Chapter 15
“We got a Christmas card today from Dad and Pam.” Nell looked up from her bowl. “Really? I didn’t see it.”
“I put it in the basket with the other cards,” Felicity told her. “It’s a picture of the three of them in Colorado. They went skiing there for a week in March.”
Molly made a dismissive sound and put her spoon on the table next to her bowl. Nell had made a Portuguese style fish stew, but even the rich and savory dish couldn’t tempt Molly to take more than a few bites.
“What do your friends think about you going to Switzerland next Christmas?” Nell asked Felicity.
“They think it’s awesome, of course,” Felicity said, ladling more stew into her bowl. “Except for Ricki. She hates the cold. She said if someone paid for her to go somewhere special for the holidays it would be a tropical island with plenty of sand and sun and fit guys in tiny bathing suits.”
“Banana hammocks,” Molly muttered.
Felicity laughed. “I bet Mick wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those! Not that he has the time to be hanging out at the beach with all he has to do at the farm.”
Molly suddenly rose from her seat. “I’m off,” she said. “Mick and I are meeting some other members of the Young Farmer and Rancher Committee at the Blue Mermaid.”
“What’s with the long face?” Felicity asked. “You look like you’re going to the dentist or something. It’s just a bunch of people meeting in a pub.”
“I’m sure these gatherings can get pretty heated,” Nell said hurriedly.
Molly shot Nell a look of gratitude and was on her way.
“You know that bag I have my eye on?” Felicity asked. “This online store has it on sale. I sent you the link.”
“Thanks,” Nell said abstractedly.
“Do you want me to help clean up?”
“No,” Nell said. “I’m sure you have more important things to do.”
“Okay.” Felicity took one last bite of stew, got up, and brought her bowl to the sink. “I’m going to call Dad. Should I say hi from you?” she asked.
Nell smiled. “Sure,” she said. “Thanks.”
When Felicity was gone, Nell’s thoughts were finally free to turn again to Eric. Conversation at lunch had come easily for the most part. Eric hadn’t mentioned their painful breakup or asked about her writing, for which Nell was grateful. He had suggested they see each other again, and she had assented. All of that was good.
Except for one thing, Nell realized, as she brought her empty bowl to the sink for rinsing. Here she was professing to be unhappy about her soon to be empty nest, and yet while her children were still with her, instead of focusing entirely on their well-being her thoughts were being tempted by the memory of a lost romance. It’s not my fault, she thought defensively as she turned on the water. It isn’t. It was just that Eric Manville’s turning up in Yorktide this Christmas season was the last thing Nell had expected to happen. The absolute last. It was understandable that she should find herself to some extent preoccupied with him. It was understandable. Wasn’t it?
* * *
It was almost midnight. The house was quiet but for the ticking of the miniature grandfather clock in the living room and the sound of the wind rattling the few old windows Nell was always meaning to replace. Softly she opened the door to her room and stepped into the hall. The doors of the girls’ rooms were closed. Felicity was probably deep in sleep, but Molly might very well be staring into the darkness much as her mother had been doing since she had retired for the night.
Quietly, Nell began the journey she had decided upon only moments earlier. The attic of the house on Trinity Lane was accessed via a steep and narrow staircase hidden behind an equally narrow door at the end of the hall. The door creaked when she opened it, and Nell flinched. She reached for the pull cord, and a bare bulb overhead illuminated the stairs before her. Nell closed the door behind her—it creaked again—and, holding the banister, climbed the fourteen steps to the attic.
There she turned on another light that allowed her to see the center of the room if not every shadowy corner. Nell walked purposefully across the bare wooden boards to a plastic storage container labeled PRIVATE. There was a low stool nearby; Nell brought it closer and sat. She hadn’t opened this container since she had packed it just after graduation from college. With a deep breath Nell snapped off the lid.
There they were, her old notebooks, and under them the journals in which her poetry had been published. The notebooks were five and a half by seven and a half inches and spiral bound. Nell had never written early drafts of her poems on a computer. She had felt the physical act of writing was in itself a part of the creating.
Nell lifted one of the notebooks from the plastic container and opened it. Immediately she recognized Eric’s writing along with her own. She smiled as she remembered how she had so often asked for his input and how he had happily encouraged her process—This works so well!—and suggested changes—Not sure about this word; try another? She had never felt his contributions an intrusion or an attempted usurpation of her work. They had shared a sympathetic dialogue, a true give-and-take of ideas.
Nell took another notebook from the container and held it to her heart. These notebooks were all the tangible evidence that remained of her relationship with Eric. After the breakup she had packed into a separate box Eric’s letters and the photos taken of them together and the trinkets and books he had given her and stored it in her parents’ attic with the other boxes that contained memorabilia of her youth. When she married she had left that one special box where it was; to bring evidence of her earlier love affair into the home she was going to share with her husband seemed wrong. After the divorce Nell had been so occupied with the task of rebuilding a life she had virtually forgotten about the box, until three years earlier, when her parents had decided to sell their house and move to Florida. Nell had told her mother she would visit to pick up what remained of her belongings.
“Oh, I got rid of all that old junk that was littering up the attic,” Jackie Emerson had said lightly. “That box from your college days weighed a ton. Your father almost threw his back out hauling it to the curb.”
“But it was mine,” Nell had replied, stunned and horrified. “That box contained my history. You had no right to deprive me of my past.”
To which her mother had said, “Well, what’s done is done.”
Though there was much to be missed in that box, there was one photo in particular Nell would do anything to have in her possession. It had been taken at a picnic with friends one idyllic summer day. Nell could still hear the drowsy sound of bees buzzing; she could still smell the heady scent of roses; she could still feel the warmth of the sun on her skin and taste the tartness of the cold lemonade they had drunk. It had been a day of simple pleasures and deep happiness. She wondered if Eric remembered it as she did. Maybe, if things continued to go well between them, she would ask him. Maybe—
Nell shivered. The attic that could be so warm in the summer months was bone-shatteringly cold at this time of the year. She put the notebooks back into the plastic container and with some difficulty brought it down to her room, where she stowed it in her closet. Reading her old work would be an emotional experience and one Nell would have to approach carefully, but it was an experience she very much wanted. She removed her bathrobe, laid it across the end of her bed, and crawled under the covers. With the light turned out, Nell looked into the dark and remembered.