“Yes. I know that.”
If Monsieur Wilde knew they were talking about him, he gave no discernible sign of it. Nor did he seem to be bothered at all they were speaking in French. He was looking towards the house, blinking as men did when they tried not to show emotion.
For the second time Jean-Philippe turned to see Lydia, this time approaching them over the grass with a basket in hand.
She spoke only a few words in passing it to the Acadian, but what she said made his eyes fill, too, as he said, “Thank you” in English.
She said he was welcome—that much at least Jean-Philippe could understand—and not looking at anyone else she turned round, heading back to the house.
Jean-Philippe didn’t want to betray his own interest by watching too long, so he glanced down instead at the basket in Boudreau’s hand. There were eggs in the basket, a wrapped block of sugar, a bottle of what looked like wine, and a small sack of something that might have been tea.
“It’s for my wife,” the Acadian told him, his voice slightly roughened.
Unable to help himself, Jean-Philippe looked back at Lydia, walking away from them. “She is good, also.”
“Yes,” said the Acadian.
“Yesterday, though, when you saw her, you left.”
“That was out of respect. Because I did not wish to upset her.”
“Why would you upset her?”
Boudreau, bending down, took the pitiful coffin and set it upon his one shoulder, and looking at Jean-Philippe told him, “You have much to learn, Marine, about this family.”
And saying no more to him, thanked Monsieur Wilde and was gone.
Charley
Willie McKinney, our stonemason, was hard at work in the trench that surrounded the Wilde House foundation when I came on site. He was flirting with Lara.
I really liked Willie. A burly big Scot from the Isle of Arran, he had a great accent, a great russet beard, and a great sense of humour.
“You’re finding more nails for my coffin then, are you?” he called up to Lara as she sorted through what remained on the sifting screen.
“Only a couple,” she called back.
“Well, don’t give up hope. Morning, boss,” was his greeting to me. “You look fancy.”
“I dressed her,” said Lara.
“Well, that would explain it.” And with a broad wink, Willie picked up his mallet and went back to sounding the walls, pounding on the foundation stones to see if he could detect any movement. He normally had an assistant at work with him—more an apprentice, I reasoned, who did all the side labour, fetching tools, moving thing, cleaning up afterwards. I didn’t see him today. “Sent him out for more sand,” Willie said, when I asked.
Lara, still sifting, said, “Plenty of sand here.”
“Not sharp sand. That stuff there’s too dead,” he replied. “It won’t support weight like sharp sand.”
“If you say so.” Her tone was offhand but I realized, on seeing her smile, she was flirting back, and I’d have moved along out of their way if she hadn’t said, “Come look what I’ve found so far. Just don’t step in the dirt with those shoes.”
Which was easier said than done. I rarely wore high heels, and when I wore them I wasn’t entirely graceful. Keeping my balance, I stepped from the brick walkway onto the grass to examine her little collection of finds. There were three nails, including a lovely old forged one; two pennies, not old, and some pieces of porcelain that looked to be from the same plate.
Lara poked the porcelain bits and asked me, “Those are old, right?”
“I’m not sure. Dating porcelain can be kind of difficult, unless you know the pattern or you have a maker’s mark, or you can get someone to carbon-date it. But they’re not new, I don’t think.”
“They’re pretty. I can clean them up and add them to the tray upstairs. You never know, we might find more.” She looked me up and down and said, “You really do look fancy.”
From the trench beside us, Willie chimed in, “Told you.”
Lara smiled. “It still needs something, though. I don’t know what. Just something.”
“Work boots.” That was Sam’s voice, and I turned to see him coming up the path.
“Of course,” said Lara dryly. “Just what every outfit needs.”
“I’m serious.” He had his own on, with the T-shirt, jeans, and tool belt that made up his daily uniform. “We’re starting on the siding this week, and the roof is next, so if you want to stand around out here you’re going to need some work boots. And a hardhat.”
Lara made a face. “But not today, right? It would ruin Charley’s hairdo.”
Sam smiled faintly. “You look . . .”
“Fancy,” Willie said a third time.
“Nice,” was Sam’s choice. “This your lunch day?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, looking down. “The shoes are definitely fancy.”
“Every woman,” Lara told him, “needs a pair of power shoes.”
“Is that what those are?”
“Yes,” I told him, smiling back.
A bit of borrowed courage. And not only for the meeting with my grandmother.
? ? ?
My office looked innocent. Empty.
I switched on the fan, which was still plugged in right where I’d left it plugged in. Cast a carefully nonchalant glance at the outlet across from my desk, to make certain the lamp had stayed plugged in, too. So I could safely assume that whatever had pulled those plugs out of the wall before, when they had been in the socket behind my chair, just had a problem with that one particular socket, and not with my lamp or my fan.
Good to know, then, I thought as I sat in the awkward, self-conscious way I did all things when I thought I was being watched.
Rachel would have told me I was being over-sensitive. She would have looked around my office and assured me there was nothing there.
That’s what she’d said to me this morning, before breakfast, when I’d come down after showering to find her sitting wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa, with the television on.
“How was the ghost hunting?” I’d asked her, trying not to sound too curious, and she had shrugged and told me, “There was nothing there.”
I hadn’t argued with her. Hadn’t shared the fact that I had seen the phantom light shine in the Wilde House woods myself at night. Her life was mixed up enough at the moment, and right now she needed to go on believing that I was the steady, more practical one.
“You were out a long time,” I’d said, “looking at nothing.”
“Yes, well, Gianni’s really stubborn.”
She hadn’t gone further with that, so I’d left it alone. And I hadn’t asked how late she’d stayed out, because I had already known. I’d been sitting upstairs in my bedroom and reading, one eye on the clock, until I’d heard her come in at twenty-two minutes past one. Then I’d put down my book. Gone to sleep. I’d assumed she had, too.
Only seeing her sitting there wrapped in her blanket this morning had made me less sure. It was how she had sat as a little girl when we’d watched movies that scared her or made her cry. And while the blanket this morning had not been the same one she’d had in her childhood, she’d still worn it in the same way, like her personal armour—a signal for me to tread carefully.
Rachel was one of those people who didn’t like being approached when they felt upset. True to our family, she held things inside, so if she was bothered by something that Gianni had done or concerned about school starting or simply missing her dad, I’d have no way of knowing until she decided to tell me.
It might have been none of those things, I’d acknowledged as I’d glanced towards the TV. She had just started watching a movie that would, on its own, have been cause for the blanket—an old haunted house thriller, older than me. We had watched it together a couple of times, but this morning while eating my breakfast I hadn’t been in the right mood.
“It’s too creepy,” had been my excuse.
“But the ghost isn’t trying to hurt anyone, he’s just trying to right an old wrong.”