Little Green

by Tish Cohen

  “Wow. I don’t even know what to say.” Cass didn’t appear nearly as excited as Matt imagined she should. She looked truly stunned. “You’re sure it was him?”

  “Totally,” Sophia said. “That photo was on our fridge our entire lives. It was like we grew up with you.”

  “He never knew who sent it to Life. He would have had their heads.” Nicholas laughed. “He hated publicity.”

  “How long ago did he die?” Cass asked.

  “About five years ago. He and Mom were hiking in the Andes. Soph and I take care of his estate now. None of his photographs had anywhere near the success of that one. Dad was a total hippie; he didn’t care. It was all about making art. Not selling it.”

  “We’re pretty proud of him. And protective.” His sister winced politely. “We’d really love it if you gave him a posthumous credit somehow.”

  “Well.” Cass glanced at Matt and Val. “Of course, let’s discuss it. I mean, I literally didn’t even know your father’s name. But I’m happy to do whatever it takes to make good, obviously.”

  “Look at this.” Val beamed as they exchanged numbers. “History being made at my little bookshop. Isn’t life funny.”

  Chapter 38

  Elise returned to the cabin in a trance. Pregnant. A real, solid, healthy pregnancy—Oliver had confirmed it. She didn’t have to lie down with her feet up or cross her fingers or pray to Mother Nature. She was free to be herself. The baby had been there the whole time. Maybe the embryo implanted late or maybe Elise had been wrong about her dates. Didn’t matter. She was pregnant.

  She sat on the back porch now and opened every envelope Warren had sent over the years. She’d expected page after page of empty platitudes about silver linings, and how much he missed her, and how much she would love her new seventeen-years-younger half-sister. But that wasn’t what he’d sent at all.

  Every envelope contained a single Polaroid of Elise in his banged-up aluminum fishing boat on “Lake Puddlejump,” really not much bigger than a large suburban pond where he’d taught her to fish—Elise in her boxy red lifejacket, Elise piercing a worm with a hook, Elise holding a sandwich crust over the boat’s side to unsuccessfully entice a loon.

  The loon’s call had been their shared magic. Every time you heard it, they’d decided, something wonderful was about to happen.

  She stared at the photos for a while. Then put them away to fill the bath with hot water and lie still until it went cold. Finally, she soaped, shampooed, scrubbed her arms and legs pink with a loofah, and dunked. Climbed out onto the cotton mat, dripping and cool.

  She combed her hair back and secured it at the base of her neck, then examined her face. Skin pulled taut. Eyes wider, somehow. Like the stag, maybe they’d taken in too much. Before pulling on a bathing suit and shorts, she looked at her belly. Was there a slight swell or was that hopeful thinking?

  Gracie would have beautiful news to come home to.

  The lake’s surface glittered as she waited on the dock. Coming toward her in a bright red canoe was the man who had promised her the world and then walked away with it. His paddle stroke was as crisp and smooth as it had ever been. He wore a floppy gray fishing hat covered in lures, just like his old blue one. His frame seemed brittle; his shoulders narrower. He put up a hand to wave.

  That same toothy grin as he reached the dock. “Lisey. All grown up.”

  She pulled the canoe perpendicular to the dock and reached for the rope to tie it. “Come. We can sit inside on the porch. I made coffee.”

  He set the paddle across his thighs. “I think better with a fishing rod in my hands. You know that. Hop in.”

  Somewhere south of Hawk Island, he laid his paddle down beneath the seats and they sat face-to-face. She noticed that her navy blue polish on fingers and toes was peeling from when she’d painted it on with Gracie. Warren reached into a rusted coffee tin for bait.

  “You still have the same can,” she said.

  He waited until the lid squeaked back on and the worm he’d punctured stopped squirming. When he drew the rod back, a little red and yellow bob bounced on the line.

  “This one does the job just fine.”

  “So did Mom.”

  Hesitation in the rod before he cast. The bob landed with a tiny plop. “I deserved that.”

  A seaplane flew low overhead with a deep hum. They both tilted their chins up to watch as it cruised toward the north shore and the mountains beyond. They waited to see if the bob moved at all, and when it didn’t, Warren reeled his line back in to cast again. “You remember when you used to love baiting the hooks?”

  “I hated baiting hooks.”

  “Not true. When you were very small, you insisted on baiting both our hooks. One day you pricked your finger and blamed it on the worm. You thought he had teeth. You were about eight.”

  “Gracie’s age.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Couldn’t believe it when I saw the news. I saw the picture and thought, she looks just like my Lisey.” He reeled in his line very slowly, pausing to jiggle the bait. Then cast again.

  “You haven’t seen me in a while.”

  He reached into his tackle box and pulled out another envelope addressed to her, unsent, and put it in her hands. “Go ahead. Open it.”

  She stuck a finger in the flap and ripped it open. Glanced up at him before pulling out the photo. There she was atop Indie, her freestyle test completed, saluting the judges. It had been taken at Tryon, the day she got long-listed. “You were there?”

  “I was. And then I drove up to New Jersey because I thought you might be at Ronnie’s the next morning. I was going to leave this for you, but when he said you’d all come up here . . . I figured I’d stop in on my way home to Vermont instead.”

  “You left the flowers at the wrong house.”

  “I had the right house.” He smiled sadly. “I just lost my nerve and left them next door. Didn’t want to put you on the spot. I figured you’d maybe call when you got them, so I stayed overnight.”

  “And then it happened.”

  “And I don’t plan to leave until you have your little girl back in your arms.” He folded the worm onto itself and pierced it twice to better secure it on the hook. Started to cast and stopped. Looked at her. “Want to try?”

  She took it from him. “So light.”

  “They make them better nowadays. Like most things.” He watched her cast smooth and far. Smiled his approval. “Fathers included, I hope.”

  She didn’t comment. Slowly began to reel the line back in. “Remember my old rod? Covered with pony stickers?”

  He nodded. “I still have it.”

  “Gracie is just the same. Stickers all over her crutches.” Elise cast again and slowly reeled her lure back in.

  “He a good father, Matt?”

  “The best.”

  She cast again, then shifted to a more comfortable position on the canoe seat.

  “You want to catch a fish, you gotta stay still. Move around too much and you scare them off.”

  “Sitting still isn’t my strong point. Don’t think it’s yours either, outside of a rowboat.” Elise reeled in the line all the way. Just as she pulled it up, not twenty feet away, a pair of loons surfaced. They drifted past in their sleek, dark beauty. The male let out a long, haunting cry that bounced off the shorelines.

  They looked at each other. Something wonderful. If only.

  “Loons mate for life,” he said. “I didn’t know that back then.”

  “Probably a topic we should stay away from.” When the hook was out of the water and dripping, she handed the rod back to Warren.

  “Briony finally came to her senses and left me.” He pointed to a scar on his cheekbone. “But not before sending Big-Mouth Billy sailing into my head.”

  “Mom would never have done that.”

  “Your mother was all elegance. She handled my big dreams and lousy follow-through in one manner, Briony handled it another. Lost my shirt in that divorce. So . . . I�
��ve decided to relieve women everywhere of my shit and live out my days as a lonely fisherman.” He waited a moment. “Is this a good time to mention that your half sister wants to meet you? Chloe Diane. I drive down to stay with her every other weekend when Briony is at her boyfriend’s. You’d like Chloe.”

  “We should get back. I didn’t bring my phone.”

  “You’re the boss.” He set down the rod and grabbed his paddle, pointed them back toward civilization. “Mentioned I’m staying at a little fishing lodge up on Barrel Bay. Pretty out there, but plenty rustic. No electricity. Outhouse is a long walk through the woods. I had to drive into town just to get a cell signal. Emailed you from outside Starbucks.”

  He dipped his paddle into the water, pulled hard, then turned the paddle away from the canoe without a sound. The perfect J-stroke. “Kostick and Sons Fishing Lodge. Nice enough guy just opened it. Retired. Always been his dream.”

  “Andy just fixed our roof. We know him.”

  “Lives out there in the bush with his granddaughter.”

  Elise thought about this. Why did it sound wrong?

  “Never told me what the story is, why this kid’s willing to live in a place where even the toilets are—”

  She interrupted her father but spoke slowly, confused. “Andy has no family. Matt told me he has no family. We joked about it because of the ‘Kostick and Sons.’”

  “Well, I’m only going by what he tells—”

  “Have you seen the girl?”

  “No. She keeps to herself in their cabin most of the time because of all the bears. Has pet rocks, he said. Draws little animal faces on them. I’ve heard her boss them around, though.” Warren chuckled to himself. “Real character. She picks one rock at a time to hug. Teaches them discipline or some such thing.”

  “Dad. Dad, that’s Gracie!” Elise stood, wobbling the vessel side to side. She looked up the lake as if she might be able to see her. “That’s Gracie—the doled-out hugs, the fear of bears—”

  “Sit back down before you sink us! I’ll get us there.”

  “No—I don’t want anyone to see me in the boat. I’ll swim—you follow.”

  “Wait!” Warren braced the paddle across the thwart and leaned his weight over it. Elise dove off the canoe, feeling it rock beneath the balls of her feet as she plunged into the cold, heavy depth of the lake and started to swim.

  Chapter 39

  Lake Placid Public Library was tucked away between Main Street and Mirror Lake. White clapboard, with a Norman Rockwell front porch. The place was historically significant: Melvil Dewey himself had been instrumental in the library’s growth, donating newspaper and magazine subscriptions.

  Matt stepped into the comforting fragrance of old books and waxed floors and looked around, his head afloat from lack of sleep. He’d developed a tic in one eyelid.

  At the microfiche, downing black coffees from a machine, Matt discovered five properties his grandfather had swindled from their rightful owners, and managed to come up with some sense of where these families had later settled.

  He’d never been one to buy lottery tickets, but if there was a chance in hell this would bring Gracie back, he’d hunt down every person his grandfather had even bumped into in a store, short-changed in a poker game, or cut off in the fast lane of the I-87.

  He rubbed at his spasming lid.

  Lyman Williams—the first of that name—rested in North Elba Cemetery on Old Military Road. Matt had bicycled or jogged through it many times when he was younger without sparing a single thought for who might be buried within. Williams’ gravestone was slender and tall. Gray stone, the edges softened by lichen. Along the bottom platform, the name WILLIAMS in block letters. On the face, both Lyman Williams’ name and his wife’s, Hannie Williams, whose headstone matched his. He had died in 1897, Hannie five years later.

  Nate Sorenson was fifty-five when he foreclosed on the Williamses’ land for an unpaid debt of $13,000. Matt tried to imagine the full narrative—what Nate told his wife, what he told Matt’s father, and mostly what he told himself about throwing a hardworking family with two young children out of their home, taking their land, and leaving them without an income.

  A twig snapped behind him. Matt turned to see Lyman.

  “Thank you for coming,” Matt said.

  “He was a sheep farmer,” Lyman said, looking down at the headstone. “Came here with his wife and two kids. They bushwhacked their way onto a plot given to them by New York State’s wealthiest abolitionist before the Civil War, then built a cabin out of the trees they’d felled. Gerrit Smith offered land parcels to three thousand black men to so they could have the right to vote in state elections, learn how to farm, keep themselves and their families safe from slavery. The effort was called Timbuctoo. This land—it was rocky and treed, the winters were harsh. Not many of the families were able to make a go of it. But mine did. My ancestors sold off part of their original farm plot, but they went on to found a school, a church. And here we are today.”

  Matt recalled the sign he’d spotted as Dorsey drove them through the crowd on John Brown Road. “So that was you accepting an award last week at the John Brown place? On behalf of your ancestors?”

  He nodded. “Timbuctoo was the reason Brown settled here in the first place.”

  The ceremony had honored the man whose descendants Nate would one day swindle. The sun suddenly grew unbearably hot. Matt rolled up his sleeves. “Your family owned thirty-seven percent of the land I’m selling. There’s no way for me to immediately sever it and return to you what’s rightfully yours, but I want to give you thirty-seven percent of my sale price.”

  Lyman said nothing.

  “Your land’s worth a lot of money.” The stretch of wooded shoreline had a sandy inlet and an archipelago of smooth rocks that reached out into the lake; Matt used to hop from stone to stone as a child. But for his grandfather’s greed, it would have been Lyman and his sister who spent their childhoods playing on those rocks. “More than half a million.”

  “I appreciate what you’re doing, Sorenson. But what’s done is done—”

  “I realize it’s nothing in the face of what your family lost. I can’t undo what my grandfather did. Please don’t walk away from this.”

  A crow in a tree cawed. Another answered back.

  “I don’t take handouts.”

  Long after Lyman had gone, Matt continued to stare at the Williamses’ headstones.

  Chapter 40

  Elise lifted her head from the water a moment, heart hammering, lungs paining. For all the years of wind sprints, of cross-training, of riding until the seam of her briefs cut into her skin and made her bleed, all the mucking stalls until her hands blistered and mucking more stalls until the blisters split, the schooling when it was so cold she had to ride with no saddle, the cold-water-bath plunges Ronnie promised would sharpen her focus, the endless pushups and lunges and power yoga classes that made lying in a grave sound like relief—never had she pushed her body harder.

  The canoe was gliding along behind her. Warren held a hand low in greeting.

  With electric jolts firing from every cell, Elise caught her breath and looked toward the shore. The lodge appeared, from the water anyway, to be made up of a main building surrounded by cabins so small they likely didn’t hold more than a bed. About eight or ten of them dotted the piney hillside, looking down at the shoreline. A couple of smaller docks ran perpendicular to the shore, along with one long central dock that had seen better days. Near the end of the long dock was a dilapidated hut. It wasn’t until she swam closer that Elise caught movement beside the little structure, a flash of green dress.

  Can it be?

  She ducked underwater and swam nearer, coming to the surface as quietly as she could, lest she attract the wrong attention. Another flash of green. Elise made sure to stay behind the dock in case anyone was watching from land. Bits of slimy plant life curled around her feet. She dove down, propelled herself underwater, and, with a mighty th
rust, reached the end of the dock. She surfaced, worked herself to the corner to see, perched on the long side of the dock, leaning against the hut, the single most beautiful sight possible—a girl with messy blond hair who bounced her bare heels as she peered down into the water.

  Gracie.

  Elise waved frantically to her father, following behind her in the canoe, and motioned that he should paddle to a ladder at the end of the dock, just around the corner from Gracie. Anyone could look out and see them. Anyone could try to stop them.

  Elise felt herself hyperventilating as she drew closer, willing with every stroke that no one would approach, that Gracie would stay put, that this would really be true. The stones were sharp beneath her feet as she struck land for a moment. Then the lake’s bottom dipped down again. She moved closer, close enough to see Gracie humming, to see her tiny toes painted in chipped navy, like her own.

  The bow of the canoe drew near the ladder.

  “Gracie. Honey. It’s Mommy.”

  Gracie scrambled to her feet. To Elise’s shock, she did so without crutches.

  Then the girl looked over toward the ladder and saw Elise’s father pulling the canoe alongside dock. She started to whimper.

  “It’s okay, my big girl. Sweetheart.” Elise found land beneath her feet, but just barely. “That’s your grandpa . . . my dad. You’re safe now. We’re going to take you home.” Elise held open her arms. “I need you to jump. I need you to hold your breath and jump into the water, okay?”

  Gracie sat and scooted to the edge of the planks. “I’m scared.”

  “I know. But you’re going to do it anyway. Fall toward me.”

  “But I’ve never gone underwater.”

  “Hey!” A male voice, yelling from up on the rise. Elise looked toward a row of tiny cabins—it wasn’t Andy. It was a big bruiser of a man in a bathing suit and sweatshirt, coming out of his cabin. He started down the slope toward the beachfront. “What’s going on down there?”

  Warren was climbing out onto the ladder.