A Walk Through a Window (19 page)

That had Captain Cameron written all over it. Darby remembered what he said about picking up lumber in Quebec. But it meant she might never find out about the people on the ship. Maybe she needed to buttonhole Nan for more details.

Darby signed out a few books for extra reading and hurried home. Since she was banned from the skateboard, she practised her balance by carrying the books on her head. She managed to make it almost all the way up the
front steps with a big fat book (boringly entitled
Ireland in the Nineteenth Century
) on her head when Nan dashed past. She had something khaki-coloured in her hands, and it was smoking. Darby followed her into the kitchen to find her dousing Gramps’s old military uniform in the sink.

“He got lost in a television program on Scotland,” she said harriedly, “and he forgot he was in the middle of ironing his uniform.”

Her hair was sticking up and she looked exasperated. “This is why I do the ironing around here, and don’t you forget it!”

“Okay, Nan.”

Since Darby hadn’t ever ironed anything in her life, she figured that agreeing was a pretty safe bet. She also decided it might be a good time to make herself scarce, so she grabbed one of the coffin ship books and Nan’s knobbly sweater to sit on, and headed out to the porch.

Several hours later, Darby was deep in the middle of copying out a passenger manifest from her book when Nan called from the kitchen.

“I sent Gramps out into the garden an hour ago for a handful of the last raspberries, and he hasn’t come back in.”

Visions of the cenotaph danced in Darby’s head. “Do you think he’s taken off, Nan?”

“No, dear, I know he’s back there. I’ve been making pastry and I can see the gate from here, but I just hope he hasn’t dozed off in the sun.” She rolled her eyes. “You know how Gramps is about something like sunscreen. Stubborn doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“Okay, I’ll go have a look.”

Darby took the two glasses of lemonade that Nan pushed into her hands and elbowed her way out the screen door.

She paused on the step to take in the warmth of the day. It was strange—after the journey on the
Elizabeth
, the headache had been so much milder than the first time, but the cold wouldn’t leave her, even with Nan’s sweater. After staggering home from Gabe’s back garden, it had taken at least half an hour under the shower to get warm. Unfortunately, this meant she used up all the hot water and Gramps had to yell for a while, just to get it out of his system. He seemed fine by breakfast the next day, though. Darby figured he’d forgotten all about it by then. Who said Alzheimer’s didn’t have its advantages?

Looking around the garden, at first glance Darby reckoned Nan must have blinked. There was no sign of Gramps anywhere in the backyard. Both of the big Adirondack chairs were empty and he wasn’t in the garden, either. She was just going back in to report to Nan when something caught her eye near the raspberry bushes. It looked like a shoe.

Sure enough, when she peeked into the spot Gramps had shown her a few weeks earlier, there he was. Most of the berries were gone—either picked or dried up—so the area underneath formed a little hollow that couldn’t really be seen from the house.

It was dim and leafy and cool under there, so Darby set down the glasses and crawled in herself.

“Hi, Gramps. Feel like a lemonade?”

“Sure thing, kiddo. Bring it on in.”

“Uh—are you sure, Gramps? Wouldn’t you rather drink it in your chair?”

“No, sir. It’s like an oven out there, and if I sit in the sun, Etta will be after me to rub some of that stinking lotion on. Just bring it in here.”

Darby crawled back out of the bushes and gave Nan a thumbs-up sign through the kitchen window, even though she felt a little anxious. She was not so worried about bringing him the drink, but she’d noticed he had two of his old scrapbooks with him and she didn’t want to ever live through a repeat of the big argument.

She took a deep breath to steel herself before grabbing the glasses and a cork mat that had been sitting on the little table outside. Bending low, Darby passed them all through to Gramps in his raspberry cave.

When she crawled back inside, she saw that Gramps had managed to find the trunk of a tree to lean on. He looked pretty comfortable, but it was weird to see him there. Sort of like some wrinkled-up little boy, hiding in his fort.

Darby picked up her lemonade and prepared to knock it back in one gulp. Gramps had a faraway look in his eyes that she didn’t like at all.

“Have ye ever found yourself in a situation you don’t understand, kiddo? Where ye feel like a fish out of water?”

Darby darted a look at her grandfather, but his face was serene. She couldn’t think of a better way to describe her summer than those very words. She took a sip of lemonade instead of a gulp, and sat back a little.

“You know,” he said, “I was only twenty when I first saw combat, and I felt like a goddamned beached fish the whole time I was there.”

The strange thing was, when Gramps described his experiences going to war, he sounded almost as freaked out as Darby had been over the past few weeks. She adjusted her position so as not to get poked in the side by a raspberry root and listened to him talk.

Darby didn’t know Gramps had been a pilot. He told her about seeing all the soldiers coming back after the Second World War when he was a kid, and how it made him think guys in uniform were the bravest men on the planet.

“But in the end, the whole thing was a disappointment,” he said. “Even after more than fifty missions over China, being fired upon by MiG fighters—well, let’s just say there was no hero’s welcome for us when we returned.”

Darby edged a little closer and glanced into one of Gramps’s scrapbooks. “I guess the war in Korea maybe didn’t seem as important as the Second World War?”

He shifted his shoulders. “War isn’t a popularity contest, kiddo. In the end, it was the men I fought with I cared about the most. They were the ones who put their lives on the line.”

Gramps ended up telling Darby stories all afternoon, pointing out guys in his scrapbook, and showing her where he flew his missions on a map he had tucked in the back. He didn’t give any sign that he knew she’d ever seen the scrapbooks before.

Nan’s voice finally called through the kitchen window
to tell them dinner was ready, so Darby crawled out of their spot under the bushes. She had to help Gramps up. Sitting under the raspberry bushes had made him pretty stiff and he really hobbled on his way over to the back door. He paused, and Darby could see him stop to stretch his back out a bit. She was right behind him with the empty glasses in one hand and his scrapbook under her arm.

“Thanks for telling me about that stuff, Gramps. It’s so cool you were a pilot. Wait ’til I tell my friends at school.”

He looked at Darby in a puzzled way. “You never made it to school, Allie. What are you talking about?” He walked into the house and refused to say another word for the rest of the evening.

Later that night, she was up in her room writing down a few notes in her summer journal when there was a knock at Darby’s door. Nan stuck her head through the opening and smiled.

“I thought I might find you playing on your new contraption,” she said, as she came in and closed the door.

Darby laughed, but she closed her journal in a hurry. “I haven’t managed to play on it since that first night, Nan. Too busy, I guess.”

Nan perched on the edge of the bed. “I see you are making good use of Michael Stevens’s basket,” she said. It was sitting on the bedside table. “That’s quite a collection.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Darby agreed. The smooth piece of the hearthstone from the
Elizabeth
nestled in the basket, alongside the other rocks.

“You have chosen such beautiful colours,” she said. “Look how striking they look together. That pale green piece against the red sandstone. Even the broken grey shard looks beautiful in that basket.” She patted Darby’s hand gently. “But I didn’t come up here to talk about your rock collection. I just want to thank you. It was very kind of you to spend the afternoon with Gramps, dear.”

“Actually, Nan, it was okay. He was telling me all about being a pilot and patrolling over China during the Korean War. I had no idea there even
was
a Korean War. At school we’ve only learned about the First and Second World Wars.”

“Oh, your grandfather can really go on with his war stories. I remember he cut a very dashing figure in his uniform when he returned from his tour of duty.”

Darby grinned. “Swept you off your feet, right, Nan?”

She smiled and smoothed a wrinkle in her dress. “Well, yes, he did. I had a very romantic vision of life in those days. Things were so different than they are now, of course. Your Gramps just wanted to take care of me and our family.” Her voice faltered a little and she took on the same sort of faraway look that Darby had seen in Gramps’s eyes that afternoon.

“One day, before he left for the Far East, he found me reading poetry in the graveyard.” She paused and her distant look changed to a positively evil grin. “Of course, I had my sister watching for him all along, so
she signalled me when he was coming and I draped myself most becomingly over an old tombstone.”

Darby grinned again. “Nan! You were trying to catch yourself a boyfriend.”

She blinked her eyes at her granddaughter. “Gramps hasn’t figured it out to this day,” she said with a straight face. They both burst out laughing.

Nan stood up and put her hand on the door. “I do want to thank you again, Darby. And I realized today that you have not been to the beach even once on this visit. I’m going to arrange a trip soon, I promise. We have to visit the shore before your parents arrive—they will be here next week!”

“Oh—okay, Nan. Thanks.” A trip to the beach was the last thing on her mind. She needed to find Gabe and ask him about the
Elizabeth
.

But Nan didn’t seem to notice the obvious lack of enthusiasm.

“Wonderful. It will do us all good. You certainly can’t come to the Island and not even visit the beach.” She looked thoughtful. “You know, Gramps is not himself these days. A trip to the shore will cheer him up, too. I think he’s a bit lonely, though he doesn’t seem to want to go visit with his old cronies the way he used to. There are so few of them left, I guess.”

“What about Ernie, the cab driver?” Darby asked.

“Yes, Ernie is a dear. He’s almost ten years younger than Vern, though, and his only experience in the war was as a supply clerk, though you’d never know it to talk to him.” She smiled gently and opened the door.

“When we got married, Darby, Vernon promised to look after me, and I him. He has cared for our family all these years and I plan to do the same for him as long as I can. Thank you for helping me do that this summer.”

She closed the door softly and left Darby to her thoughts.

The next morning, Gramps used up the last of the milk making his porridge, so he handed Darby enough money for milk and a pack of red licorice and sent her off to the corner store. Darby took the opportunity to skate past Gabe’s house before heading to the store, but there was no sign of anyone around, and all the windows were dark.

By the time she glided back down the street with the milk under one arm, she noticed a strange car parked in front of Nan and Gramps’s house. She set down her skateboard quietly on the porch and walked around the back to put the milk away in the kitchen. Nan was sitting at the kitchen table talking with a lady Darby didn’t recognize.

“This is Ms. Fraser from the social services department,” Nan said, her voice sounding artificially bright. “Darby is our granddaughter, from Toronto.”

“Ah—from away, are you?” Ms. Fraser said with a smile. “I’m actually just leaving, but it is nice to meet you all the same.” She turned to Nan.

“Thank you so much for the tea, Mrs. Christopher.
I’m glad to see you have things so under control. You’ll let me know if anything changes or if you need a helping hand, won’t you? I’m just a phone call away!”

She wiggled her fingers at Darby and Nan ushered her out the front door.