Jess’s look was non-committal. “You can’t just go and knock on her door after 68 years,” he said. “ ‘Hello Ma’am, are you still looking for help?’ ”
Jane decided to ignore the obvious. “We couldn’t find out which house she lived in anyway,” she pointed out. “General delivery means she picked up her mail at the post office.”
Jess scratched the back of his neck and shifted his weight restlessly. “It’s just an old letter. Probably someone was using it as a bookmark.”
“Maybe,” said Jane. He could be right. Perhaps she was making too much of it. “Look,” she decided. “I’ve got to go anyhow. My grandmother will be waiting for me. Maybe you should just give this to the librarian. We probably shouldn’t even have read it.”
“Whatever,” said Jess. Taking the folded paper from Jane, he poked it down into the pocket of his jeans. He followed her back around to the other side and bent to pick up his paint brush again.
“Nice to have met you,” said Jane. She didn’t expect a reply and didn’t get one. She could see Nell getting into her car at McPherson’s, and she quickened her pace before the vehicle came lurching down to meet her, spitting gravel and coughing dust onto the fresh paint.
She needn’t have worried. The Lake Car stalled before it reached the end of the driveway, and Jane seized the opportunity to clamber inside.
“I see you met young Jesse,” Nell smiled, gears grinding as they took off.
Jane opened the bag of candy and held it in Nell’s direction. “Do you know anyone named Fraser around here?” she asked.
Nell shook her head and waved the candy away. “Can’t say as I do. What did you think of Jesse Howard?”
“Weird name for a boy, if you ask me.”
“Not at all. It’s Biblical, in fact. Nice-looking young man, don’t you think?”
Nell’s car was awfully hot and the window on Jane’s side didn’t roll down any longer. “He’s okay,” Jane said. “Not exactly what I’d call friendly. Oh, the man at the store said to say hi to Mom.”
“Jackson Howard,” Nell nodded. “Man with his name on backwards.”
Jane blew into the empty bag and, holding it shut, burst it with a bang. “So you never heard of anyone named Fraser? Mrs. Thos. Fraser?”
“Why?” Nell asked, affording her a quick glance. “What’s this all about?”
“There was a book sale at the municipal centre,” Jane explained. “I was looking at some of the old books and a letter fell out of one of them. It was all folded up, from someone called Mrs. Thos. Fraser, and it was written in 1930.”
“Long time ago,” said Nell, craning forward to negotiate a curve in the road.
“I know, but the weird thing about this letter was that this Mrs. Thos. Fraser said she thought she was in danger, and she was writing to someone, asking for help.”
“What kind of danger?”
“I don’t know for sure. She said her husband’s brother had ‘terrible rages’. That she never would have come if she’d known.”
“My word! That does sound ominous,” Nell agreed.
“It was written to a woman who looked after a store, and the store was somewhere near water. I figured out that much. Maybe even the store here at the marina.”
“I’m not sure who would have had the store here, way back then,” said Nell. “It’s nice to see the Howards take it over now, though. Jackson’s been out west for years. He and Jesse came back just last fall.”
“Then Jess is his son?”
“That’s right.”
Jane looked at her watch, relieved that there would still be time for a swim before lunch. “I wonder what happened to Mrs. Thos. Fraser,” she mused, picking up one of the warm brown eggs which nestled in the container on the seat between them.
“Thos. is short for Thomas,” said Nell. “Mrs. Thomas Fraser.”
“Whatever,” said Jane, holding the egg to her cheek. “I’ll just call her Eugenie.”
Chapter 2
A steady rain greeted Jane her second morning at the cottage. All day it drifted, ghostlike, back and forth across the lake and sighed through the dismal trees. Jane spent most of the time reading, curled up under the lamp on one of the couches in the living room, listening to the rhythmic creak of Nell’s rocking chair, the intermittent popping of the fire in the cookstove, eventually falling asleep. When she awoke, stiff and chilled, she went to draw a chair up in the warmth of the kitchen where her grandmother was playing solitaire.
“I expect you needed that nap,” Nell said when Jane apologized for dropping off.
“Mom says I sleep too much,” Jane yawned. “She dragged me to the doctor, but I could have told her I wasn’t sick. Maybe I sleep to avoid arguing with her.”
“That’s too bad,” said Nell, counting out three more cards from the pile she held in her hand. “I expect it’s a stage you’re both going through.”
Jane stood up and stretched her arms above her head. “Mom doesn’t try to understand me anymore,” she stated flatly.
“Do you do the same for her?” asked Nell, looking up from the cards on the table.
“What’s to understand?”
“She hasn’t had an easy life, Jane.”
“Oh, you mean because of Dad? She’s the one who sent him away.”
Jane saw Nell bite her lip. “I think you know better, dear.”
Jane pretended to concentrate on the length of spider web strung between the little china figurines on the window sill, separating them one by one from its clutch. The worst thing she had ever heard Nell say about Dan Covington was that he was a man of little strength. ’Though Jane never knew what staying at a nine-to-five job had to do with a man’s strength. To Jane, her father was a man who dreamed dreams, a man who felt he had to follow them. Always sure that the next get-rich-quick scheme was the one that would do it for him, he had come and gone many times during Jane’s childhood, until finally Mary had suggested he leave altogether. But no one had ever bothered to ask Jane how she felt about it.
She is running, her mouth gasping for air, her legs pumping wildly. Her arms ache with the weight she is carrying. But no matter how hard she runs, she is slowly being drawn back towards a swirling vortex, back towards whatever it is that she is fleeing.
Jane awoke suddenly and sat up with a gasp, her pulse pounding. She had been dreaming. Realizing that was all it was, she lay down again, only to resume the tossing she’d started before the nightmare. She shouldn’t have spent so much time sleeping during the day, she decided. What was it the woman on the bus had said? That dreams are meant to connect you to something? She tried to recall the dream, to put together the pieces and think about what she might have been running from.
She was eating her cereal at the kitchen table the next morning, her book propped open in front of her, when Nell came back inside from the clothesline.
“Will you look at this?” Nell sounded exasperated. She set what looked like an ordinary red brick on top