Blackberry Winter: A Novel (19 page)

I sat up straighter in my chair. “So you know him? Or, rather, you
knew
him?”

“I did,” she said. “It was so long ago.”

My heart beat faster.

“How did you say you found my name?” she asked suspiciously.

“On a drawing,” I said. “A child’s drawing over at Café Lavanto.”

“Well,” she said, a stiff practicality tingeing the edges of her voice, “I’m not sure how I can help you. I was just a small child when he went missing.”

“Could we meet in person?” I had learned early on as a reporter that people always divulge more in person than they do on the phone. A senator had once confessed his marital affair to me at a lunch interview at Canlis restaurant during the salad course. I remember crunching into a bite of romaine when he told me about the shade of his mistress’s eyes. “Perhaps when we talk, you’ll remember something. Even a small detail might help.”

“Well,” she said, her voice softening a bit, “I suppose that would be all right. Would you like to come by tomorrow morning?”

“I would love that.”

“Good,” she replied. “I live in the Brighton Towers, a retirement home near the Market.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“You know,” she added, her voice trailing off, lost in memories, “my nephew took me up to Nordstrom last week, and we passed the old apartment building.”

“You mean Daniel and Vera’s?”

“Yes,” she said. “It warmed me to see that the old place hadn’t been torn down. It’s a café now, right?”

“Yes, Café Lavanto.”

“Developers treat old buildings like weeds,” she said. “They can’t wait to tear them down so they can build their fancy high-rise condominiums. They don’t know that they’re destroying history, and people’s memories, with their wrecking balls. Whoever owns that building is a good person, keeping it intact.”

I smiled to myself. “I happen to know the owner,” I said. “And he’s a great guy.”

“All right, dear,” Eva said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good-bye.”

A moment later, an e-mail popped up in my in-box. The subject line read, “Can’t wait to see you!” I looked at my desk calendar, where “visit with Emily” was written in blue ink on the slot for the afternoon. I’d promised my old friend Emily Wilson a visit. She’d moved to Bainbridge Island a few years ago, where she lived with her husband, Jack, in an old colonial owned by her ailing great aunt. I opened her e-mail.

If you want to take the 12:00 ferry, I can pick you up at the terminal at 12:45. You won’t believe how big the twins are. xoxo

I’d only seen her babies once, when they were just two weeks old. Ethan and I had visited when I was newly pregnant. We shared the news with them then, and I’ll never forget holding one of her twins, marveling at how I’d soon be cradling my own baby. She’d felt so delicate, so light. I remember feeling frightened by her little cry, wondering if I was prepared for motherhood. It came so naturally to Emily. She’d lifted the baby out of my arms with such ease, nestling the child to her breast as if she’d done it thousands of times before. I had looked down at my own belly, where a baby was growing inside, wondering if I’d be a good mother, like Emily seemed to be. I closed my eyes tightly, pushing the memory deeper into my mind, forcing it back into its dark corner. I looked at the clock on my desk. Already eleven thirty. I’d have to race to catch a cab to the terminal.

I sank into a booth on the ferry and leaned against the vinyl seat, gazing out at the V-shaped wake the vessel carved through the salty water. Seagulls flapped alongside the aging vessel, yelping and squawking, as if challenging it to a race. Eventually the outspoken birds tired of the game and flapped away.

Ethan loved the island. His parents had a beach cabin there, and we made regular trips. The four-bedroom home overlooking Eagle Harbor, however, was hardly a cabin, in the typical sense. It had a five-piece bathroom, a balcony off the master, and a chef’s kitchen, where Ethan would make buttermilk pancakes for me in the mornings. But lately he had been going alone. When my mom stayed on to care for me after the accident, Ethan spent six days at the cabin. My mom never forgave him for that. But as much as I had been hurt by his absence, in some way I’d understood. He had needed to grieve in his own way. He’d come home unshaven, with eyes that seemed vacant, distant.

I reached for my laptop, in its black leather case, and plugged the power cord into an outlet below the bench seat. The Word document I’d saved as “Daniel-Ray-Feature” contained only a title, “Blackberry Winter: The Story of a Lost Boy in the Snowstorm of 1933.” I stared at the flashing cursor and wrote a few sentences, then a few more. By the time the ferry’s horn sounded, announcing our approach to the island, I had written an introduction I was proud of.
Will I be able to finish the rest? Will I ever figure out what happened to Daniel Ray?

A short walk down the ramp to the terminal and I spotted Emily, waving her arm out of the driver’s side window of her aunt’s green 1963 Volkswagen Beetle. “You made it!” she called out, her voice muted by the sound of the engine.

I opened the passenger side door and tucked my bag and laptop case inside before turning to look at the backseat, half-expecting to see the twins tucked into their car seats.

“They’re at home with Jack,” Emily said, as if reading my mind. She looked happy, with her rosy cheeks and wispy blond hair tucked back into a simple ponytail. The pear-shaped diamond,
studded with rubies, on her hand sparkled in the sun that streamed through the window. Emily had recounted the story of the ring to me once. It had belonged to a woman Jack’s grandfather had loved a long time ago. I don’t remember the details of the tale entirely, but it exuded love from decades past. You could feel it when you looked at it. “Twenty months old yesterday,” she said. “Can you believe it?” Her happiness, so apparent, may as well have been written all over her with a permanent marker.

“I can’t wait to see them!” I said. It was a true statement, and yet if I was honest with myself, I’d admit that I was apprehensive, too. For every milestone of their lives would be a reminder of my loss.

“Sorry, Claire,” she said suddenly. “I know you’ve been through so much this year. Is it too hard for you to be around…?”

“Babies?”

“Yeah,” she replied cautiously. “I don’t know how you’re holding up so well. I’d be in pieces.”

There was no sense lying to an old friend. “I
am
in pieces.”

“Oh, Claire,” she said, her eyes narrowed, reflecting my pain. “I’m so sorry. I just grieve for you. Listen, if it’s hard for you to see the babies, just let me know. I just fed them, so we can go out for lunch instead. We don’t have to go back to the house.”

I placed my hand on Emily’s arm and gave it a firm squeeze. “I
want
to see them. It would break my heart not to.”

“You’re amazing, you know,” she said, navigating the car out of the ferry terminal. “You really
get
friendship.”

“What do you mean?”

“My aunt Bee has always said that contrary to what most people think, the definition of a true friend is not someone who swoops in when you’re going through a rough patch.” She shook her head.
“Anyone can do that. True friendship, she says, is when someone can appreciate your happiness—
celebrate
your happiness, even—when she’s not necessarily happy herself.” She looked at me with appreciative eyes. “That’s you, Claire.”

My eyes brightened. “Thanks, Em.”

She turned her gaze from the road for a moment. “I really mean that.”

“I bet they’re huge now, the twins,” I said, pausing to look out the window. The island’s lush evergreens whooshed by. “What’s it like, motherhood?”

Emily sighed, clasping the wheel a little tighter. “It’s frightening and wonderful all at the same time. And exhausting. I’ll tell you, honestly, for about a month after their birth, I secretly wanted to send them back.”

I giggled.

“I’m not lying, Claire,” she said. “I’ll never forget the moment when Jack came into the bedroom one night and one of the babies was crying in his arms; the other was crying in her crib. It was somewhere around two a.m. I was so tired. Sick tired. I sat up and dangled my legs off the side of the bed, and all I could think was,
I’ve made the worst mistake of my life
.” She shook her head. “But I got through it. The adjustment period, that is. Now I can’t imagine life any other way.” She turned down the winding road that led to her aunt’s property, and gave me a quick smile.

“I bet Jack is a wonderful father,” I said.

“He’s amazing with them,” she agreed. “He’s taking them on a walk along the beach right now. We got one of those double jogger strollers with those enormous turbocharged wheels that can handle the barnacles.”

“How’s your aunt Bee?” I asked. I wasn’t certain of her
age—late eighties, possibly nineties, even—but she didn’t fit the mold of an elderly woman. When I’d visited Emily on the island the first time, Bee had offered me a shot of whiskey.

Emily sighed. “She hasn’t been well,” she said. “The doctor says it’s her heart. They have her on all kinds of medications now. She’s in bed most of the time. I take care of her during the day, and we have a nurse who tends to her at night.” She shook her head. “Bee just hates being cooped up in the house. I caught her trying to sneak down to the beach yesterday afternoon. The poor thing is so frail, she nearly fell off the bulkhead.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “It must be so hard to see her deteriorate.”

“It is,” she replied. “And it sounds strange, but the house feels different without her at the helm. Something’s changed. I can feel it. Does that even make sense?”

“I know what you’re saying. When my grandma got sick years ago, the old house took on a different feeling too,” I said. “Like the soul had been sucked from the walls.”

“That’s exactly it,” Emily agreed. “Jack and I moved in with her right after we were married. Bee insisted. At first I worried the arrangement wouldn’t work, but we came to love it. It’s funny, I think we needed Bee just as much as she needed us. Her health has declined quickly, though, and the changes frighten me. She no longer mills about at six o’clock in the morning, or comments on the sea life outside the window. The newspapers pile up in the entryway because she doesn’t read them.
The New Yorkers
too. I actually cried the other day when I pulled the last jar of her homemade jam from the freezer. I stood there realizing that it may be the last jar I’d ever enjoy. She’s still here, of course, but I’m starting to miss her already.”

I ached for her, because I knew the type of sadness she spoke of. “I’m not sure what’s more difficult,” I said. “Losing someone quickly or gradually, over time.”

Emily wiped away a tear on her cheek with the edge of her hand. “Bee’ll be happy to see you. She loves visitors.”

She slowed the car as we approached the house. I stared out the window at the rhododendrons in bloom along the roadside, in shades of deep red, light purple, white, and coral. The road wound its way down to the waterfront, where the old white colonial gazed out at the Puget Sound. It looked wise, with its black shutters and stately columns. Wise and a little sad.

“Here we are,” Emily said, opening the car door. I stepped out and followed her along the pathway to the front door, where an empty double jogger stroller was parked.

“Mommy’s home,” Emily cooed into the entryway. I heard a chorus of giggles from somewhere inside, and a moment later Jack appeared holding two cherubs dressed in pink.

“Hi Jack,” I said, smiling. “Look at you. You’re a natural.”

Emily rubbed his back lovingly. “He gets up every morning with the babies so I can write.”

“Did she tell you?” Jack said, turning to me.

I shook my head. “What?”

“She wrote a second novel. It’s being published this winter.”

I smiled. “That’s fantastic, Emily!”

“Well,” she said, looking out toward the water, “I owe it to this place. It’s magic. I’ve never felt so creative. Anyway, come in! I know you don’t have much time, so let’s savor every second.”

We walked to the living room, and Jack set the twins down on a blanket scattered with toys. “They’re beautiful,” I said.

“Nora is a firecracker,” Emily said, pointing to the larger of the
two, who swiped a rattle from her sister’s hands. “She already argues with me.”

I laughed. “Your Mini-Me?”

Emily nodded. “I’m in for it. But Evelyn—we call her Evie—is our little peacemaker. The girls still share a crib, and when Nora wakes up crying, Evie pats her head. It’s the sweetest thing.”

“Adorable,” I said, handing Evie another toy.

Jack gestured toward the hallway. “Why don’t you take her to visit Bee?” he said to Emily. “She’s usually up from her nap about now.”

“Yes,” Emily said, “Bee would love to see you.”

I nodded and stood up, following Emily to a closed door at the end of the hallway. She knocked quietly, and moments later, we heard a feeble but friendly, “Come in.”

Bee wore a white nightgown. She lay in her bed, propped up by pillows. A stack of books and magazines sat untouched on a table to her right. She stared blankly out the open window, where waves rolled quietly onto the shore.