From what I’d learned at the store, Eric and I were going to need all the help we could get to fight Charlie Cardinal and his groupies.
When I reached the looming shape of my cottage, I swore even harder. Except for the faint blemish from the timer light in the front room, the building had been all but consumed by the moonless night. In my haste to meet Marie, I’d forgotten to turn on the outside flood lights. Keeping them lit in the dark hours was a habit I’d adopted after I’d managed to survive my first traumatic night all alone at Three Deer Point, a terrifying night with no city lights to banish the darkness. I’d since managed to overcome my fears through pigheaded determination not to give in to such childish behaviour and by leaving on a few lights. Still, there were those moments when my imagination suddenly shifted into overdrive, and I’d sit up wide-eyed with the sound of adrenaline throbbing in my ears.
Like now. Images of lurking yellow were convincing me my attacker was here waiting for my return. I stayed in the truck and tried to bring the waves of panic under control by counting slowly to twenty and telling myself this was ridiculous. I strained to see through the darkness, ears, eyes alert for anything that didn’t belong. From inside the house, Sergei barked. But it was his high pitched greeting yelp, not his deep warning woof. I relaxed a bit and waited.
Finally, I gathered up my nerve and raced up the stairs into the house. I locked the door, switched on the hall light and giggled. What a ninny I was. Of course, there was no one in the house. Why would there be? Sergei seemed to agree. With his usual jubilance, he greeted me as if I’d been away a month, then after a few pats returned nonchalantly to his sofa. He wasn’t concerned about unknown visitors.
Still, I immediately turned on all the outside lights. If anyone intended to sneak up on me, I wanted plenty of warning. Unfortunately, while the immediate woods were flooded with light, anything beyond was blotted out of existence. But I did have my early warning system in place, Sergei.
After double-checking all the outside doors to ensure they were locked, I stoked the fire and filled the silence with the Gypsy Kings, the liveliest CD I owned. I started to pour myself the usual calming tonic but remembered Eric’s admonishment. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was drinking too much. So I shoved the bottle aside, sank into the chesterfield in front of the fire and tried to relax on my own.
It was ridiculous, all these precautions. Just my nerves taking over. There was no reason for the guy in yellow to come here. As Eric said, this guy was only protecting his interests on Whispers Island. As long as I didn’t interfere with the claim, he’d leave me alone.
Gradually, I calmed down as the heat of the fire wrapped me in a cocoon of soothing warmth. I sank deeper into the cushions, while the Gypsy Kings’ dancing guitars swirled around me.
As I contemplated the flickering orange, my eyes wandered to the mantel, to Aunt Aggie’s amazing wedding photograph perched beside Sergei’s china cat. She and her unknown husband appeared just like any other newly married couple, shy with each other, but with a hopeful earnestness in their smiles.
I found it a very sad picture. This happy looking Agatha Harris was not the Agatha I knew. Although Aunt Aggie had seemed content with her life, she never smiled. It used to bother me so much that I used to crack jokes, make funny faces to get her to laugh or at least raise the corners of her mouth, but it never worked. She just grunted and told me to stop such foolish nonsense.
Wondering if I could learn more from this photo, I removed it from the mantel.
They looked comfortable together; she, seated with an unfamiliar elegance, a serene smile on her lips, her eyes sparkling, hands clasped firmly on her lap; he, towering behind her with one hand resting on her shoulder, as if proclaiming “she’s mine”.
This young Agatha Harris was slightly slimmer than her older version. While Aunt Aggie’s mind might have suffered from old age, her body hadn’t. Perhaps it was the active life she’d led during her years alone at Three Deer Point that had kept her from becoming stooped and unsteady. She, with the help of Marie’s mother, Whispering Pine, had performed all the heavy work; chopping firewood, tending a flourishing maple sugar operation, maintaining a large vegetable garden and keeping Three Deer Point in good repair, not an easy task, as I was discovering.
Her hair was dark in this picture, not the grey of her later years. No doubt it was the deep auburn I remembered from my childhood. A colour I used to wish I had, not the fiery red I was born with. But it was the smoothness of the skin on her hands and her arms in the photo that I noticed most. With not a blemish to mar the milky whiteness, it was in sharp contrast to the disfigured hands and arms I knew. I’d once asked Aunt Aggie about the angry scars she hid beneath long sleeves. She’d replied they were from a fire a long time ago and then, more as an afterthought, had added, in another life.
I’d assumed she meant when she was a child. I’d even thought the scars had kept her from marrying, but clearly this photo showed that the accident had occurred after the marriage. Perhaps her husband was the kind of man who couldn’t bear disfigurement and had left her.
But then I was assuming it was he who’d left. Maybe it was Aunt Aggie who, unlike me, had had the smarts to call a halt to a relationship that was growing worse by the day. And then again, maybe death had intervened. Death, however, seemed unlikely, for I doubted Aunt Aggie would have hidden her widowhood. In her day, being a widow would have carried a certain cachet, unlike the stigma of shame that would have been associated with a failed marriage.
And who was this ramrod-stiff stranger with dark hair, neatly clipped mustache and pince-nez clamped on the end of his nose? His pale eyes and the shape of his brow seemed familiar, but I couldn’t recall from where. I tried removing the spot of dirt to get a better view of his face but discovered it was under the glass.
The photograph itself didn’t provide any clues. I assumed it had been taken sometime around World War I. My aunt’s gown was of that period. And the setting of the photograph was no different from any I’d seen from that time; the standard chair, this one intricately carved, a small spindly table with a large bouquet of flowers in a Chinese vase, an oriental carpet on the floor and heavy tasseled drapes in the background. Clearly this wasn’t a poor man’s wedding, unless the photographer had provided these props. But then, my great-aunt wasn’t poor nor, judging from his confident demeanor, was the bridegroom.
I tried to remove the picture from the silver frame to see if there was anything written on the back, but the clasps were tarnished shut, and I was reluctant to force them open in case I damaged the photo.
Since this photograph wasn’t going to tell me anything further, I decided to phone my mother, who still hadn’t returned my earlier call regarding Whispers Island. This time I reached her.
“Are you calling to tell me you’ve finally come to your senses?” were Mother’s opening words, before I had a chance to say more than hello.
“Forget it, Mother, we’re not getting into that now. Just tell me if Aunt Aggie ever owned Whispers Island.”
“How should I know? I don’t even know where Whispers Island is.”
So I told her about the gold mine and the threat it posed to Echo Lake.
“Thank God, now you’ll return to where you belong.”
“Mother, stop it, I am where I belong.” I should’ve known she wouldn’t be sympathetic. She hated Three Deer Point and anything to do with Aunt Aggie.
“Just like Agatha Harris to waste her money on a slab of useless rock. But if there’s gold on it, you’ll be rich, dear.”
I
