style="font-size:15px;"> Moose Tracks was exactly the sort of place Johanna expected. Upscale, spare but with a nod to the outdoors—a pair of antique snowshoes on the wall, duck decoys on the rafters, a collection of hunting horns hanging over the bar. The food was of the artisanal variety, plow to plate and local. It gratified her to see Julietta’s pizza was thin-crusted, oil drizzled, and loaded with arugula and goat cheese.
At least it was real vegetable matter and dairy.
“No, that’s where Efan works,” Julietta was pointing to the castle-like building across the street. “He’s a teacher at the prep-school, not a waiter.”
“I didn’t mean to imply Evan is a waiter,” Emma answered. “If you would tell us something about him—”
“It’s not Evan. It’s Efan. With an F.”
“Okay. So what does he teach?”
“History, but he’s an expert on Welsh folklore.”
“Kind of a narrow expertise, isn’t it?” Nina sipped her wine. “How did you meet him?”
“Why do you need to know all this?”
“We’re curious,” Johanna intervened. “Sisters are allowed to be. Required to be, in fact. Let’s hear it.”
Julietta put down her pizza. “Fine. You want details? I came up here because I needed a series of books I could only find available in the academy’s library and ran into this guy. Efan. He saw the books I was pulling out and we started talking and got into a big discussion about The Children of Dôn and it got late and there are no visitors allowed on campus after seven so Efan suggested we come here and finish. He paid for dinner, even though I told him I could get it covered on my expense report. He laughed and said my candor was refreshing but he hasn’t contacted me since so I suspect he got over it quick. Okay? Enough? Can I eat in peace now?”
Johanna exchanged glances with Nina, then Emma.
“Darling.” Nina touched her sister’s hand.
Julietta frowned but did not look up.
“Jules, does he even know your full name?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I think so.”
“Do you know his?” Johanna asked.
Julietta shook her head.
“So you are both Cinderellas waiting for someone to show up with a shoe.” Emma picked up a piece of Julietta’s pizza, took a bite. “Oh, Jules.”
Julietta’s shoulders slumped, and the red splotches of her cheeks deepened. She was shutting down to process troubling information. It might be days before she spoke to any of them again.
Johanna, at least, no longer tasted the food. “I’m going to the ladies’ room. No one eat my food.”
She checked her watch. Almost seven. She had ten minutes. Hurrying past the ladies room and out the delivery entrance, Johanna braced herself for the cold. She ran along the back of the businesses, past dumpsters and skids and a couple of guys smoking. She crossed the street at the corner and kept running straight through the wrought-iron gates of the castle-like academy. Leaning against the directory, she caught her breath.
Dining Hall? Or Library? Johanna took her chances with the library. It was closer, close enough for her to see the image of George Washington carved into the grey stone over the great doors. She made a shivering dash for it.
Warmth, and the papery-leather scent of books. Johanna had never frequented libraries, but the scent always made her think of September and school starting and those hopeful days when the academic slate was clean. She had another year to prove she wasn’t a C student. By Christmas break, she’d always be lagging, all desire to catch up firmly behind her social life and the upcoming school play she always aspired to but never got a part in. Nina studied hard. Julietta didn’t have to. Emma was hit or miss. Johanna was mostly miss and, come senior year, had simply been happy to graduate.
“Excuse me.” She caught a librarian stacking books. “Do you know a man named Efan? He’s a history teacher.”
“Everyone in the library knows Efan,” the young man said. “He practically lives here. What do you want with him?”
“Well, ah—you see…” Johanna blew out a breath. “Okay, I’ll be straight. My sister met him here a couple weeks ago and they hit it off. Apparently, neither one of them gave any contact information.”
“That sounds like Efan.”
“They’re a pair, I’m sure,” Johanna said. “We, my sisters and I, are having dinner across the street, and I thought I’d take the chance of finding him, give him my sister’s info. Is he here?”
He tilted his head, grimaced a little.
“I swear I’m not stalking him.”
“How about you write down your sister’s contact info and I’ll give it to him?” He fished a pencil out of his pocket, handed it to her along with a scrap of paper from the pile on his cart. Johanna wrote down Julietta’s email address, website address, and cell phone number. She handed it to the librarian.
“How do I know you’re not going to chuck that the minute I leave?”
“How about I promise I won’t?”
“How about you pinky-swear me?” She stuck out her pinky.
He laughed, and hooked his little finger around hers.
“Pinky-swear. But I can’t promise he’ll call or anything. Efan is…a little strange.”
She let her hand fall. “So is my sister.”
Johanna didn’t bother taking the circuitous route back to Moose Tracks, but entered through the front door. Julietta didn’t even look up. Emma and Nina gave her a look that said they knew exactly what she had done. Dropping into her chair, she barely picked up a French fry before the door opened again and into the restaurant rushed a tall young man with dark hair and an intense expression focused immediately and solely on Julietta.
Efan, Johanna mouthed. She was certain. Gratification warmed her through, though it could do nothing about the cold hamburger and fries on her plate. She picked up the burger and took a bite, trying to pretend she didn’t notice Efan’s ungraceful descent to one knee beside Julietta’s chair.
He took her hand, drawing her out of shutdown with a perfectly-Prince-Charmingly accented whisper, “Julietta?”
* * * *
Night two in her old bedroom, in the farmhouse on County Line Road. Night four since Gram’s death. Night five since sleeping last in the room above the bakery, blissfully unencumbered by the memories and bonds so much easier to pretend did not exist. Johanna turned onto her side, pulled the locket free of the nightgown she took from Gram’s drawer. She traced the engraved letters, clicked it open to run a fingertip over her mother’s face she could not see for the darkness.
“I wish,” she whispered. “I wish…”
