steady rain greeted Jane her second morning at the cottage. All day it drifted, ghostlike, back and forth across the lake and sighed through the dismal trees. Jane spent most of the time reading, curled up under the lamp on one of the couches in the living room, listening to the rhythmic creak of Nell’s rocking chair, the intermittent popping of the fire in the cookstove, eventually falling asleep. When she awoke, stiff and chilled, she went to draw a chair up in the warmth of the kitchen where her grandmother was playing solitaire.
“I expect you needed that nap,” Nell said when Jane apologized for dropping off.
“Mom says I sleep too much,” Jane yawned. “She dragged me to the doctor, but I could have told her I wasn’t sick. Maybe I sleep to avoid arguing with her.”
“That’s too bad,” said Nell, counting out three more cards from the pile she held in her hand. “I expect it’s a stage you’re both going through.”
Jane stood up and stretched her arms above her head. “Mom doesn’t try to understand me anymore,” she stated flatly.
“Do you do the same for her?” asked Nell, looking up from the cards on the table.
“What’s to understand?”
“She hasn’t had an easy life, Jane.”
“Oh, you mean because of Dad? She’s the one who sent him away.”
Jane saw Nell bite her lip. “I think you know better, dear.”
Jane pretended to concentrate on the length of spider web strung between the little china figurines on the window sill, separating them one by one from its clutch. The worst thing she had ever heard Nell say about Dan Covington was that he was a man of little strength. ’Though Jane never knew what staying at a nine-to-five job had to do with a man’s strength. To Jane, her father was a man who dreamed dreams, a man who felt he had to follow them. Always sure that the next get-rich-quick scheme was the one that would do it for him, he had come and gone many times during Jane’s childhood, until finally Mary had suggested he leave altogether. But no one had ever bothered to ask Jane how she felt about it.
She is running, her mouth gasping for air, her legs pumping wildly. Her arms ache with the weight she is carrying. But no matter how hard she runs, she is slowly being drawn back towards a swirling vortex, back towards whatever it is that she is fleeing.
Jane awoke suddenly and sat up with a gasp, her pulse pounding. She had been dreaming. Realizing that was all it was, she lay down again, only to resume the tossing she’d started before the nightmare. She shouldn’t have spent so much time sleeping during the day, she decided. What was it the woman on the bus had said? That dreams are meant to connect you to something? She tried to recall the dream, to put together the pieces and think about what she might have been running from.
She was eating her cereal at the kitchen table the next morning, her book propped open in front of her, when Nell came back inside from the clothesline.
“Will you look at this?” Nell sounded exasperated. She set what looked like an ordinary red brick on top of the wood box inside the back door. “It’s not the first one to fall off the chimney. I absolutely must get some mortar and get it repaired.” She was already at the telephone, pressing buttons.
“Morning, Jackson. It’s Nell Van Tassell. Oh, fine, fine. Looks like a grand day. Yesterday’s rain was just what we needed.”
Jane closed her book and took her breakfast dishes to the sink. How hard was it to put two bricks back on a chimney anyway, she wondered? Outside, she discovered the day was warming up quickly. She swung herself into the old striped hammock which sagged between two poplar trees in the side yard, pushing herself off with one foot, swinging there, facing the lake where the sunlight glinted. She waited for Nell.
Today, they were going to take a picnic lunch and row over to the island, see what the crop of raspberries was going to be like this year. Of all the cottagers on the lake, Nell was the only one Jane knew who still considered a stout set of oars and muscles to match the best way to power a boat.
The screen door slammed and Nell came down the steps towards her. “It’s all set then,” she announced. “Jesse’s picking up some supplies and he’s going to fix the chimney for me. Right away. You don’t mind having our picnic here, do you, dear? We use that stove everyday, and the chimney is dangerous the way it is.”
Jane gave herself another push to set the hammock in motion again. “Jesse didn’t mind coming?”
“Well, I didn’t actually speak to him,” Nell admitted, dropping her hands into the pockets on the front of her denim skirt. “But when I asked his father about getting some mortar, Jackson said he’d send Jesse over to do the work for me. He’ll do some other little jobs while he’s here. What teenager doesn’t need a little extra money these days?”
Nell went back inside and Jane debated whether she should go for a swim first or putter about in the row boat for a while. The warmth of the sun was making her lazy. Maybe she would go and look for the raspberries herself. She would just as soon not be here when Jesse arrived, considering his surly attitude when they had first met. But she did wonder if he might have discovered anything more about the strange letter she’d found.
Jane had gone upstairs to straighten her room when she heard the sound of an outboard motor approaching. From the window, she saw Jess Howard pull his boat into the empty berth on the other side of the dock, get out, tie the boat to the pipe, and reach down for a paper sack, which he slung onto his shoulder. Then he strode with it up the incline to the cottage. The bandanna was gone from the dark hair, and he had added a white T-shirt to his wardrobe of jeans and workboots.
Jane heard Nell go out to greet him, and the sound of their voices moved around to the back. From the window at the head of the stairs, Jane watched as Jess entered the shed and came out with the ladder. He set it down on its side against the building. Reaching over his shoulder with one hand, she saw him pull his T-shirt off over his head and stuff it into the waist band at the back of his jeans. Then, before bending to pick up the ladder again, he looked directly up at the window. Jane stepped back quickly, feeling the colour rise in her face, knowing she’d been caught.
“Oh, there you are,” said Nell when Jane came down into the kitchen again. “Could you take Jesse this lemonade, dear?”
“Oh, Nell. He just got here! Couldn’t it wait?”
“It’s pretty hot around there on the east side, Jane. Jesse will be here for a while. He’s going to set the stones back in the front planters for me, do some other repairs. It wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more friendly, would it?”
“He didn’t act like he was looking for a friend,” Jane said. She took the glass without another word and found Jess on the far side of the cottage, mixing mortar in the old wheelbarrow. She wished now that Nell hadn’t made that remark about his looks the other day, and she especially wished that he hadn’t seen her watching him from the window on the stairs.
“My grandmother sent you some lemonade.”
“Thanks,” said Jess, without raising his head.
“Could I set it somewhere?”
“I’ll take it.” He reached for the dripping glass and downed it
