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“Andy!” Fanny cried out. The animal had a name? How did Fanny know—“—and Eva!”
“Am I late?” The woman who’d moved into the Bonhomme house stepped from the wooded path into the clearing. She was dressed in jean shorts and a pink T-shirt and had her dark hair tied back in a ponytail. Her left arm, oddly, was festooned with what seemed to be loops of yellow yarn. Eva. Silas stood automatically, as he’d been taught to do when a member of the opposite sex entered the room—he supposed this arrangement under the apple tree qualified as a room.
Fanny clapped her hands in delight. “Surprise!” she crowed. “Surprise! Surprise!” Silas heard the squirrel start to chatter in the tree overhead. So Kelly had joined them, after all….
The afternoon, which had promised to be just another hot, somewhat boring July afternoon, had suddenly become interesting.
EVA’S FIRST THOUGHT—that Fanny’s father might have had something to do with the party invitation—evaporated when she saw his expression, as dismayed, she was sure, as her own. He hid his surprise instantly and stepped forward, hand extended. “We weren’t properly introduced yesterday. Maybe we should start again. I’m Silas Lord.” He nodded. “Welcome.”
“Eva Haines.” She shook his hand briefly, aware of the heat of his skin, the hard, dry strength of his fingers….
At his reference to their previous encounter, the way he’d practically thrown her to the side as she grabbed his arm to prevent him from barging into her kitchen, her lips thinned, and she answered him coolly. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“You’re limping,” he said bluntly, leading her toward the small table.
“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate. The briar she’d removed must have left something behind, because her heel had begun to throb that morning. She’d stuck on a Band-Aid after her run and had worn thick socks with her sneakers.
“It’s a party!” Fanny, at least, was delighted to see her. “This is my dad, I guess you know that—” Silas nodded again “—and this is my playhouse he builded for me and this is Bruno, well, you know him!” She waved toward the branches overhead. “And that’s Kelly up there, he’s my squirrel.”
Eva dutifully peered up but didn’t spot the source of the scolding. She waved and called softly, “Hi, Kelly!” then felt rather silly, knowing Silas Lord was watching. Her initial impulse had been to enter into the child’s game, her play “world,” just as she’d have done with one of her students at school.
When she turned, Fanny’s father was indeed watching her.
He gestured toward a small chair opposite his, and Eva approached. “Are you in the habit of talking to squirrels? And what, if I might enquire, is that unusual bracelet you’re wearing? It’s very attractive. Did my daughter make it for you?”
“Dad!” Fanny giggled.
Eva lifted the loops from her wrist and set them on the table. “You could say that. I found my way here by following the yarn Fanny left on the bushes. That was very clever of her.”
Fanny beamed. “I wanted you to draw me a map, Dad, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
Silas met Eva’s eyes. “I’m guessing you got an invitation, just as I did.”
“Yes.”
“And you followed the clues. Kind of like Hansel and Gretel.”
Eva laughed. “Exactly. Except the birds didn’t eat up all the clues, like they ate the crumbs—”
“I know that story!” Fanny interrupted, coming to the table and looking important as she picked ice cubes out of the beverage container with her fingers and put one in each of the three plastic glasses in front of her. “Dad reads that story to me.”
“No birds to eat up all the crumbs,” Silas said in a low voice, his eyes on Eva’s, “and no big bad witch at the end of the trail, either.”
Eva hesitated for a split second, then shook her head. “No.” Fanny’s father seemed very different today from the man she’d met yesterday. Then he’d been brusque and determined, angry and arrogant, with the exception of those few minutes on the trail when he’d returned, almost as an afterthought, to offer to escort her back to Doris’s house. Was that to make sure she left the property? This afternoon he seemed deliberately friendly, even jovial.
“Except Auntie Aggie, of course,” he teased, with a glance at his daughter. The half smile transformed his face, changing it from grim and rather formidable to handsome, even boyish. Which was the real Silas Lord?
“Dad!” Fanny shouted. “Don’t say that! Auntie Aggie’s not a big, bad witch. Here, have some.” She pushed a glass toward her father.
Silas took a sip. “Mmm,” he said, with a smile at his daughter over the rim. “Champagne! I suppose that’s in honor of our visitor.”
“It’s not champagne, Dad,” Fanny said seriously. “It’s fizzy water and lemonade, just like I had at Eva’s.”
“Aha!” Silas put his glass down firmly. “So you were in the house, you little rascal!”
CHAPTER SIX
“YEP!” Fanny laughed. “Eva gave me a drink, only she didn’t have any pop in her fridge, just like us. And me ’n’ Bruno ran out of there when we heard you coming. Ha!”
Fanny gave her father a triumphant look. “And we beated you home, Dad!”
“Beat, honey,” Silas corrected, his eyes locked on Eva’s astonished gaze. “Not beated. And I think you should call our guest Miss Haines, don’t you, Fanny? It is Miss, I presume,” he continued smoothly.
“I’m not married,” Eva blurted out, about to take a sip of the lemonade. She was astonished at the rapid interchange between father and daughter, then the sudden switch to her. She was beginning to feel like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s picnic. “Miss is rather old-fashioned, isn’t it? And, of course, Fanny, I want you to call me Eva. It’s my name.”
“And what does Ms. Haines do when she’s not visiting Liberty Island?”
“I’m a teacher.” Why was she answering this man’s nosy questions so willingly?
“A teacher?” Fanny’s father sounded genuinely interested. He studied her across the blue table and reached for his glass again. Fanny was busy serving pieces of cake on small plates. “High school?”
“No, elementary. I had grade one and two classes last year.”
“Substitute?”
“Yes. I’m applying for several full-time positions for this fall, though.”
“How is it you’ve come to Liberty Island? Are you related to Doris Bonhomme?”
Eva stared at him, her lips pressed firmly together. She felt her cheeks warm under his steady gaze.
“I wish I could go to school,” Fanny said sadly. She licked icing from her fingers.
“Oh, you’ll be in school soon enough,” Eva said, glad to change the subject. “How old are you, Fanny?”
“Five-goin’-on-six,” she responded, holding up one hand, fingers spread. That had been Eva’s estimate, although the child was small for her age.
“You’ve just turned five, Fanny,” her father said quietly and his daughter frowned. “That’s hardly almost six.”
“Well, I suppose you’re going into kindergarten, then,” Eva said hastily, aware that the subject of school seemed to have cast a pall on their little party for some reason.
“Nope.” Fanny shook her head and sighed. “Kids in books go to school.” Eva thought that was a strange comment but Silas immediately stood up and stepped away from the table.
“Would you like to see Fanny’s playhouse? We can eat our cake and vegetables later. You’ll have to bend over, I’m afraid, as it’s not designed for grown-ups.”
The awkward conversation was successfully derailed and Eva followed Fanny to the Dutch doors of the playhouse, which looked very gypsyish, even to the point of having wooden wheels, nonfunctional, she assumed. Silas didn’t accompany them, which was a good thing, Eva realized, once she was inside. The small structure consisted of one rectangular room with two small upholstered chairs, a brick-look plywood false fireplace complete with painted flames and braided hearth rug, miniature rose-sprigged curtain-hung cupboards and a child-size bed, covered with a quilt and tucked into a nook in the wall. There was even a tiny wrought-iron shelf above the bed, with half a dozen books. Bent over as she was, Eva managed a quick glance at the titles: several worn Curious George stories, Goodnight, Moon, two tiny Beatrix Potter volumes, including Eva’s personal favorite, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, and a well-thumbed older edition of Mother Goose nursery rhymes.
This place was a child’s dream come true!
When she emerged from the caravan, she stumbled as she put her weight on her sore foot, and Silas came forward quickly and grabbed her arm.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Eva felt embarrassed. “I don’t think I got all the rose briar out of my heel last night.”
“What have you got on it?”
“A Band-Aid.”
He sent her a derisory look and offered the cake plate. Eva took a piece and bit into it. Carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Delicious. “Did you make this, Fanny?”
“You’re funny!” Fanny laughed. “Isn’t she, Daddy?”
“I wouldn’t say funny, exactly,” Silas said slowly, choosing a carrot stick from the vegetable tray. “More like interesting or mysterious or maybe crazy for not looking after that infected foot.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Eva said. “Fanny,” she went on briskly, “watch out for Andy. Behind you. Would you like to give him some carrots before he invites himself?”
The donkey was leaning over the table. He’d discovered the open Tupperware container with the vegetables and had already knocked over a glass.
After the cake, Eva thought she could politely leave but when she stood, the pain from her foot shot up her leg and she grimaced, shifting her weight onto her right leg.
“That settles it,” Silas said. “Come up to the house. I’ll put some antibiotic cream on that.”
Eva hesitated.
Was she being foolish? If Doris had a first aid kit, Eva had no idea where to find it. Maybe some antibiotic cream was a good idea. “Well, all right. I appreciate your concern. If you really think it’s necessary.”
“I do,” he said.
Ten minutes later, Eva sat in the large, dim, old-fashioned but well-equipped kitchen and looked around. She felt rather self-conscious sitting there all by herself with her bare foot in a basin of steaming water. Silas had drawn the water, put a handful of salt in it and then disappeared down the hall. A clock on the wall ticked softly. The counters, a mid-century speckled grey Arborite pattern, were spotless and the porcelain-and-brass pump handle by the huge stainless steel sink gleamed. The kitchen was shipshape.
A door slammed somewhere and a few seconds later, Fanny and Bruno entered the room. “Is my dad fixing your foot yet?”
Eva bobbed her foot in the water. “I guess so.” She wished now that she hadn’t let Silas talk her into coming inside the house. An infected splinter was hardly a life-threatening injury.
“Is the water real hot?”
“Yes.” Eva smiled and lifted her foot, which was quite pink already. She wiggled her toes. Where was Silas with the first aid cream he’d promised?
“Did you like my party?”
Eva nodded. “It was lovely. Thank you for inviting me—”
“I made the ’vitations myself,” Fanny interrupted. Her eyes glowed.
“You did a beautiful job.”
“I did, didn’t I?” she agreed.
“Oh, my goodness! No one told me you were here.” An older woman, obviously the housekeeper, came in through a side door. “You must be the young lady staying in the house on the other side.”
Eva extended her hand awkwardly. “I’m Eva Haines. Doris is a cousin of my mother’s.”
“I see. So she’s your second cousin then?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Agnes Klassen.” Mrs. Klassen put a knitting bag on the table and bustled toward the stove. She glanced at the hall and lowered her voice. “How is she, by the way?”
“Doris?”
The housekeeper nodded. “I don’t know her well, of course, just to say hello if I saw her shopping or whatnot on the mainland, but I do know she had a bad spell earlier this spring.”
“She broke her hip but she’s doing quite well now. She’s in a nursing home in Sechelt. Seaview Lodge.”
“Is she? I’m glad to hear it,” the older woman said hastily, then glanced again at the doorway to the hall. “You’ll have a cup of tea?” she continued in a normal tone.
“Oh, no, thank you,” Eva said. “I’m just on my way—” She looked helplessly at her foot, immersed in the rapidly cooling water. “I’m just—”
“She’s got a sore foot, Auntie Aggie,” Fanny explained. “My dad’s gonna fix it up.”
“Silas should have told me you were here. Honestly!” The elderly housekeeper settled into a rocking chair by the window with her knitting. She took out a small piece, yellow, with blue ducks knitted into the yoke of what looked very much like the back of a child’s cardigan. The color was suspiciously familiar.
The clack-clack of the knitting needles filled the silence for a long minute. Eva desperately wished again that she’d just gone home. “Are you here for the summer?” she asked, casting about for something—anything—to say.
The housekeeper raised her head abruptly. “No, we’ve been here, me and my husband, for nearly three years now.” She sighed. “This latest time, anyway. I worked for Silas’s parents before, too, you know. Here and at their place in West Vancouver. That would be some years ago, of course.”
“I see.” So Fanny and her father—and the Klassens—really were living on the island year-round. What did one do here in the winter? “It must be lonely.”
“Sometimes.” Mrs. Klassen shook out a strand of yarn from her work bag. “Oh, but there’s always something to do and I go over to the mainland regular to visit our son—goodness, child, what are you after now?”
Fanny had opened the refrigerator door and was inspecting the contents. “I wish we had some of that fizzy water like Eva has in her fridge. Or pop.”
“So you’ve had a look in our guest’s fridge, have you, you nosy little dickens, you?” the housekeeper asked with a cheerful smile. “Come here, honey, I want to measure this on you again.”
The girl went obediently to the window, carrying a juice box, and stood quietly while Mrs. Klassen fussed with the garment, pulling and pushing until it fit, in a manner of speaking, on the child’s back, over her T-shirt.
“There! Thank you, dear.” The housekeeper flopped the piece she was working back to front and began on a purl row. It had been years since Eva had knit anything. Her mother had taught her. She’d knit a pair of slippers for Girl Guides, once. And a scarf as a Christmas gift for her sister Kate.
The Newfoundland’s sudden focus on the hall entrance alerted Eva to Silas’s return. He carried a towel and a handful of first aid supplies, including the tube of ointment he’d gone for.
“How’s the foot?”
“It’s fine, really. I feel rather foolish going through all this just for a sliver….”
“You can’t be too careful. We’re on an island here with no doctors, no nurses, no medical help of any kind. It’s best to avoid emergencies.”
“This isn’t an emergency,” Eva insisted.
