While the men were busy, I slipped away. This visit hadn’t gone quite as I’d planned.
I tried to relax as I drove, but Liam had compounded the unease resulting from Spencer’s visit, which I’d come here to escape. It seemed to me that no matter how many improved roads or cleaned cabins I distracted myself with—at some point, my nerves would stretch too tightly, and then what would happen? Would I explode? Would that be any better than simply telling Ellen the truth?
The car swerved. I nearly left the road. Where had that thought come from?
No, that was never going to be a possibility. The truth was the truth, and the actual truth was that Ellen hadn’t been born to me, that she had come to me in a very different, but no less genuine, way, and after so many years, excellent years, it couldn’t be undone. No matter what.
I was back onsite for the final dismantling of the springhouse, and a few days later when the logs were put into place for the new house. The porch would integrate with those logs. I tried to target my visits for when the crews were gone so I could stand where the deck would be and consider the view. Sometimes I sat in Roger’s lawn chair, put my head back, and listened to the old familiar songs of nature. How different would this be from what I’d grown up with? Not very. It gave me comfort.
On the other hand, the perspective from the back deck would be different. It would be wide and span most of the back of the house. What would I see? The cabin, of course, and also the creek, the cemetery, and as far up toward Elk Ridge as the forest would allow. It would be perfection.
I was at the jobsite when the stonemason reerected the chimney. I’d taken the mystery box that had served its owners like a safe-deposit box under the hearth to an expert in Richmond to be opened. We discovered old documents, along with some ancient cash, plus the original survey plat of the land and an old will. I was having a copy made of the plat, which I’d frame and hang on the wall by the fireplace.
Per Roger’s advice, I’d been picking through the metal storage unit in the front yard and had found some antique tools with decorating potential.
The main room would be large and open across the back of the house where it met the back deck. The kitchen would be on the south side of the house. On the other end would be bedrooms and a study. The master suite would be upstairs, again with an outstanding view of Cub Creek, Elk Ridge, and the glorious woods in which I’d grown up.
A beautiful house with a beautiful view. I didn’t want to live alone, but if that’s how it ended up, and it looked like it might, then so be it. I’d have my pottery cabin and continue my business from here. I didn’t need the storefront.
All those years of growing up barefoot and living on a meager budget had been unnecessary, and I didn’t understand why my grandparents had chosen that lifestyle, but they had, and I respected that. While I didn’t like excess or waste, I had never embraced an unnecessarily parsimonious lifestyle for Ellen and myself. As long as I had the choice, I never would. In fact, had I not needed to clean those houses for cash—that first loss, the greatest loss, would never have happened. How might that have changed how Gran and I responded to the gift Mr. Bridger left on our porch?
These thoughts flitted through my head as I watched the progress, the changes, occurring in Cooper’s Hollow. Framed and roofed, the house looked huge, vast and echoing. Almost churchlike? Solemn. A work in progress teetering on the edge of the future.
Suddenly, doubt hit me. I stood at the wall of window openings that overlooked the back. The toolshed was long gone, the springhouse was gone, the pottery cabin was looking better, and the cemetery in its peaceful setting seemed almost eternal. It wasn’t, of course. Nothing lasted forever.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow. A small shadow atop the cemetery wall. Perhaps an animal?
I stared at the cemetery and at the hill. The only shadows were those cast by the trees. Anything else was born of my imagination. Reassured, I smiled and looked down. Eventually the deck would be finished, but for now it was about a three-or four-foot drop down to the raw, red dirt and I needed to mind where I stepped.
I drove home but couldn’t rest. The baby book was still on Ellen’s desk. I didn’t want to touch it. It was an emotional bomb for me. Or was it a warning that things—my life as I knew it—were about to change beyond my own plans, beyond my control, beyond all recognition?
Could I take counsel with Duncan? He was still my attorney. I didn’t doubt his discretion. But anything, once told, was subject to be repeated or written down or to be divulged in some way whether on purpose or accidental.
It was a huge risk. I’d lived in this bubble for the last few years, had grown comfortable and almost complacent, but with Liam in town, it was as if my chickens were—more than metaphorically—coming home to roost. What I’d sown might have to be reaped after all. Did my original intent matter? Not in the face of the actual choices I’d made and acted upon.
There was no one I could speak to about it.
I could talk to Liam.
No. The idea sent a jolt, a painful, burning jolt, throughout my body. No. I rejected the possibility of it. Despite . . .
Despite how he’d looked, standing there in the low light, in the echoey openness—a tall man dressed in old jeans and a cotton shirt, his hands hanging at his sides—I sensed a need in him, something missing. Did I sense it because I knew about Ellen? Or was that my conscience speaking?
I knew nothing about him, really.
He could be a worthless drunk for all I knew.
Regardless of right or wrong, or of what it might do to me, I couldn’t risk exposing my daughter to so much unknown.
I’d done what George Bridger had wanted me to do, hadn’t I? And he’d certainly known his son better than I did.
I set my small cooler in the area that would be the kitchen, and I could clearly see how that would look now, and then carried a crate of peat pots out to the raised garden beds Roger had constructed. He said the rest of the landscaping could be managed around them. This act, the first round of transplanting of my plants, seemed like an official event. The first step of the actual move. Now I needed the house to be finished. A minor point, I joked silently.