The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress

Chapter Twenty-One





BELGRADE LAKES, MAINE, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1930



THE first snowfall crept in during the night. Stella woke to plumes of frozen breath clouding the air above her head. The chill settled across her cheeks and at the foot of her bed, where she’d tugged the blankets away from the mattress. She pulled her knees up and curled into a ball, dreading that moment when she would push the covers back and plunge into the cold air.

The kitchen door banged open downstairs, and she heard Fred’s heavy footsteps and then the thump of wood dropping to the hearth. The metal grate slid across the fireplace. Paper crumpled. The strike of a match against sandpaper. And then another, followed by a muted curse. A whoosh of air up the flue as kindling ignited. Soon she smelled the acrid scent of burning newsprint and heard the crackling fire. Her room had not warmed so much as a degree, but the knowledge of a fire burning downstairs gave Stella the motivation she needed to climb from bed and find her clothes.

Gone were the days when she went downstairs barefoot. Before leaving her room, Stella fished a pair of Joe’s heavy socks from the drawer and pulled on her hiking boots. In the eighteen years they’d been coming to the cabin, they had never stayed until first snowfall. She hadn’t bothered to bring winter clothes. In hindsight, it seemed a terrible oversight, but Stella made the best of her circumstances, dressing in layers with her robe over top.

“Don’t laugh,” she said, catching Fred’s raised eyebrow.

“I’m too cold to laugh, Mrs. Crater.” He rubbed his palms together next to the fire.

“Thank you for doing that.”

“I’d like to say it was for your benefit, but I’d be lying.”

Emma shuffled into the living room and scooted one of the wingback chairs next to the hearth. “I didn’t pack for this,” she said.

“No need. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

Both Fred and Emma turned toward her, curious.

“What about the grand jury? I thought you didn’t want to testify,” Emma said.

They’d avoided the postman for a week, refusing to answer the door and sign for the registered letter. But he’d caught up with Stella two days earlier at Irv Bean’s while she shopped for groceries.

Stella sat on the stacked-stone hearth. “We’re not going back to New York.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think a little vacation is in order. But first we have to close down the cabin.”

For the remainder of the day, they packed and cleaned. Stella took the screens off the windows and put them in the hollow beneath the stairs. Emma set all the taps to drip so that the glacial air barreling down from Canada wouldn’t freeze and burst the pipes. They stowed dishes in the cupboards and dusted while Fred oiled the door hinges and set mousetraps. Emma attacked the floorboards with an energy Stella didn’t think possible for her eighty years.

After a lunch of soup and bread, Emma slipped back to her room for a nap while Stella sorted papers in front of the fire. Fred kept the fire going strong all afternoon in between running errands. He had not received his wages since the end of July. Nor had he asked for them. When Fred brought her the mail and that day’s newspapers, she asked him to sit. He waited patiently as she sifted through the letters. At the bottom of the stack was another letter from the district attorney’s office. Apparently, Thomas Crain was undeterred by her lack of response and was following up with a second grand jury summons. As if she could forget. Fred watched with alarm as she tore it into small pieces and fed it into the fire.

“Shouldn’t you read that?”

“I already know what it says.”

“Why won’t you help them?”

“Thomas Crain doesn’t need any help destroying my life. He’s done a good enough job on his own.”

Fred wouldn’t meet her gaze. He watched the fire instead. “It seems like you’re fighting against the people who are trying to find Joe. They’re just doing their job.”

Stella cleared her throat. “Those men aren’t trying to find Joe. If they were, they’d be scouring New York City. They’re trying to place blame. And they see me as an easy target.”

“It doesn’t look good, is all, you burning those summons and running from everyone who asks a question.”

“Do you really think he’s going to come back, Fred? That he’ll walk through the door, give me that grin, and explain where he’s been the last two months?”


His face plainly said that he didn’t.

Stella tucked a wool throw around her legs. “Joe isn’t coming back. I have to protect myself.”

“Hiding up here won’t make the problem go away. You need to talk to them. You got nothing to hide. I was right here with you when Joe was in the city. He never came back up here.”

“Why don’t you tell them that?”

“They’re not asking me.”

“You could go forward.”

“It’d look like you put me up to it. Since I work for you and all.”

Stella pushed the hair off her forehead with her palm. “About that—”

The smile he offered fell short of kindness and settled on resignation. “Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Crater. I know you’ll pay me when you can.”

“That’s just it. I can’t.”

He wanted to ask for clarification, she could see that. But he didn’t. Instead, he sat quietly, waiting for her to continue.

“I can’t pay you. Without Joe, without his salary, I can’t pay anything.” Stella lifted her purse from under the chair and dug around the bottom until she found the keys to the Cadillac. She tossed them to Fred.

He looked at them as though she’d laid an egg in his palm. Or a sunflower. Or some other random object. “Do you need me to run an errand?”

“I’d like you to take the Cadillac as payment for what I owe you.”

He sighed, a desperate sort of thing, and said, “You don’t have to do that.”

“I owe you over two months’ wages. And I don’t have a prayer of finding the money. The court stopped cutting Joe’s checks. It’s this or nothing, Fred. I don’t have anything else.”

“What about Joe? You’re just gonna let him stay out there? Missing?”

She turned back to the fireplace and stoked the embers. “It’s better that way.”

Fred looked at her, dark eyes narrowed. “Better for who?”

“Me. Everyone. Even Joe, at this point. Can you imagine the questions he’d face if he were to show up? The accusations? We’d be ruined.”

Fred passed the keys from one hand to the other. They jingled in the silence.

“The title is in an envelope by the door. But there’s one thing I need before you leave. Consider it your last act of employment.” Stella wiped her soot-covered palms against her skirt. “I need you to drive Mother and me to Portland in the morning. It’s my turn to disappear.”