“All that skill, that talent, it’s in his blood,” Rebecca said. “Karl Senior and Anna’s father was a blacksmith.”
“Anna?” I said. “Everett’s mother?”
“Yes.” Rebecca nodded. “Everett’s mother and Oren’s grandfather were brother and sister.”
At that point Violet appeared in the doorway. “Dinner’s ready,” she said. “Please bring your glasses.”
The dining room overlooked the backyard. I’d been expecting a formal room, but it was actually very relaxed and welcoming. The table was set with a cream tablecloth and matching cream napkins with blue flowers, and flanked by six black leather Parsons chairs. Very comfortable chairs, I discovered when I sat down. Violet was at the head of the table, with Rebecca to her left and Roma and me to the right.
Dinner was sole with spiced vegetable stuffing, rice pilaf, tiny carrots and salad with mustard vinaigrette. Violet was an excellent cook. As she refilled our wineglasses I wondered how she’d ended up with a bottle of Ruby’s wine. They both loved music, but I didn’t know they were friends. Roma had apparently been thinking the same thing.
“Violet, why do you have a bottle of Ruby’s homemade wine?” she asked.
Violet set down her fork. “That’s right. I didn’t tell you,” she said. “Ruby’s going to move into the apartment over the carriage house.” She turned to me. “You probably noticed the carriage house at the end of the driveway.”
“I did,” I said.
“There’s an apartment on the second level. I haven’t had a tenant there for a long time, but I decided having a little more life around here would be a good idea.”
“When is she moving in?” Roma asked.
“End of the month. Unless the festival is canceled, in which case she may move in a bit sooner.”
Roma speared a carrot with her fork. “What do you think happened to Gregor Easton?” she asked. It seemed like a casual question; then I noticed how tightly she was clutching her fork.
“I think he was a debauched old goat who had most likely been engaged in something he shouldn’t have been doing with someone far too young for him,” Violet said.
“You think he had a heart attack or a stroke, then?”
“Don’t you?” Violet asked.
“It makes the most sense,” Roma said slowly. “From what I’d heard he was a man of large appetites. But if it was just a heart attack why are the police still investigating?”
I didn’t say that Easton’s death hadn’t been a heart attack—or most likely not even an accident. I wanted to see where the conversation was going.
“Because Gregor Easton was a celebrity of sorts. He died here, in Mayville Heights. To a lot of people that’s Nowhereville.” Violet poured a little more wine into her glass. “Why wouldn’t the police be extra thorough? As it is, there’s probably going to be some comments made about our ‘hick’ police department.” She looked at me. “Kathleen, you used to live in Boston. There is a big-city perception that a small town can be a little slow, isn’t there?”
“With some people, yes,” I admitted.
“What about you?” Rebecca said teasingly. “Did you think we were all a bunch of lumberjacks running around the woods in plaid flannel shirts?”
She popped a bite of fish and stuffing in her mouth.
“Not in the beginning, I didn’t,” I said. “Then my first week here Susan came to work one morning wearing a pair of fur-trimmed Sorels, a hat with earflaps and a red-and-black plaid jacket.”
Violet and Rebecca both laughed. “I think Susan feels the cold,” Rebecca said. “She’s a tiny person.”
“And plaid was in last winter,” Violet added.
“So, Susan didn’t leave you with the impression we were all a bunch of hicks?” Rebecca asked, setting her knife and fork side by side on her plate.
I took the last bite of fish and did the same. “No, she didn’t,” I said. “I’ve lived in a few small towns myself, so I’m aware of the stereotypes.”
“I thought you grew up in Boston,” Violet said. She stood to clear our plates.
“No,” I said. “I’ve lived all up and down the East Coast. My parents are actors.”
“Theater?” Violet asked.
“For the most part. My father has been in a number of commercials over the years. But most of the time they’ve been onstage.” I realized Violet had very skillfully turned the subject away from Gregor Easton and his death. Why? Was it just that she didn’t think that was suitable dinner conversation? Or did she have another reason? Beside me Roma sat silently playing with her fork.
“And you didn’t want to act?” Rebecca asked, finishing the last of her wine.
“No,” I said emphatically. “First of all, I didn’t inherit a drop of my parents’ talent. I can memorize lines, but I’m a big block of wood onstage.”
“You couldn’t be that bad,” she said.
“I could and I am. And sometimes I think acting held no interest for me because there was no lure to the exotic, the unknown.”
“What do you mean?” Violet asked, turning from the sideboard with a blueberry tart in a clear glass pie plate.
“I know how hard being an actor can be. I’ve seen the work, the rejection, the uncertainty. There’s nothing glamorous about it. Not to me.”
Violet cut a slice of the tart and handed it to Rebecca.
“What about the rest of your family?” Rebecca said, taking the plate. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I have a younger brother and sister. Twins.” Violet passed plates to both Roma and me.
“Do they act?”
I shook my head. “No. Sara is a screenwriter and filmmaker. She’s made several short films. She’s working as a makeup artist, as well. There have been enough movies made in and around Boston to keep her working pretty steadily.” I took a forkful of pie—juicy blueberries, a light custard filling and flaky pastry. “Mmmm, Violet, this is delicious,” I said.
“Thank you,” Violet said. “It’s Rebecca’s recipe.”
I raised my fork to Rebecca across the table. “Then thank you, too,” I said.
“It’s my mother’s recipe, actually,” she said. “Although I think you added a little nutmeg to the berries, didn’t you?” She looked at Violet, who was pouring coffee.
“Yes, I did,” Violet said. She handed me a cup. “You were telling us about your family. What does your brother do?”
“He’s a musician,” I said. “A drummer. He teaches jazz drumming and he’s in a band called The Flaming Gerbils.”
That pulled Roma back into the conversation. She almost choked on her coffee. “The Flaming Gerbils?”
“Uh-huh. Ethan has been in one band or another since he was a little kid. He put his first band together when he was in kindergarten. He called it Up Your Nose.”
They all laughed.
“What about you, Violet?” I asked. “Were you in a group when you were younger?”
“Not unless you count rhythm band in grade two. I played a mean triangle.”
“She did,” Rebecca said, solemnly. “Violet was a triangle virtuoso.”
“I did play rehearsal piano for pretty much anybody and everybody when I was getting my first degree,” Violet said.
“Where did you go to college?” I asked. Was it possible she’d known Gregor Easton at university?
“Oberlin College. It’s in Ohio. What about you?”
Easton had gone to the University of Cincinnati. “I went to Husson in Maine.” I smiled, remembering. “I may not have had any stereotypical ideas about Minnesota, but I definitely had them about Maine. I showed up with a suitcase full of sweaters, and they were in the middle of a late-summer heat wave.”
Thank heavens Lise had been my roommate. I wondered when I’d hear from her again. If anyone could dig up information about Gregor Easton, it would be Lise.
After we finished dessert Violet took me on a tour of the house. Every room was as beautiful as the living room and foyer. “Llŷn,” I said as we walked back into the living room. “That’s Welsh, isn’t it?”
Violet nodded. “It is. It means ‘lake.’ My mother’s parents were from Wales.”
Roma was looking at a large photograph that was hanging in the dining room. It was a street shot of the downtown by the lake, from, I guessed, at least fifty years ago. Violet joined her as Roma tried to pick out old landmarks. I sat beside Rebecca on the sofa.
“Violet’s a wonderful cook,” I said to Rebecca.
“She is. Even when we were girls she would take a recipe and change it just a little to give it her own unique touch.”
“Have you been friends a long time?”
“Forever. From the time we started school. Violet’s like my sister.” She settled back against the arm of the sofa and folded her hands in her lap. “I had two older brothers who teased me constantly. Violet was an only child. But she was fearless.”
Rebecca shook her head, smiling at something she’d remembered. “We weren’t allowed down by the lake,” she said, lowering her voice so we wouldn’t be overheard. “But we used to sneak down all the time. My brother Stephen told on us. The next morning when he got up his shoes were filled with wet sand—the pair he wore for school and his good pair for church.” She laughed at the memory. “It was Violet, but to this day I don’t know how she did it.”
I glanced toward the dining room. “It’s hard to picture Violet as a rebellious girl.”
Rebecca rubbed a hand over the sofa cushion between us. “I know she comes across as very reserved. Some people think she’s cold, but she’s not. Life has just made her seem that way.” She looked around the room. “Violet grew up in this house. She was only twenty-five when her mother and father died within six months of each other. Ten years later she was a widow with two little boys. If she seems unfeeling, well, is it any wonder? But inside she’s warm and loyal. I’ve always been able to count on her. I’d do anything for her and she’d do anything for me.”
“That’s what my mother calls sisters of the heart,” I said.
Rebecca glanced over toward Violet again. “I like that,” she said. She turned back to me. “You come from a very colorful family, Kathleen. How did you end up in Mayville Heights?”
Andrew’s face suddenly filled my memory—his big smile, his deep blue eyes, his blond hair that curled down over his collar when he was overdue for a haircut. Maybe it was what seemed like Rebecca’s genuine interest, or maybe it was two glasses of Ruby’s wine. Whatever it was, I answered honestly. “I ran away.”
Rebecca’s eyes widened. “From what?”
“From my life at the time. From my family—I love them, but they can use up all the air in the room.”
Rebecca nodded her understanding.
“And from the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with.”
I looked away for a moment. Violet and Roma had a photo album out now.
Rebecca leaned over and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you mind my asking what happened?”
I twisted my watchband around my arm instead of looking at her. “He married someone else.”
“Then perhaps you’re better off without him.”
“That’s what my friend Lise said. She also called him a no-good, scum-sucking elephant turd.”
Rebecca was silent for a moment. “I think I’d like your friend Lise,” she said finally, a bit of a smile playing on her lips.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” I said.
“I’m listening,” Rebecca said.
“Andrew—that’s his name—wanted me to take a leave of absence from my job and see the country. All of it. With him.”
“I take it you didn’t want to.”
“No, I didn’t.” I rubbed a finger over my thumbnail. “Rebecca, I lived in a lot of places growing up. Small towns, big cities, and everything in between. I’ve already seen a lot of the country. I want to stay in one place. I want to belong somewhere. The way you and Violet and Roma do.”
I looked around Violet’s welcoming living room. “Violet grew up in this house. The two of you have been friends almost your entire lives. I don’t know how many different places I’ve lived, and my whole childhood is in one cardboard box in a storage unit in Boston.” I twisted my watch around my wrist. “I just want to belong somewhere.”
“Your Andrew didn’t understand that.”
I looked over my shoulder, through the front window to the darkened street. “No, he didn’t. He went on a two-week camping trip in Maine after I said no. He came back married.”
“After two weeks?”
I nodded and tried to clear the lump in my throat. “Married. I went to work the morning after he came back, saw Everett’s notice about the job here and applied.” I held out my hands. “And here I am.”
Rebecca studied my face. “You miss him, though.”
“Sometimes. But it’s over. Time only moves in one direction: forward. So no matter how much I might want to change things sometimes, I can’t.”
Rebecca got a faraway look in her eyes. “There’s something special about first love,” she said. “But you’re right, it’s important to move forward. And your Andrew’s loss has been our gain.” She smiled at me. “I hope you’re starting to feel you belong here.”
Before I could answer, Roma poked her head in from the dining room. “Rebecca,” she said. “What used to be on the corner opposite the market?”
“Anderson’s,” Rebecca said at once. “They sold fabric. He was a tailor.”
Roma tapped the side of her head. “Anderson’s. Of course. Thank you.” She turned back to the album Violet was still looking at.
Rebecca looked at me. “Would you like to see what Mayville Heights looked like back in the good old days?”
“I would,” I said. We walked over to join Violet and Roma. The framed black-and-white photograph was remarkably sharp and detailed. Rebecca walked me down the street in the old photo, pointing out each building and sharing stories about herself and Violet.
“You know, the downtown really doesn’t look that much different,” I said. “I would have recognized the hotel and all those little stores.”
“That’s because the buildings were built to last,” Rebecca said.
“How about another cup of coffee?” Violet offered. “It’s decaf.”