The Winter Road Page 9

  “Most people don’t see that. Aunt Edith thinks they’re dust catchers.”

  “I suppose they are. Dust catchers and a map of human thought.”

  Emily smiled. “She’ll never be done collecting, though. She goes sideways, too.”

  “What do you mean, sideways?”

  “After she got all the books from the Enlightenment that she thought were most important, she decided she needed music from that time, too, and art prints. The same thing happened for the Renaissance, for every period of time.”

  “Amazing.”

  “It gets frustrating for her. I mean, she can’t own a cave-painting. And a poster doesn’t capture the scale and mood and texture.”

  “She’ll need a couple of extra lifetimes for all she wants to learn.”

  “If she does want to learn. I’m never sure if that’s really the point. Maybe she just wants the map.”

  Matthew had listened intently. His face, in leaf-shaped shadow, looked so touchable she tucked her hands under her knees to make sure they behaved themselves.

  She hadn’t kissed a man in years. Who could she kiss? Everyone around Three Creeks was her cousin or married or eighty or fifteen.

  She closed her eyes in an effort to stop seeing the picture that came to mind, herself sinking backward into tall grass, him coming after. Right away, she opened them. Eyes closed made it worse. Eyes closed she felt his weight against her.

  “Are you all right, Emily?” He sounded concerned. “I should take you home. You’ve had a lot of sun.”

  She could explain why she’d closed her eyes. Or show him. How would he react if she wrapped her arms around him, pressed against him, touched his mouth? Something besides good sense stopped her from finding out, something she sensed from him.

  He helped her to her feet. “Should I take you to your aunt’s house? Heatstroke isn’t something to fool around with and your mother, if you don’t mind me saying so, doesn’t seem like the first-aid type.”

  “I don’t have heatstroke, Matthew. All I need is a glass of water and a fan.”

  “A fan would suit you. The folded paper kind. You’re an old-fashioned woman.”

  “I’m not old-fashioned.”

  “Hmm. Delusions. Another sign of heatstroke.” He was smiling, but he kept one arm around her all the way back to the car, and she didn’t try to step away.

  When they reached her house she said, “I nearly forgot! Aunt Edith and Uncle Will are having a barbecue tomorrow evening. I wondered if you’d like to go. There’ll be lots of untinned food. And trees to eat it under.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “You’ll come?” She wished she didn’t feel so pleased. “Why don’t you drop by here earlier? Around four? You could help me pick berries—that’s my contribution to the meal. We can all walk over together.”

  “See you at four, then.”

  He backed out to the road and drove away—slowly, she was glad to see, and with a reassuring zigzag motion.

  She walked up the driveway, humming, and only noticed the tune when she reached the door. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” It wasn’t even a song she liked, but she smiled, thinking of snowflakes and cocoa and Matthew.

  THE TELEPHONE WAS RINGING when Matthew got back to the house. He hurried to pick up the kitchen extension.

  “At last! I was beginning to think you’d found yourself a deserted island with white sands and your own personal bank. How’s it going?”

  The voice on the other end crackled. “Slowly. With bites.”

  “Bugs are bad?”

  “They’re thriving.”

  Matthew got juice from the fridge with his free hand. The cupboard was too far to reach, so he drank from the carton. “Where are you?”

  “Just back from the crash site. The so-called crash site. That plane is in surprisingly good shape. Broken struts, damaged undercarriage, that’s about it.”

  “Supports your theory,” Matthew said.

  “He beached it.”

  “Kind of risky on a rock shore.”

  “Frank never minded risks. Between the canopy from the living trees and the dead ones leaning over it nobody was ever going to see that wreck from the air.” The voice faded. “You can’t tell after so long if the trunks were broken or cut. What I will say is they’re conveniently arranged over the fuselage.”

  “Did you get a look inside?”

  Static cut off some of the reply. “…snowshoes in winter. Hatchet, snare wire, first-aid kit.”

  “What’s that? You found the gear?”

  “No, no. It’s gone.” The voice faded again, then came back. “I’m losing the signal. Have you been to the Moore place?”

  “Couple of times. It’s hard to get a good look around. The mother never leaves.” Matthew held the phone away from his ear during a burst of static. When it ended, the busy signal took over.

  He hung up the phone, dried his hands to make sure there was no condensation remaining from the juice carton and took the manila envelope Emily had given him into the living room. He spread out her grandmother’s photographs on the desktop.

  One showed a scruffy-looking bunch beside an oxcart. Another, a house building bee. Grim-faced men in undershirts and sagging trousers looked at the camera as if their worst enemy was holding it. In the third, a hollow-eyed man stood behind a seated woman who held an armload of blankets he supposed contained a baby. The last was a threshing scene, interesting for the look at agricultural technology of the time. No names or dates were written on the backs. He had to take Eleanor Robb’s word for it that these gray-faced people were Rutherfords and other early settlers.

  He tucked them back in the envelope, then picked up the digital camera he’d left on the desk. He turned it on, switched to view mode and scrolled through the most recent shots.

  The Moore house from a distance, with its hedges and forestlike yard. The dog, slow but observant, looking toward the faraway camera.

  Mrs. Moore through the kitchen window, reading.

  He touched the last image. Emily, in her garden picking raspberries. Emily who looked beautiful in blue and in yellow.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SHE WAS EXCITED, and she shouldn’t be. It was like drinking, getting a little tipsier with each glass. She felt a little more…a little more what? Not in love. Not after five days. But a little more something each time she saw him. Enticed. Attached. Lucky.

  Even though he was different from everyone she knew, puzzling and unreadable so much of the time, he seemed right, right for her. She didn’t believe in the idea of one perfect mate. You could be compatible with any number of people. It was more a matter of geography. A compatible person who lived where you did. And Matthew didn’t.

  So she shouldn’t be excited.

  “Mmm.” An appreciative look came over his face, shaded by the straw hat she had lent him. “You haven’t tasted raspberries until you’ve had one you picked yourself.”

  “City people usually worry about the worms.”

  His chewing paused. “You’re kidding.”

  “They’re very little worms.”

  He swallowed deliberately and looked closely at a second berry, peering inside the hollow where it had been attached to the branch. It must have been bugless, because he popped it into his mouth, unconcerned.

  A few berries later he paused, then pulled it open to expose a tiny, white, wriggling worm. “Is that the critter you meant?”

  “That’s it.”

  Matthew tossed the berry into the bushes. “I don’t mind for myself. I’m thinking of the worm’s welfare.”

  She wanted to kiss him for the unexpected silliness, the mock-serious face. Her heart beat faster, as if she was about to make a speech or parachute from a plane. She should do it. She should kiss him.

  “You’re staring.” He tugged the brim of the straw hat she’d lent him. “You chose the hottest part of the day to go picking just so you could make me wear this ridiculous hat, didn’t
you?”

  “It’s an efficient hat. Keeps the sun and the mosquitoes off your neck.” She squished one that had landed on his cheek, then quickly pulled her hand away. “If you tried to pick too early or too late in the day you’d get eaten alive.”

  “Living close to a creek has a downside.” He reached past her to a clump of fruit. “So, I’ll meet the whole school of Robbs this evening, will I?”

  “All the Three Creeks group will be there, along with Susannah and Alex and Uncle Winston and Aunt Lucy.”

  “Except for the paleontologists, are they all farmers?”

  “Tom’s wife, Pam, is a teacher. Uncle Winston and Aunt Lucy are retired now, but when they lived here, they farmed.”

  “Winston was talking about that before you came into the post office the other day. He sounded nostalgic.”

  She smiled. “He does that. To listen to him now you’d think he never lost sleep over wheat prices or drought or wet years and rotting crops. He only remembers the good things.” It made him nice to be around, but disconcerting. He thought everyone he had left behind was living a different life than they really were.

  She glanced at Matthew, still eating a couple of berries from every handful he picked. “You probably have a university degree, accounting or business, something like that.”

  “It’s no help to me today. I had no idea raspberry bushes had thorns.” He held out a scratched arm for her to see. “Doesn’t your aunt have her own berries? Mrs. Bowen does.”

  “Sure, everybody does. But this is what we do to each other. Give each other berries and zucchini and tomatoes—”

  “And pumpkin loaves?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “I’m catching on. Must be genetic memory.”

  It was good to see him so relaxed. Every day he loosened up a little more. Three Creeks had that effect on people—that, or it sent them screaming for city lights.

  He shook his ice cream pail, settling the berries. “Do we have enough?”

  “We need more than enough. It’s an unspoken rule of barbecues.” She turned her back so she couldn’t see him. Scratched and silly, he was more appealing than ever.

  JULIA HAD SUDDENLY dug in her heels about the need to “get together and eat.” The momentary change in Emily had startled Matthew. Her hands had stilled, her shoulders drooped, a look of exhaustion had touched her face. The next second she was back to normal, her expression soft with good humor, her voice warm while she reminded her mother that Winston and Lucy would be leaving the next day.

  That point didn’t seem to have any effect, so he had jumped in, telling Julia he wished she’d go to the barbecue for his sake, that for an outsider like him another familiar face in the crowd would be welcome.

  The problem of being in a crowd was something she understood. So here they were at a family dinner where he didn’t belong and where he had no real expectation of learning anything new. Julia was off by herself studying the flowers growing in a border along the driveway as if she was the first botanist in the South American rainforest, and Emily looked happy chatting with her pregnant cousin. Susannah. Would his clients be satisfied with his work for today? Journal entry: Helped make Emily happy.

  He should have been done in Three Creeks by now. Close to done, at least. Ever since she’d come to Daniel’s door he’d been operating on half power. Right then he’d started dancing around the issue instead of getting at it. He wasn’t a tourist in the land of orchids and belugas. He had a job to do. A lucrative job, at that.

  “Here they are!” Emily said. “Can you believe they drove here? Lazy things.”

  Two trucks turned into Will and Edith’s driveway, the second one riding the first’s bumper. Passengers piled out and greeted each other as if they didn’t cross paths nearly every day. They pulled at children, checked to see if faces were clean and teased whoever they weren’t actually talking to, all at once.

  Emily pointed out the people Matthew hadn’t met. Eleanor, her grandmother. Brian, Susannah’s oldest brother, and his family. Martin’s wife, Pat, and their daughter, Nell. Tom’s wife, Pam, and their three kids.

  “Jennifer’s the oldest, she’s a real animal lover. Young Will’s in the middle, hockey’s his thing, no matter what the season. Anne is the littlest. She’s quiet, except when she scolds people.”

  “I’ll be sure to steer clear of her.”

  “You won’t hear a peep from her this evening. You’re a stranger, Matthew. Dangerous.” She looked amused at the thought.

  “Good for her. Not a bad example for you, Emily.”

  There were only twenty people, but they were noisy and energetic and the group felt bigger. Some resembled Emily, reddish and willowy, others were dark, like her mother. Robbs seemed to come in two varieties. Any new genes added to the mix must sink out of sight.

  Emily began to lead him around the yard, introducing him face-to-face, going through the whole family again. As she did, her hand kept lighting on his arm, distracting him from attaching names to faces. He heard snippets of conversation, with Edith’s voice rising above the others.

  “I couldn’t help but cry, to see the three of them side by side…”

  “We should have gone organic at the beginning….”

  “…standing together outside the church, no husbands, only Liz and Emily and Susannah with her tummy out to here, well, the tears just flowed.”

  “…love castle ruins. There’ll be a book in it.”

  “…there with his handkerchief. Susannah has found herself a very kind man. Very brown, too—he’s careless about the sun. A pity dinosaurs didn’t deposit themselves in more temperate climates.”

  Emily stopped circulating when they got to Susannah.

  “Before I’d even met Alex I used to imagine my children digging with me,” she was saying to Pat. “Now it’ll happen.”

  “Don’t count on it. Nell thrives on being contrary.”

  Patting her stomach, Susannah looked at her husband. “He won’t give us trouble, will he? This little guy?”

  “No more than we gave our parents.” He caught the end of her hair with his fingers, and she bent her head so her cheek touched his hand.

  Matthew looked away from the intimate gesture. Emily didn’t. She watched with a tender expression. He felt his own face soften in response. She had that effect on him, took away the hard edges he’d built up over time. Built up intentionally and for good purpose.

  He’d be crazy to get involved with her. This was a woman who worried about hurting toads. He had to back up. Get the job done and get out.

  EMILY WAS HAPPY to see Matthew fit in so well. He helped Tom and Alex keep an eye on the steaks, talked local history with Eleanor, agriculture with Uncle Will, pet care with Jennifer, and when Uncle Will and Aunt Edith’s dog brought him drool-covered sticks he threw them as if he enjoyed it.

  After dinner the children went off by themselves and most of the adults moved closer to a few smudges that smoldered to keep mosquitoes away. Uncle Will always said his skin was too thick for them. He sat right where he was, with his back against the picnic table, wasps circling, the heels of his steel-toed boots digging into the grass.

  The talk had gone around a few times from the wedding to the baby to bankers and back. The repetition was making Emily sleepy until Uncle Will mentioned a story he had seen in the newspaper a couple of weeks before.

  “This guy’s supposed to be flying gold out of Snow Lake and he never turns up. You must remember that happening, Mother. Didn’t Daniel know the pilot?”

  “They were good friends. It was very hard on him.”

  “I suppose a Mountie knows all kinds of people.” Will looked around, including the rest of the group in the conversation. “There was a storm system in the area, but not toward Winnipeg, where he was headed. They figured he must have got caught up in it anyway. Didn’t seem likely to me. I always thought he hightailed it to the Dominican Republic or some such place. But now they’ve found the plane.”


  “Way out nowhere,” Tom said. “Some guys on a flyin fishing trip found it.”

  “But get this—no body.”

  “And no gold.”

  Everyone but Emily had read the story. She’d hardly looked at a newspaper for weeks. If she didn’t get to an issue quickly, her mother had it clipped, filed and recycled.

  “Who would it belong to now?” Martin asked. “I mean, if Tom and I found it could we keep it?”

  “You won’t be the only ones thinking about that,” Uncle Will said. “Bet you the lodges will be offering gold-hunting packages. Never mind black bear and moose.”

  “It must still belong to the mine,” Eleanor said. “So you just pay attention to your farm, Martin.”

  “Forget the farm.” Pat laid a hand on her husband’s chest. “Go find gold, sweetie. For me.”

  There were chuckles and whistles and a call of “None of that, missy!” Matthew didn’t seem to be listening to any of it. He rubbed the dog’s ears while its head rested on his knee, brown eyes fixed on gray ones.

  Emily went to sit beside him. “How are you doing?”

  “Great. Too full, and sleepy.”

  “Same here.”

  “Your mother didn’t seem to mind the getting together and eating once she started.”

  “It’s the difficulty of taking that step, getting from one thing to another, letting go of the house.”

  He nodded, his expression distant, as if his mind was half on something else.

  “I hope you’re not bored. Sometimes my family gets started on a story and they go on for hours.”

  “I’m enjoying it. What might have been, right?”

  “Do you wish your family had stayed? They could have built another house, I suppose. They still had lots of land.”

  “Maybe we would’ve gone to school together.”

  “But then I wouldn’t like you, because I’d remember you pulling my hair.” She wasn’t aware of moving closer until her arm pressed against his, sending quivery feelings all the way to her stomach. She quickly leaned away.