Tightening the Threads

by Lea Wait

  I read somewhere—probably at the vet’s office—that you might own a dog, but a cat owned you.

  Trixi would have shrugged and thought, “As it should be.”

  What had happened at the Lawrences’ house after Sarah and Patrick and I left last night? I’d find out this morning. Sarah had said to be there by nine.

  I scrambled a couple of eggs while the coffee was perking.

  Thanks to Trixi, I had a couple of hours before I’d have to make myself presentable and appear at The Point.

  Time enough to clear a few feet where the stone wall had stood.

  I threw on my grungiest work clothes. “Sorry lady. Too many cars and wild creatures out here that would make short work of an (almost) three pound kitten like you.”

  I was determined Trixi should be an indoor cat, but she was also a Velcro cat. She wanted to be wherever I went.

  I headed outdoors. Trixi meowed in protest, but settled by the kitchen window, where she could watch me.

  The uprooted maple had knocked about half the stones off the old wall. Some had scattered, pushed by the tree’s branches. Others lay in a heap next to where the trunk of the tree had lain a week before. I’d removed most of the tree, leaving a messy combination of large and small rocks, small branches and green leaves that had been severed too early to have turned red.

  Unlike modern walls built by stone masons with rocks and stones graded and smoothed at a quarry, whoever built this wall most likely used rocks dug from the large kitchen garden that had once taken up most of the space between our house and barn.

  The garden was smaller now. Gram had grown peas and beans and zucchini and summer squash, along with tomatoes and several types of leaf and head lettuce, plus her favorite herbs. I’d been trying to maintain what she’d planted in the spring, but weeds had already overgrown part of it. Gardening required constant attention, and this past summer I’d had other parts of life on my mind.

  Maybe next summer I’d have the garden and yard more under control.

  Four months had passed since I’d come back to Haven Harbor. I’d only promised to stay and run Mainely Needlepoint for six months.

  I suspected now that those promised six months were only the beginning of my new life as an adult in the place where I’d gown up.

  Memories of my childhood here still interrupted my dreams and blew through ordinary conversations with people who hadn’t known me then. Or I’d turn a corner and run headlong into my past.

  But it was all getting easier. The past was over.

  Except for those memories.

  I got a crowbar from the barn and started moving the heavy pieces of granite and sandstone, slate and basalt. It wasn’t easy.

  Some rocks had been scarred from the collapse of the wall. Many were slippery with mosses and streaked red from iron or glittered with the mica that had been part of them for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, before they’d been unearthed and positioned in this wall by one of my ancestors. The smaller, smoother, stones had probably been lugged up from Pocket Cove Beach to fill spaces.

  I didn’t know a lot about building walls. But if the stones weren’t level they’d fall off the first time a chipmunk scampered along them, or another nor’easter blew.

  I wanted my wall to withstand time and weather. My predecessors had used balance and patience and taken the time to find the perfect rocks for their dry stone walls. Using mortar felt like cheating.

  I took a break and looked carefully at the rest of the wall. The intact part.

  The stones had been placed crosswise, not lengthwise, as I’d first assumed. And the wall was slightly narrower at the top than the bottom.

  That made sense. Smaller stones filled in the spaces left by the larger, irregularly shaped ones. I’d have to sort the displaced stones.

  A few larger stones remained in place, on what had been the base of the wall.

  I decided to leave them there, to build on. But the broken stones, and the smaller ones, had to be removed before I could start again. I got back down on my knees and started clearing spaces for new stones, and leaving heavier ones for the crowbar.

  Half an hour later I looked down at my hands.

  Abbie’s hands yesterday had been red and rough. I said a silent apology to Abbie for having noticed. Now my fingernails were broken and my hands filthy. I’d clean up before I went back to The Point, but my hands wouldn’t look manicured for a while.

  Which reminded me I couldn’t work on the wall for too long. Using the crowbar, I lifted one more rock out of the dirt it had been half-hidden in and shifted it to the side.

  The hole it left was deep, but I’d have to even it out before I put that stone, or another, back in its place. I stood up and stretched. It was time to stop work for the day anyway.

  I picked up my red crowbar and then glanced down. Something that didn’t look like a rock was in the soil below where I’d just been digging.

  Curious, I dropped down on my hands and knees again and started uncovering it. Who knew what I might find that had been buried for close to two hundred years?

  As I worked to move more dirt away, I felt a chill. The more I dug, the clearer it was.

  The stained gray fragment hidden for years under my family’s stone wall was a bone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “(over the mantel in Charlotte Palmer’s bedroom there) still hung a landscape in coloured silks of her performance, in proof of her having spent seven years at a great school in town to some effect.”

  —From Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen (1775-1817).

  I carefully pulled the bone out of the earth. It was small, maybe from an animal of some sort. One end was fragmented.

  I took it inside and, to Trixi’s fascination, washed it in the kitchen sink and left it to dry.

  Over the years Gram and I had dug chips of old pottery and handmade square-headed iron nails out of the yard. We’d even found a few coins from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a pewter spoon. Once Gram had found a bullet.

  She’d called the police that time, to make sure the bullet wasn’t dangerous.

  They’d assured her it was not.

  Maybe I should call the police about the bone? But if it was from a dog or cat or other small animal, they’d laugh.

  Instead, I called Gram.

  “Good morning, Angel! I thought you were spending the weekend at Ted Lawrence’s with Sarah.”

  Of course, Gram didn’t know what had happened last night. So I told her.

  “Sarah is Ted Lawrence’s niece! I know people say everyone in the world is only six connections apart. But—Sarah and the Lawrences! What a story. However did she keep it quiet all this time?”

  I smiled. All the questions I’d asked when I’d first heard. “Last night Ted told his children. They didn’t seem thrilled.”

  “Ted’s always had issues with those kids of his,” Gram shared. “After his wife died, he mourned too long. Maybe he’s mourning still. Some said he blamed himself for Lily’s death. His children grew up pretty much on their own. Oh, he made sure they had food and went to school. Had a housekeeper most of the time to watch out for those details—Lizzy Davis lived there for some years as I recall. It was a while back. Abbie was such a beautiful girl, and a beautiful teenager. Everyone in town said so. But she ran off and got married when she was a freshman or sophomore in college. The boys moved out as soon as they could, too.”

  “Sad. Then Ted never married again?”

  “Not even dated, so far as I heard. Funny, since he had a reputation as a bit of a ladies’ man when he was married. Some folks tried to set him up, you know, after Lily died. They figured he could use company out at that place of his. But he wasn’t interested.” She paused. “Maybe he’d already sown his wild oats.”

  “He’s leaving Sarah all his Robert Lawrence paintings,” I blurted.

  “What? All of them?” said Gram. She wasn’t often surprised. “Sarah will be a millionaire—a
billionaire—if she sells them.”

  “I don’t know what she’s going to do,” I said. “It all happened so fast last night.” I glanced at the kitchen clock. “I have to get cleaned up and get over to Ted’s again. I promised Sarah I’d help for the weekend. But I called to ask you about something.”

  “Yes?”

  “You know our old maple fell in the storm last week.”

  “Tom loaned you his saw to clean it up. You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

  “Nothing like that, Gram. I’ve finished cutting up part of the tree, but unless Tom needs his saw back right away, I’d like to keep it another week or so. But when the tree fell it knocked down part of the stone wall between our house and the Smarts’ house.”

  “Not surprised. It was a grand old tree. Sad to see it go.”

  “I’ve decided to rebuild the broken part of the wall.”

  Gram hesitated. “Building a stone wall’s harder than it looks, Angel. You could hire someone to do that for you.”

  “I’d like to do it myself. Get in touch with my Maine roots, I guess. Anyway, I was just outside, clearing away some of the stones and rocks so I could start. And I found something weird.”

  Gram was silent for a moment. “What did you find?”

  “It looks like a bone. A small bone. It was under the wall.”

  Gram’s deep breath was audible through the phone line. “Why don’t you just put it back there, Angel. Put it back where it belonged. Sometimes it’s better not to disturb the past.”

  “I wondered if I should call the police.”

  “It’s been there for generations. No need to bother anyone. Just put it back.”

  I heard Tom’s voice in the distance.

  “I have to go. Tom’s reminding me it’s Saturday. Time for choir practice. But don’t worry about what you found. It’s from a time long past.”

  Gram hung up.

  That was strange. I looked at the bone, now drying in the dish drainer next to my sink.

  I didn’t want to put it back in the ground. Besides, I didn’t have time now. I had to shower and get the earth of ages cleaned off my hands before I headed over to help Sarah at The Point.

  The bone was probably buried by an animal, maybe a pet dog, a century or more before.

  Gram was right. It wasn’t important. It’d be embarrassing to ask the police about it.

  If it was an animal bone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Gossamer: A rich silk gauze, so-called from its resemblance to the finely woven silken thread spun by spiders, and which seems to derive its name from the fact of its being chiefly found in the Gorse or Goss. According to an ancient legend Gossamers were said to be the raveling’s of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s shroud on her Assumption which fell from her.”

  —From The Dictionary of Needlework: An Encyclopaedia of Artistic, Plain, and Fancy Needlework, by Sophia Frances Anne Caulfeild and Blanche C. Saward, London: L. Upcott Gill, 1882.

  Patrick must have been waiting for me. He walked outside as soon as I’d parked near Ted’s house and gallery.

  “Am I the last to arrive?”

  “You are,” he said, reaching down to push a strand of hair behind my ear and kiss me lightly. I touched his arm in response, wishing I could touch more of him. But anyone in the house could have been watching. Patrick’s and my relationship, whatever it might turn out to be, was too new to flaunt. Or even disclose.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Michael survived his late-night swim. He’s sitting on the front porch, looking at the ocean and nursing a nasty hangover and a Bloody Mary. Silas is drinking coffee and Bradley’s and generally complaining about life. Luke and Jeremy just went to the barn gallery with Ted.”

  “Luke’s seemed interested in art the past couple of days.”

  “Maybe he’s newly cultivated an interest in his grandfather’s work since he found out it will all soon be Sarah’s,” Patrick commented. “But everyone’s being civil. Jeremy’s practically fawning over Ted.”

  “He really wants to inherit the downtown gallery,” I noted. “He’s worked there long enough. I wonder what he’ll do if Ted doesn’t leave it to him? Last night Ted left that up in the air.”

  Patrick shrugged. “The world is full of opportunities. Many of them are outside Haven Harbor, though. I’ve gotten to know Jeremy a little since I’ve been helping out at the gallery. I think he has a friend in Scarborough he wants to stay close to.”

  “Galleries in Portland would be closer to Scarborough.”

  “Most of those are operated by their owners. Not a lot of jobs for someone with Jeremy’s background.”

  We’d almost reached the house. “And Sarah?”

  “Sarah’s back in organization mode. She and Abbie are planning the rest of our day.” He opened the kitchen door for me.

  Sure enough, Abbie and Sarah were bent over a legal pad, making lists. Sarah looked up. “Good morning! You’re a little late.”

  “Sorry. I decided to do a little yard work this morning and got more involved than I’d planned.” Like, in finding a bone under my stone wall. This didn’t seem the time to share that mystery. “What’s happening here?”

  “We’re planning this afternoon’s lobster bake,” Abbie said, as though she and Sarah had been working together for weeks.

  “Giving out assignments?” Patrick guessed.

  “Very soon,” Sarah agreed.

  “We all ate breakfast late, and there’s plenty of Sarah’s wonderful chowder left if anyone’s hungry in the next few hours. Because sunset is about six-thirty tonight, we want the lobster bake to start early enough to eat at about five o’clock. That means getting the fire started around two,” Abbie explained.

  Sarah had figured all that out days ago, but I was glad she was now getting Abbie involved.

  “Dad wants us to do the bake the way we always did—dig our own clams and pit. Plus we’ll have to gather driftwood and rockweed. So we’ll have to get started now,” she added, glancing at the clock. “It’s low tide, so we don’t want to waste any time.”

  You couldn’t dig for clams or collect rockweed if it wasn’t low tide. Sarah hadn’t done a lobster bake before, so far as I knew, but certainly Abbie had.

  I kept my mouth firmly closed. I was a guest, not a member of the family, old or new.

  “I thought maybe you and Patrick could go to the co-op to get lobsters,” Sarah added. “And if you leave now you can get to the farmer’s market for the potatoes and onions and, I hope, late-season corn, before the market closes at noon.”

  “I wish I’d known we were going to have a bake,” Abbie added. “Silas and I could have brought our own potatoes and onions to contribute.”

  None of his children had brought their father birthday gifts, I realized. Although Abbie had given a couple of jars of her homemade pickles to Ted. I’d noticed one was open on the counter. Someone, probably Ted, had sampled them.

  Maybe gifts weren’t the custom in this family. Or maybe he’d asked them not to bring any. Still, it seemed odd. I couldn’t imagine not giving Gram a gift on her birthday. In August I’d found a vintage needlepoint sign that read HOME SWEET HOME surrounded by roses, and added a note saying how glad I was to be home again after ten years. She and Tom had hung the sign in their kitchen.

  “Angie? Are you listening?” Sarah was asking.

  “Right. Lobsters at the co-op and vegetables at the farmer’s market. Got it.” I started toward the door and then turned around. “What about drinks? Eggs for the bake? Mussels?”

  “We’re good for eggs,” said Sarah. “Mussels might be good.” She glanced at Abbie. “In case the clam diggers don’t come up with enough for all of us. We have champagne, but maybe we could use a case of beer. What’s Silas’s favorite, Abbie?”

  Her husband had been the only one drinking beer the night before.

  “He usually drinks Allagash White. But I don’t think he’ll want beer. Today he’s switched to Br
adley’s. We could use a couple of extra bottles of that.”

  More Bradley’s? A couple of extra bottles?

  “No problem,” said Patrick calmly. “Is everyone else going digging for clams?”

  “Luke and Michael and Jeremy, for sure,” Abbie said. “Last I heard, they were arguing about which flat to go to.”

  “I’m staying here with Ted,” Sarah explained. “And packing up the plates and glasses and paper towels and such we’ll need for dinner.”

  Abbie stood. “I’ll round up the clam buckets and forks and the hip boots for the diggers. There should be enough for an army in the barn. Then I’ll start collecting seaweed and driftwood. I’ll tell the clam diggers to get back in time to help dig the pit.”

  “Ted said he has dry wood set aside if there’s not enough driftwood,” Sarah put in.

  “Good. And unless he’s reorganized the barn, the shovels and tarp and drum to soak the corn will be there.”

  Patrick held the door for me. I was halfway out when I turned around. “Dessert? Shall I pick up something for after dinner?”

  “Pies, if you see any good ones at the market. Or at the patisserie,” confirmed Sarah. “We have some birthday cake left, but there were nine of us . . . and some nibblers late last night.”

  Abbie laughed. “I wouldn’t count on finding much of that cake left.”

  Just one big happy family. How long would that last?

  Chapter Fifteen

  “How fair is the rose, what a beautiful flower

  In summer to treasure and feel

  For the leaves are beginning to fade in an hour

  Still how sweet a perfume it will yield.”

  —Martha Elizabeth Spicer of Muskingum County, Ohio, stitched this verse on her sampler in 1851, surrounding it with roses and baskets of roses.

  Patrick held the door of his navy BMW open for me.