The middle-aged woman Anna had introduced as her cousin Margaret stole looks at Elise every time she took a bite of food. And that was signal enough. She put down her napkin and said, “You are all very kind, but I know you are wondering about me.”
“Well,” Lia piped right up. “I was wondering about your dress and your shoes and if you lost your bonnet, the white one that made your eyes look so blue.”
Mrs. Quinlan said, “All interesting questions. But I think we should take turns, and Elise will answer only some of them. We don’t want to use up all her stories right away.”
“That’s all right, Mrs. Quinlan,” Elise said.
“Oh, no,” said Lia, as if Elise had committed some terrible breach of etiquette. “You have to call her Aunt Quinlan. Everybody does. But you don’t get punished if you forget,” Lia reassured her.
The girls thought of her not as a grown-up, not even as a woman, but as a creature out of her element, someone who was as new to this world as they were. And in that they weren’t entirely wrong.
Anna said, “That rule doesn’t apply to everyone. I’ll bet Elise has aunts of her own.”
“I do,” Elise said. “I have two aunts who are always coming up with schemes. The stories I could tell—” She paused for effect. “And I will tell them, if you’re interested.”
Margaret said, “Where did you grow up, Elise?”
From the corner of her eye Elise saw a quick flash of irritation cross Anna’s face, but she smiled at Margaret.
“In Vermont, on the Quebec border. My father has a farm outside Canaan, sheep and goats and dairy cattle and some crops. They make cheese, mostly, to sell.”
It had been so long since she had been asked—even allowed—to speak about herself that it came to her slowly, the things that could and should be said.
“I have been through the area,” said Mrs. Quinlan. “By sleigh, in the deep of winter.”
Anna smiled at her great-aunt. “During the war?”
“Oh, the war—” Lia began, but Jack reached over and cupped the crown of her head in his head.
“Not the war you’ve heard about,” he told her. “A war that happened a very long time ago. I am right, Aunt Quinlan?”
“It was 1812, and I was very young,” Aunt Quinlan agreed. “And very much in love with my first husband, though I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, not even myself. Elise, go on please and tell us about your family.”
She told them about her younger brothers, her parents, her two maiden aunts who spoke only French but on occasion tried English, to everybody’s amusement: Aunt Bijou’s Oh my cows! when she was startled, Aunt Nini’s But why the cockroach? when someone was making a sad face.
To her own surprise Elise found that she was still a good storyteller. Even the cautious and reserved Margaret was smiling.
She felt as if she had passed a test, one she had set herself. Leaving the convent, she had assured Mother Superior and everyone else that she would fit into the world again, but on some level she had doubted herself. Now she knew that it would take time, but that she could be Elise Mercier, and that the strangeness would go away, with time.
? ? ?
JACK HAD BEEN friendly and talkative on the way home, but he was unusually quiet during dinner. He smiled at the right moments and responded when somebody talked to him, and still some part of his mind was elsewhere. He might be thinking about the bridge disaster, or some other case, or his mother, or wondering how to say he disliked red cabbage. Anna resolved not to ask, out of common courtesy. She had always disliked being prodded to reveal what she was thinking about. He would tell her if and when he was ready. But what if he was waiting for her to ask?
Enough, she told herself, and fixed her attention on Elise, who had an unassuming way of answering personal questions, engaging and modest at the same time. When she talked about her family it seemed as if she were shaking the dust off parts of herself she had hidden away for safekeeping, small treasures to be studied and polished before she shared them, even in such a gathering of people who had welcomed her so warmly.
Elise looked very much like someone who needed a good night’s sleep, but there was an energy in her that wasn’t so easily subdued by weariness. Not a beautiful girl, but so alive and curious and filled with goodwill that few people would notice.
While the little girls helped Mrs. Lee with clearing the table and wiping dishes, Aunt Quinlan called for Mr. Lee and asked him to bring down certain boxes from the attic. Jack went along to help, which left the four women alone in the parlor where the windows were open to the evening breeze. Margaret picked up her sewing right away, but Aunt Quinlan sat studying Elise openly, as she might have studied an interesting painting.
“You have had a very long day,” Aunt Quinlan said. “But I hope another hour won’t be too much to ask. I think some of the clothes I have put away will suit you. They will need a good brushing and some adjustments, but with any luck they’ll hold you over until we can manage something new.”