shell and tossed it into the waves from her chamber window.” She frowned and looked over at Vicky. “Did I mention this was a seacoast kingdom?”
“The best ones always are. Go on.”
“The shell rode the waves,” Willy continued, moving the shell up and down. “Never sinking, of course, because it was magic, otherwise none of it works. Eventually the shell found the sailor’s ship and lingered there on the rolling waves as long as possible. Waiting with the queen’s kiss tucked inside for the sailor to find.”
“Of course, he missed it”
“Completely. He was working on a sail, absorbed in his task, and the tiny shell could hold on no longer. It slowly drifted away, sinking at last under the weight of the queen’s broken heart.”
Vicky followed the shell as it started to sink. “The queen married the king?”
“Sadly, yes. When the sailor finally returned, he was banished from the kingdom, because the king had learned of the key and was ridiculously jealous.” Willy held the shell still in front of her eyes. “The sailor wandered the sea, searching for the key until he died in a terrible storm. But even then he didn’t give up. In every lifetime since, he searches again and the queen waits for him to find it. But he never did. Then one day, it landed on our beach, and Albert picked it up.”
“That made you the queen,” Vicky said.
Willy shook her head. “Not a chance.”
Vicky’s smile faltered. “How can you not be the queen? You had the key, the shell, everything.”
“Because it’s all just blarney.” Willy closed her fingers around the shell and shoved it back in her pocket. “I knew from the moment I met Albert that I could never be the queen.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Because I was everything he didn’t want. A rich girl from a good family. His father would have been so pleased at the match. There was no way he could have ever let that happen.”
Vicky stared open-mouthed, at a loss for words. She had heard about the Ferguson feud, of course. It had reached almost legendary proportions in the grandmother’s house.
Albert, the eldest son—already enrolled in the college his father had attended and groomed since childhood to follow in his father’s footsteps—had dared to argue; to insist on his own course, his own life.
Reid’s father, Edward, had been six at the time. After Albert left, the responsibilities and expectations fell to him. The grooming began immediately and in earnest. This son would not fail them. At age eighteen, Edward upheld the family honor and left for Princeton. At twenty-four, he went to work in his father’s office, and at thirty-seven he fell asleep behind the wheel of the family car. There was talk of suicide, rumors of alcohol, but nothing substantiated beyond exhaustion and a round of business meetings that had turned out badly.
Vicky knew the bitterness against Albert ran deep within Reid’s mother and grandmother. But the Albert that Vicky knew had always been philosophical about it, never seemed to let it bother him. It saddened her now to think of him as he must have been when Willy knew him: young, angry, and hurt.
“He was alway
s honest about it,” Willy said. “Never led me on, never pretended we could be more than friends. I was only sixteen at the time, so part of me wanted desperately to believe he would change his mind. That’s why I took all of his flies-in-ice cubes, hoping he’d come back for them. I must have dropped the key when I was stealing them. Either that or he took it.” She glanced over at Vicky. “I should open the note he sent and find out if he confesses to his crime.”
Vicky finally spoke. “I’m surprised you haven’t read it by now.”
“For some reason I couldn’t.” Her smile was too quick, too bright. “Maybe the part of me that wanted him to come back still can’t let go.”
The sound of the ride-on coming back around the house drew Willy to the window again. She pushed back the curtain and waved to George and Reid.
Vicky could see them, both with a bottle of beer now, riding back to the topiary duck. Reid hooked up the cart again while George went back to pruning the bush. Reid stayed with him, listening while George ran his hand down the side of the duck, explaining something about the art of topiary to a man Vicky was sure would never pick up a pair of clippers in his life.
Yet he was paying attention, his eyes no longer wandering to the lawn mower. If he was acting the part of the interested guest, he was doing a good job, and George was obviously thrilled to have an audience.
“George doesn’t know I kept the shell,” Willy said quietly, as though to herself, but when Vicky turned around, she was looking straight at her. “He knows the story of the key. He worked with Albert on the logging crew and they ended up sharing a room, so the three of us were often together. While he wasn’t with us when we found the shell, I told him all about it.”
Vicky turned back to the window, watching Reid take the clippers from George, hold them to the bush, and make a cut. Only realizing she’d been holding her breath when she saw George nod and fluff the spot with his hand.
“He must have been surprised when we handed it to you,” she said, watching him point to another spot, make a measure with his thumb and forefinger, and encourage Reid to go again.
Love, Albert Page 17
