Authors: Isabel Sharpe
“Where I live, you could charge people a fortune to make their yards look like this.”
Megan laughed again, still nervously. “Mostly I grow what we eat.”
“Seriously, you should think about it.” If Megan was taking
in boarders, she had to need the cash. “Dominique had someone design a garden on our building's roof, and the guy could buy a Hawaiian island on what we paid him. I can take pictures of your yard and show some people I know who've moved to North Carolina fromâ”
“Thank you, but no.” Megan met Elizabeth's eyes then, expression calm but definite. “I just do it for our family.”
“Okay.” Had Elizabeth offended her? She hadn't meant to.
“Where are you from originally, Megan?”
“Oh.” She waved around her. “All over.”
“Your accent⦔
“I was born in Newfoundland, but we moved frequently.”
“Newfoundland, how
cool
!”
Megan looked taken aback. “Oh. Thank you.”
“So you moved a lot. Was your dad in the military?”
“He's an electrician.” She took a step away, arms folded, each hand clutching the opposite elbow.
“His company kept transferring him?”
She pressed her lips together. “He just liked moving.”
“I see.” Elizabeth tried to look pensive while she wondered if there was anything Megan would talk about in longer sentences. “I grew up in Milwaukee, then I lived in Boston for a while, now New York City.”
Megan nodded, head at an angle that made Elizabeth want to draw her. Madonna Among the Herbs. “How long do you think you'll be here?”
“I don't know.” She turned her face blissfully up to the sun.
“One month certainly.”
“But it could be longer?”
“Mmm. I don't know.”
“Ms. Detlaffâ”
“Elizabeth.”
“âI'mâ¦curious. About why you chose Comfort.”
Elizabeth opened her eyes. Megan was watching her a little anxiously. This would probably not be a good time to become
Babcia
and say Comfort had chosen
her
. At the same time, she didn't want to lie. Lies didn't belong in a place like Comfort.
“I had a fight with my boyfriend and needed to get away for a while.”
“Oh, I'm sorry.”
“Thanks.” Elizabeth did another visual sweep of the garden. Sage, thyme, lavender, tarragon, oregano, dill, rosemary, basil, vegetables Elizabeth recognized and a few she didn't.
“Dominique is a chef, so our garden has herbs and vegetables too. Here's his card.” She dug in her purse and handed it over proudly.
Dominique!
in gold, the name of his restaurant, then underneath, his cable show:
French Food Fast
. “Are you the cook of the house?”
“Yes.”
“Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“With children? I saw the playroom⦔
“Three. Two girls and a boy. My mother-in-law lives with us too.”
Wow. Three answers to one question. “What does your husband do?”
“Stanley is a salesman.” Megan looked back down at the brick path. “He sells physical therapy equipment.”
“Does he travel a lot?”
“Two weeks out of the month.”
“Ouch. That's hard, I know. My boyfriend not only travels, but when he's home, he's gone all day and way past midnight at his restaurant. It's that much harder to have any kind of relationship, isn't it?”
“I guess.” Megan's cheeks flushed; she turned away. Obviously, Elizabeth shouldn't have said anything about relationships, though she'd only meant to show sympathy. “I'll show you the apartment now.”
“That would be great.” She followed Megan on the flagstone pathway to a side entrance in the garage, anticipating the sight of what she hoped would become her new home, up a flight of steep, musty stairs carpeted gray blue.
The place was small, two rooms and a bathroom, the bedroom in wall-to-wall dark, plush gray, a single bed covered by a quilt sprigged with tiny pink flowers over a rose-colored bed-skirt, a mottled dark wood dresser with more of that intricate lace draped across the top, and a plain blue chair with a couple of white paint drips on its seat.
In the living room, a navy love seat with red-white-and-blue pillows, a bare coffee table, an eagle-emblazoned rocker by the window and an overstuffed chair in what looked like a homemade maroon slipcover. More lace curtains blew gently in the warm breeze. In one corner, a small brown refrigerator, a sink with two cabinets above, two below and a two-burner electric cooktop sitting on its tiny counter.
Elizabeth walked through, stood in the center of each room and felt an aura in the place. Honesty. Hard work. Pride.
“I'm sure it's not what you're used to.”
“Oh, no, it'sâ”
“The kitchen's not much. Rent includes supper in the house
with the family every evening if you want. Or not, if you'd rather not.” The last added somewhat hopefully.
“It's perfect.” Hodgepodge, mismatched, and perfect.
“Really?” Megan was looking around as if Elizabeth were talking about some other apartment, and she'd like to know whose.
“Yes, really. And that lace⦔ She sighed rapturously, walked over and stretched the panel out into the room. Exquisite.
Handmade
. “Did you get it locally?”
“Weâyes. Most of it.”
“I'll want to buy tons to take home.” Elizabeth dropped the curtain and turned in a complete circle, arms wide. Imagine waking up in that cute bed, hearing the birdies chirping a good-morning song worthy of a Disney movie. Drinking her coffee with a view of mountains, reading by the window in the rocking chair. She could picture the life so clearly it was almost as if she'd already lived here. “I'll take the place.”
“Oh.” Megan backed up a couple of steps. “When were you thinking of moving in?”
“Right away. Today. Right now.” She couldn't believe the positive vibes she was getting from this whole experience.
You win,
Babcia. She was meant to be here, in this room, near this house, in this tiny town in a state she'd never visited before. And even if she never figured out why, the experience was already uplifting and healing. Her panic over the last few days had completely abated.
“The kids can be loud. You might not be used to that.”
“I'll love it.”
“They're around all day, not in camp or anything.”
“It's not a problem.”
“Iâ¦will need to make sure your check clears.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I can pay cash if you point me to an ATM.”
“Cash.” Megan slid her eyes sideways, as if to consult the door. “Well.”
“I have excellent credit. No criminal record. I'm quiet, neat and clean. I don't smoke or use drugs. I'm on a journey I don't understand yet, but I hope to soon. Maybe you're supposed to share it with me.”
Megan looked slightly horrified at this last impulsive addition to Elizabeth's speech. Her lips parted, closed. Parted again. “I don't think I need to go on aâ¦journey with anyone.”
“Right. Okay.” She rubbed her forehead. Too much too soon.
“Then maybe I'm here to learn from you.”
Megan laughed her nervous laugh and took another step back. “I have nothing to teach anybody.”
“My grandmother used to say, âEveryone can be a teacher, if only by example.'” Elizabeth smiled encouragingly. “Which would make me a student just being around you.”
“Ah.” She looked as if she wanted to step back farther, but she was nearly at the door and might topple down the stairs.
“I know this sounds crazy because you haven't lived through the past few days with me. Even I thought it was crazy at first. I still don't know why, but I need this time to be away from my life.” Elizabeth moved toward her, eager to explain this much at least. “When I walked into the Chit Chat Café, the first thing I saw was your advertisement tacked to the community board. The breeze from the door blew it toward me. The fringe tags with your number tapped me on the shoulder, âHey, Elizabeth, check me out.' This apartment is
exactly
the type of arrangement I imagined when I flew down here, but I never dreamed
I'd find it. Now here it is. And here you are. And here I am.”
Elizabeth waited anxiously, afraid she'd babbled on too long, willing Megan to understand how important this was to her, and who knew, maybe to both of them.
Megan took in a deep breath which pushed the slight bulge of her stomach against the knit fabric of her loose dress, then exhaled so the material deflated to hang straight again. “No one else has come asking about the place. I could use the money. If you want it, it's yours.”
Fiona's love, Calum, lost his father to illness the previous year. He fishes alone in the
voesâ
the small fjords of the islandsâor goes out farther with Fiona's father, Andrew. This week his mum has gone to Lerwick by horse carriage to see a doctor for Calum's younger brother, who is ill. Fiona's mother, Mary, and her father invite Calum to share their Saturday dinner of
krappinâ
a stuffed fish dishâand oat bread Fiona baked herself, praying the rounds would come out perfect and that Calum would notice and think what a good wife she'd make.
They have a merry time in the
but
end of the houseâthe main living areaâwhile outside, rain pelts the thatch and wind buffets the sheep and horses who roam there, feeding and watering themselves. Calum has never looked so handsome. He is tall, grown broad and muscu
lar with age, and fair-complected with lively brown eyes and boyish freckles, his short coffee-colored hair attempting as usual to escape its combing.
The talk is of fishing, of the storm that blew up from a beautiful calm and threatened the men and their catch, how they took down sails and rowed grimly over the writhing gray waves to a sheltered
voe.
How, while they waited out the gale, one man told a tale of his great-grandfather, approached during such a storm by a mermaid who tried to lure him into her arms with sweet songs and promises of safety. Had his friends not held him back he would have jumped overboard to have her. Legend has it that mermaids must bewitch humans into consummated marriage or suffer the loss of their beauty to unions with coarse, brutal finmen, amphibious creatures who have no love for the humans competing for their fish and women.
At the Tullochs' that night they talk further, about how the house next to Calum is empty, how Paul Halcrow and his wife and children left one night years back, taking nothing with them, and never returned.
Calum is thinking how pretty Fiona looks, firelight glinting in her eyes and off the fair strands of her hair. He feels the expectations of everyone around him that they will marry. His head tells him he won't find a prettier or harder working or more agreeable wife; his heart tells him she's loyal and good tempered; his loins tell him she's shaped to please and to bear him strong sons. But a voice coming from a place he doesn't understand tells him to be patient and wait. So he does, though Fiona is of marrying age and someone could steal her from him.
As the dinner breaks up, as he prepares to tramp over the wet and uneven land to his home, where he'll bank the fire, crawl into his enclosed wooden box bed and shut out the twenty-four-hour summer light, he finds himself asking if Fiona has seen where they're breaking ground for a lighthouse at Eshaness's highest cliff's edge, over by the
brochâ
an ancient round stone ruin.
She says no, shyly, eyes shining, and right there in front of her parents he offers to take her to see. Fiona says yes, hardly able to control her joy. Her parents beam; they like this young man, trust him and want their daughter to be happy with him almost as much as she does.
As Calum says his thank-yous and good-byes, there is a knock at the door, always unlocked, always open to strangers and friends alike, as is the Shetland way. A beautiful woman stands outside. Green eyed, ruby lipped, she clutches a black cape around her tall, proud, slender body and greets them in the voice of an angel temptress. She is Paul Halcrow's niece, Gillian, moved here from Unst, the most northern of the Shetland Islands, into her family's house next door to Calum. Would he bring his tusker and help her cut and stock peat the next day after church? She will pay him for his trouble, though she hasn't much to offer.
Watching her full lips surrounded by alabaster skin speaking such unexpected words, and watching her loose black hair blowing wild, Calum suddenly understands, as well as he understands the wind and tides on the surrounding sea, why he needed to wait.
Megan took a sip of coffee and grimaced. Too watery. She didn't like the new machine, or maybe she hadn't yet figured a way to work out proportions and grind. Her old maker had lasted five years before it vanished. She was used to things developing legs around the house, though so far, nothing too personal had disappeared, like jewelryâshe'd kill himâbut she'd liked that coffeemaker. When replacing it, she should have known better than to go for the lowest price. You got what you paid for.
Another sip, sitting in the backyard on the worn green lawn furniture handed down from Vera and Rocky. Megan didn't need to be rich, but being able to own things she enjoyed rather than put up with would be nice. She and Stanley had had big plans when they moved in, to renovate floors and bathrooms and cabinetry first, then gradually replace the worn and ancient furniture and appliances with quality. But money had been tight at first; they waited to try for children, then her body took a while to catch on to the idea of pregnancy. Everything changed while she was carrying Lolly, when she discovered her husband's other life.
She'd married Stanley because she loved him, but also, with her family moving again, to embrace the luxury of stability, of staying in one place with a chance to put down roots, form relationships that didn't have to be cut short before they'd deepened enough to become comfortable and dependable. Megan had read that sometimes soldiers hesitated to form close friendships in combat situations to keep themselves safe from grief on top of the fear and stress. Moving became her combat situation. She'd learned to keep to herself, devouring books, playing alone, spending time in her head. The skills stood her in good stead in this town. Things hadn't turned out the way she ex
pected, with her husband gone so often and with Comfort the way it was. Unless you were native, you didn't really belong.
The only deep friendship she'd developed in childhood was with her mother, Aileen, who stayed calm through the relentless upheavals, knitting the Shetland lace of her ancestors, passing along the craft and the stories to her daughter. Megan had wanted to pass the same along to Lolly and Deena, but she'd stopped knitting lace. She wasn't even sure they knew the curtains in their house had been made by Megan's mother and her grandmother Bridget. None of the lace her great-grandmother Fiona knit on Shetland had survived.
Megan settled back, adjusting her shoulder blades more comfortably against the chair's plastic slats. A cool breeze brought fresh herbal scents to mix with her coffee's too-weak aroma. This time of day was her favorite, early, just after dawn, before the kids got up, before Vera got up, when the only creatures sharing her day were birds and butterflies, none of whom asked or expected anything. The only time she could reliably be other than mother and wife except the precious hour before sleep when she escaped into a book.
Megan needed this morning more than most, having spent yesterday helping her new whirlwind move in. Taking her to Hendersonville to rent a car; giving her directions to the supermarket, then back home; in the middle of making oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies answering the phone to hear Elizabeth exclaim that there was so much pork in the meat section at the supermarket and hardly any chicken. Then calling Stanley with the news that she'd succeeded in finding a renter, and Stanley insisting he speak to Elizabeth, thereby giving the necessary head-of-the-household stamp of his approval.
At dinner, Elizabeth continued her examination, question
ing the kids, what were their favorite toys, movies, subjectsâ¦more questions than even Jeffrey asked, which was saying something.
This peaceful morning time gave Megan the energy she needed, charged her batteries almost better than sleep could, and good thing, because she hadn't slept well. All night long she'd wakened, her subconscious aware of Elizabeth's new presence as if she were sleeping right there on the floor in Megan's room.
The garage apartment window rattled up only yards from where she sat, making her jump and grip her mug too tightly. The screen grated up next and Elizabeth's blond head poked out, straight hair falling neatly into its fashionably uneven bob, even though she was still in her pajamas and probably just out of bed. Her bright blue eyes were closed; she breathed in the morning air as if it would save her life. Megan held still, coffee clutched halfway between resting and her next sip, memory bringing back New York's sounds and smells and the lung-starving feeling that there wasn't enough space or air. The move away from there was the only one she hadn't objected to.
Elizabeth's eyes opened; she scanned the sky, David's trees next doorâ¦
Maybe if Megan didn't move, she'd pull her head back in withoutâ
“Hey, good morning. It is so-o-o gorgeous here!”
Megan put her mug down, breathing through a wave of annoyance. Overreaction. Maybe her new housemate had woken early just today. Maybe it wouldn't be a habit and Megan could keep her sacred alone time for the next monthâor however long before Elizabeth left.
“Good morning. How did you sleep?” She kept her voice low to signal that the rest of the house wasn't awake yet.
“Like a
rock
.” Elizabeth didn't take the hint. “I couldn't believe how quiet it was. No shouting, no sirens. No honking horns.”
“Only birds.” Megan smiled more warmly than she felt.
And now you.
“They're wonderful.” She took another rapturous breath. “I'll get dressed and be right down.”
Megan picked up her mug again, wrapped both hands around its fading warmth. She'd do fine without her quiet time, even if Elizabeth did get up this early every day. For heaven's sake.
She got to her feet and wandered around her soothing garden. The tall okra plants were blooming well, unfurling yellow petals to show off deep purple inside. Some pods needed harvesting; if they grew bigger than three inches, they'd get tough enough to build with. Next to the okra, bees buzzed around the flowering mint. She brushed her hand over the rounded sage bush and pinched a rosemary needle to inhale its calming fragrance.
The side door to the garage opened and out stepped her tenant in another expensively casual outfit, a floral minidress that showed off her still-young cleavage and made Megan feel dowdy in her plain khaki shorts and pale olive T-shirt.
“Hi again!”
This time Megan put a finger to her carefully smiling lips.
“Everyone's still asleep.”
“Oops. Sorry. I assumed you were all up.” She stretched her slender, muscular arms above her head. “Mmm, is that coffee?”
Megan's smile drooped. She thought she'd been clear about supper being the only meal she'd offer. “Would you like a cup?”
“I'd love it, thank you.” She brought her arms down, smiling and more relaxed than the day before, when she'd been all nervous energy and draining excitement. “Just tell me where it is, I'll help myself.”
Megan started toward the house, ashamed to have been so grudging about a cup of coffee. “It's in the kitchen. I'll show you.”
“You don't have toâ”
“It's no trouble. This way.” Megan stepped into the house and into the kitchen.
“Good morning.” Vera, up already, shuffling in her green flowered robe and pink terry mules, fissured heels slipping sideways off the soles.
Grand Central Station this morning.
“Did we wake you?” Megan reached into the cupboard for Stanley's favorite mug, the biggest one they had, to scold herself for feeling so inhospitable.
“No. I was up reading. I can't sleep worth a nickel anymore.” She nodded to Elizabeth. “Getting old is not for sissies.”
“Bette Davis.”
Vera lowered herself stiffly into the chair, letting go the last few inches so she thumped down with her trademark loud sigh.
“I'm sorry?”
“Bette Davis said that.”
“That is such a pretty dress, Elizabeth. Megan, why don't you get something like that? It'd look real cute on you. Get Stanley to buy you a dress next time he comes home, he's always buying you things. Something with some color in it. You're always so drab.”
“We have better things to spend our money on, Vera. Do you take anything in your coffee, Elizabeth?”
“Black is fine.” Elizabeth walked around the kitchen touching everything in reach like a childâthe china plate on the wall, Jeffrey's black and red drawing of a battleship, the basket of still-unripe peaches. “This house is so nice.”
Vera raised her thin brows. “I'll show you the house
I
grew up in. Now that was a house. Built by a retired ship's captain who was sick of the sea in, oh, let's see, can't remember the date exactly⦔
“Here's your coffee, Elizabeth.” Megan thrust it out to her.
“A little weak I'm afraid. New machine I'm getting used to.”
“Thanks.” She took a sip, looked surprised and set the mug down on the counter, went back to touching. The bunch of mint in the glass on the sill; the tile backsplash; the butcher-block holder for Megan's knives; the vase of peonies with a doily underneath, leaving her mark everywhere. “Okay, now you have to tell me exactly where you got this lace. I've never seen anything like it.”
Megan set Vera's coffee down in front of her, then turned and began putting together plates of homemade biscuits, sliced plums and her own strawberry jam. All these questions. Let Vera answer how she would.
“I made that.”
“
You
did? Wow!” Elizabeth gently pulled the doily out from under the vase and trailed a reverential finger around its edges. Her hands were smooth and elegant, not yet showing the ten-dons and veins that had turned Megan's middle aged. “Tatting? Is that what you call it?”
“Ah, no. No no. This is Shetland lace, it's knitted.”
“Knitted!? You
knitted
this?”