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Eva was hot and her feet hurt. Why hadn’t she just stayed home? She heard a crash behind her— My God!
She wheeled. Andy appeared at the end of the path behind her, bobbing his head and breaking into a trot as he spotted her. Oh, for goodness sake. Eva’s heart was pounding.
The uncle was chasing Fanny and the dog, she was chasing the uncle and now Doris’s donkey was chasing her!
She let Andy catch up. He nuzzled the pocket of her shorts and she scratched his soft whiskery nose. “No snacks today, Mr. Andy.”
This was ridiculous. She’d turn around and go back to the house and change into some jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, grab a hat, put on some socks and proper shoes. Then she’d thoroughly search the Lord half of the island. She wouldn’t be able to sleep another night on this island not knowing what was going on with the little girl.
Okay. That was a plan. Accompanied by the donkey, Eva began to limp toward the creek again. She’d stepped on a thorn, probably from a rosebush or a blackberry thicket somewhere, blown onto the path. She leaned against a tree and inspected her heel, balancing on one leg. Her foot was so dirty she couldn’t see where the thorn had gone in her foot.
“Hey!”
She turned. The man who’d burst into her kitchen was standing at the bend in the path she’d abandoned. Eva straightened and faced him. “Did you find her?”
“No.” He shrugged, apparently not that worried. “She’s probably home already.”
“Home?”
“She knows these woods better than I do,” he said, ignoring her question. He gave her a cursory glance, from her toes to still-damp hair hanging in ropes. “Something wrong with your foot?”
“Nothing serious,” she said, instinctively rubbing her heel against her leg. “Just a rose briar. I’ll be fine.”
He surveyed her again, his eyes icy. “Shouldn’t run around the woods without shoes on.”
“I didn’t know I’d be leaving so quickly!” She felt a trickle of perspiration inch toward her nose and wiped it with the back of her hand. “What do you mean by bursting into my house like that?”
“I thought Fanny might’ve gone in there alone, to play. You weren’t answering the door—”
“I would have! If you’d had the courtesy to give me a few seconds!”
He shrugged again. “Sorry. Look, can I accompany you back to the house?”
“I’ll be fine. I think you should take better care of that child. Today isn’t the first time I’ve seen her. She can’t be more than five or six. What kind of uncle are you, letting her run around by herself like that? She could get lost or hurt….”
“Uncle?” He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Aren’t you her uncle Matthew?”
“Uncle Matthew?” He grimaced, an attempt at a smile. “Hell, no! I’m her father.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THUMP!
Agnes Klassen winced as she smacked the lump of pastry with the side of her rolling pin. She didn’t usually treat pie dough like this. “So what’s your daddy going to say when he hears all that?”
The child’s eyes were big and brown. “You going to tell him, Auntie Aggie?”
The housekeeper’s glance slid sideways. “You think I should?” She wasn’t sure what to make of Fanny’s news. The girl had spent the past half hour chattering about her new friend at the other end of the island, the woman Aggie’s husband, Matthew, caretaker of the Lord estate, had mentioned shortly after her arrival ten days ago. Matthew had said the visitor was harmless, just someone using the old woman’s house for a holiday, and Aggie believed him.
Fanny was thrilled about the lipstick she’d tried, the magazines she’d looked at, even the contents of the visitor’s fridge. Poor child! All alone and no playmates her own age. Was it any wonder she was starved for anything new?
Fanny said Silas had come looking for her, but she’d run through the visitor’s back door and away through the forest, managing to get home first. The incident hadn’t been mentioned at dinner the previous evening. Silas, of course, could be extremely absentminded. He had plenty to think about. Besides, he didn’t tell his housekeeper everything, did he?
“I guess so,” the child responded slowly, sticking her thumbs into the pastry Agnes had given her. “’Less I tell him first,” she added quickly, then nodded, as though pleased with her decision. “How ’bout that? Maybe I better, since he was chasing me ’n’ Bruno most of the way home. It was fun!”
With renewed enthusiasm, she began pressing her pastry into the five-inch tart pan Aggie reserved for Fanny’s pies. “I know!” Her face was bright. “I’ll tell him at the party today.”
Aggie rolled out one quarter of the dough in front of her. She was making two pies this morning, one for their evening meal and one for the freezer. Both Silas and Matthew were inordinately fond of blueberry pie. What man wasn’t? Aggie smiled at Fanny. You couldn’t stay mad at the little rascal, she thought. No, you couldn’t. Fanny had her—and Matthew and Silas—twisted around her pinkie finger, always had.
Fanny’s pie was for the party she was having that afternoon, presumably for her father and Bruno and the squirrel Aggie had never seen but knew all about—even that it went by the name of Kelly. A dog and a squirrel! Fanny needed more people in her life, the dear motherless waif.
Also on the menu were raw vegetables and cheese dip, Aggie’s suggestion, and toast and cake and soft drinks, Fanny’s request. Silas didn’t believe in feeding children a lot of sugar, so that would mean carrot cake and cream cheese icing and juice boxes, not pop. Sometimes Aggie wondered where a man like Silas, who’d surely never expected to be a father, got so many definite notions about childrearing.
Actually, now that she thought about it, Aggie was glad Fanny had met the young woman staying in Doris Bonhomme’s old house, although she disapproved of the way it had come about. She didn’t like Fanny and that dog of hers skulking about the island, spying on folks. A five-year-old, no matter how clever for her age, should not be roaming around freely, talking to birds and chipmunks, hair uncombed, not even properly dressed half the time.
But you couldn’t argue with Silas Lord! A more stubborn man had never lived. Aggie ought to know; she’d helped raise him herself, as housekeeper to Silas’s parents many years ago. Of course, in those days, she’d been constantly busy, cooking and cleaning for the Lord household both on Liberty Island and at their home in West Vancouver, as well as raising Ivor, their own boy. Matthew had done the outdoor work, still did although he was pushing seventy now.
They both were. She was sixty-eight and feeling every minute of it some days. She sighed and wiped one cheek with a floury wrist, aware of the aches that had crept up over the past few years. Silas was thirty-two, just a little younger than their Ivor, all grown-up, too, and in an assisted-living home in Gibsons, making his way, such as it was, in the world….
As a boy, young Silas had been as cheeky and charming as his small daughter was today.
“What’s a good time for my party, Auntie?” Fanny stared at the wall clock, pretending to read it, a pencil crayon in one hand and a piece of paper in front of her on the table.
“How about two o’clock?” Aggie suggested. “That way you won’t spoil your supper.”
“The big hand is on the twelve for an ‘o’clock,’ right?” Fanny took a fresh pencil crayon, orange, and drew a large circle on the piece of paper in front of her. The child didn’t really know how to tell time, but she understood about the big hand and the small hand. Aggie had watched Silas coach her patiently, right there at the big wooden table in the kitchen, going through the A-B-C’s, teaching her to tell time, name the days of the week, tie her own shoes. He’d started music lessons recently on the old out-of-tune player piano in the parlor—Aggie had often heard her plunking out “Old Macdonald” after breakfast—and he’d taught her to swim and play croquet.
“And the little hand is on the?” The housekeeper waited, floury hands held high as she crossed to the sink.
“Two!” Fanny triumphantly held up two fingers, then added a 2 to her drawing, not exactly in the right spot, but close enough.
“And what is that you’re drawing, honey?”
“It’s a ’vitation,” Fanny said earnestly. “You know—that you send out? This gives when. I’m going to draw my little gypsy house for the place. When you have a party, you have to send ’vitations, don’t you?”
“Well, of course you do,” Aggie agreed, rinsing her hands in a basin in the sink. She wondered where a squirrel got mail. Fanny’s “little gypsy house” was the caravan playhouse Silas had built for her under the trees in the old orchard. The girl wanted for nothing money could buy. “Anything else you’ll need?”
“Some wool,” the girl returned promptly. “I need a ball of that nice yellow wool you’re knitting me a sweater with. Can I have some?”
“For decorations?” Aggie reached for a kitchen towel, mystified, doubly so as she observed Fanny’s sudden self-conscious, rather evasive expression.
“Well…” The girl nibbled on the end of the pencil crayon for a few minutes, examining her drawing. Then she looked up, dark eyes dancing. “Something like that!”
EVA SLEPT amazingly well, considering the events of the previous afternoon, and it was nearly ten when she awoke to the sound of shingles banging on the roof again.
After breakfast, she dragged the cumbersome wooden ladder from the shed to the house and climbed up to drive in a few nails. There was a musty stack of shingles in the shed, of various patterns, as well as other odds and ends. Pieces of lumber, screws and nails in jam tins, wire screening, rusted tools of various kinds. Eva wondered if Doris had done all her own repairs. She was coming to a new appreciation of what it took to live here all alone, as Doris had for so long.
At least the riddle of the child and dog was solved, and Eva could focus on the task ahead of her, tidying up Doris’s affairs. Fanny obviously lived with her father, Silas Lord, at the other end of the island. Simple. There were Lords using the old family place. She should’ve been told. Why hadn’t Doris said anything?
“Uncle” Matthew, Eva’d been informed, was the caretaker; “Auntie” Aggie was his wife, the housekeeper. Fanny’s father hadn’t offered much more than that before he’d turned abruptly, at her repeated refusal of his help, and headed back down the path.
She’d hobbled home and managed to dig the briar out but her heel was still sore. What a strange man. What a strange child! Eva still wasn’t sure she believed Fanny and her family were actually living on Liberty Island year-round. A summer could seem like a very long time to a young child. Spending the summer here alone, probably bored, could account for Fanny’s interest in Doris’s house. Of course, little girls were interested in lipstick and jewelry and dress-up, but the contents of fridges? Old broken mirrors? Magazine covers?
She’d been more than inquisitive, positively nosy. In a way, Eva admired her brashness. Ask and ye shall receive…. A contrast to what Eva remembered of her own childhood. She’d been on the shy side, polite and accommodating—too polite, Doris had always said, teasing both her and her mother, Felicity, so inaptly named, a woman who’d had more than her share of unhappiness in her short life.
Eva finished sorting through the sheet music and other musical paraphernalia in the so-called music room, a glass-enclosed room that looked to the sea on the south and had French doors leading to the patio on the north. Instead of a swim, she decided to go for a run along the beach. She’d be ready for a late lunch when she returned.
Eva ran in shorts, a tank top and sneakers. The pebbly beach, interspersed with grassy areas and patches of sand, was too rough to run in bare feet, even if she hadn’t had a sore heel. The breeze was welcome, light against her overheated face, and as she approached the house on her way back, she slowed to a brisk walk, reaching up to whip off the scarf that held back her hair.
Whew! Looked like another summer scorcher of a day. A shower, a sandwich and then—
What was that? A square of colored paper lay just inside the door of the house. The door was always unlocked; Eva wasn’t even sure there was a lock. What was there to keep out? Just Andy and the rabbits that nibbled Doris’s garden…
Eva stooped to pick up the envelope, and smiled as she turned it over. It was clearly handmade, a little crooked and dripping with glue. From Fanny. Eva opened it and a small loop of yellow wool fell out.
She bent to retrieve it. Inside the envelope was a much creased piece of paper, which Eva unfolded, her smile widening.
There were no words. Just a drawing of a playhouse of some sort, with a table and chairs outside and various kinds of food on the table—a huge cake, drinks with straws. Nothing was in proportion; it was a typical four- or five-year-old’s drawing. A clock face, drawn in orange, showed two o’clock. It was just past one now. There was a patch of glue with telltale yellow wisps caught up in it next to the rendition of a clock face. Eva glanced at the yellow loop on her wrist, the yarn that had fallen out of the envelope. Aha!
Then she turned to gaze toward the creek that separated the Bonhommes’ from the Lords’. A yellow loop waved gently in the breeze, suspended from a bush on the far side of the creek.
While she’d been gone, someone had been very busy….
CHAPTER FIVE
SILAS HAD A STUDIO set in the trees well away from the house in a building that had once been reserved for staff. The Klassens lived with him and Fanny in the main house, a large shingle-sided two-and-a-half-story dwelling, built in a rather grand post-Victorian style nearly one hundred years before by his great-grandfather. The Lords and the Bonhommes, who’d settled at the other end of the island, had been business partners once, lumber barons cutting virgin timber on Vancouver Island at the turn of the century, a time when many family fortunes had been made in British Columbia.
Because there was no electricity on the island and because the studio was some distance from the house, which had a generator for essential electrical needs, Silas created jewelry as it had been created for thousands of years, using hand tools to work the precious metals and a propane-fired forge. At present, he was working on a commission from a Toronto auto parts mogul, a gift for his wife’s fortieth birthday. Six months earlier, Silas had delivered a magnificent diamond-and-opal bracelet to the same man—for his mistress’s birthday.
The current project incorporated tanzanite, a gemstone Silas particularly liked, set into the silver-and-gold neckpiece, bracelet and earrings. Without artificial light, daytime hours were precious and Fanny knew she could only interrupt him in his studio if it was important. This morning when he’d come back from The Baths—no sign of the visitor today—he’d found one of Fanny’s handmade envelopes in the willow basket outside his open studio door.
Silas shook his head. Parties! Was his daughter turning into a social animal like her mother? Fanny seemed to generate an excuse to have a party every couple of days.
Not that he minded. And he always humored her. Silas never forgot that he was the one who’d brought his daughter into these isolated circumstances on Liberty Island nearly three years ago and he’d do anything in his power to make sure she was happy here. Summer was a fine time, when Fanny could be a free spirit, safely wandering the forest and the shore with her dog. Winters were much harder.
Today’s event was most likely because of what had happened yesterday. Fanny hadn’t mentioned the incident at dinner—and neither had he—but he suspected the party was by way of an apology. She knew the old woman’s house was forbidden, whether vacant or occupied. Indeed, that entire end of the island was off-limits; she wasn’t even to cross the creek.
But he could understand that she’d been tempted. The newcomer must have been too much to resist. He didn’t blame Fanny. No other children around. No guests. Silas had no appetite for society, and it had been many months since he’d invited anyone to Liberty Island, other than the Klassens’ son, Ivor. His occasional trips to his studio in Vancouver fulfilled any needs he might’ve had for company, male or female. Nor had he intended to meet the island’s visitor, never mind under such odd circumstances. Busting into her kitchen and tearing through her house, no less! He was a little embarrassed about that.
Hell, he’d been scared. He’d looked everywhere for Fanny, in all her usual places, but she hadn’t been in any of them. Not in her tree house at the bottom of the garden. Not in her playhouse he’d built for her in the old orchard. Or in her room, playing with dolls, or up in the attic, where she’d found trunks of old clothes that had belonged to Silas’s grandmother and often played dress-up, sometimes draping even Bruno with a hat or scarf.
Silas had hoped the visitor would simply leave and that would be that. He admitted to some curiosity—why hadn’t she come wandering to the eastern side of the island before this? Why had she kept—as far as he could tell—so carefully to the Bonhomme property, except for that excursion to The Baths? He’d only seen her there once and the bathing pools, admittedly, had always been a sort of neutral territory. Still, how could she know that?
Silas glanced at the old-fashioned Rolex he wore. He’d freed himself from many of his big-city habits, including locking doors, which made no sense on Liberty Island, but he’d never been comfortable without the Rolex, which he’d worn ever since his grandfather, Hector Lord, had given it to him a few months before the old man had died.
Silas didn’t miss much of his previous life. The days of catching an afternoon flight to Paris for the weekend, or disappearing to Mexico at a moment’s notice to share a workbench with the silver masters in Taxco for a few months, or flying to Amsterdam twice a year to buy the rough diamonds he used in his work, then whisking off to Singapore to have them faceted and ground. Now that he’d begun living on Liberty Island again, he didn’t miss the once essential Palm Pilot, but the Rolex, one of the few personal mementos he had of a scattered family, stayed on his wrist.
Silas remembered clearly the day the old man had given it to him. He’d arrived home from university to announce he’d dropped out of business school and was going to Milan to study art. His parents had been furious—as Silas had expected—but the old man had beckoned him into a back room, where he’d taken off the watch and handed it to him with a chuckle. “Here, my boy. It belongs to you.” No further explanations.
Hector Lord had been dead for nearly fourteen years.
Almost two o’clock…
Idly, Silas wound the watch as he strode toward the orchard. When Fanny had begun staging her little events earlier that summer, he’d sometimes offered to help carry her supplies to wherever she was holding the party. Her playhouse. The promontory where they had picnics. Or, most difficult for him, her tree house behind his studio. He couldn’t climb up there as easily as he’d done when the tree house had belonged to him and Ivor. Fanny was always deeply offended at his suggestion, as only Fanny could be, insisting she could—and would—do everything herself. She was independent, all right. Sociable and sassy. Loving.
She was everything in the world to him, the center of his life.
When he arrived, five minutes early, she was setting out cups and plates on a table in front of the playhouse, which he’d designed and then had built and painted, with Matthew’s help, to resemble a miniature gypsy caravan. Everything was built on a three-fifths scale, perfect for a child.
“Hi, Dad!” Fanny had a temper but she couldn’t hold a grudge for very long. It was another of her characteristics he adored. She certainly didn’t get it from his side of the family. No matter what had come between them—and they had plenty of disagreements—her sunny spirits would bubble over and she’d forget her outrage in a minute.
“What’s the occasion?” He took one of the solid and squarely built little wooden chairs ranged around the small blue-painted table and sat down. “Kelly’s birthday?”
She gave him an arch look and continued setting out cups and plates, places for six, he observed. “It’s a surprise, Daddy. I can’t tell you,” she said, then continued a little worriedly, “I don’t know when Kelly was actually borned so I don’t know when to have a party for him.”
Silas’s personal theory was that the little gray squirrel Fanny was so fond of was already a generation or two past the original “Kelly.” How long did squirrels live? “Born, honey, not borned,” he automatically corrected.
“Born,” she repeated under her breath, counting out the cutlery. Silas watched as she went to the nearby doll carriage and pulled out a Tupperware container. “You can take the lid off this, please.”
Silas pried the top off. “Mmm, cake.”
Fanny nodded, looking pleased. “With icing. Auntie Aggie made it. What time is it now, Daddy?”
Silas checked his watch. “Five past two.”
“No, ’xactly. What time is it ’xactly?”
“Okay.” He studied his watch again. “It’s six and a half minutes past two.”
Fanny nodded, her face sober. She sighed, then put the cake in the middle of the table and went back to the doll carriage and pulled out more Tupperware containers. Vegetable strips. Some kind of nutritious-looking dip—trust Aggie. What would he have done these past few years without her and Matthew? Juice boxes. A plastic jug of water alive with ice cubes—
“Now what time is it, Daddy?”
“Ten past. Shall we get started?” Silas glanced at the five other places set at the table. “Is Auntie Aggie coming?”
“No. She said she’s too busy. This one’s for Bruno—” Fanny touched one plate, part of an unbreakable set she kept in the caravan. “And this one’s for Kelly, ’cept I’m not sure he’s coming.” Silas hadn’t heard the squirrel. Kelly rarely “visited” but, when he did, he made his presence known by his loud chirruping from the huge Orenco apple tree behind the playhouse.
“Matthew’s gone over to Half Moon Bay, if you’re expecting him,” Silas told her. “He won’t be back until just before dinner.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Auntie Aggie told me that already so I didn’t make him a ’vitation. What time is it now—hey!”
There was a distinct clip-clop on the packed earth of the path that led toward the wharf. The donkey! Of course.
Silas turned to see the grizzled old beast clatter into view, head bobbing. He’d been a fixture on their side of the island, off and on, for months. Harmless enough, from what Silas had seen. Probably lonely, too, although Silas knew someone had made arrangements for weekly hay drop-offs in the spring. Bruno sat up, ears perked, eyes interested.
This was the “surprise”?
