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“Too bad you couldn’t make her smile, Jed. Ellen’s a hard nut to crack!”
Ellen felt a flush start on her face and she looked down at her lap. She knew Jed was just playing the game, but something in his eyes had shaken her right down to her toes.
The next day Ellen left for Seaton. All of the McCaffertys accompanied her to the ferry, and poor Ruthie and Sarah clung to her in tears. Ellen felt near tears herself. She’d been here for eight months, but it felt like a lifetime. Another life, and one she wanted to keep.
“Don’t worry now, sweetheart,” Dyle said, drawing her close so she could smell the leather of his coat and the tang of his pipe tobacco. Smells that reminded her a little bit of Da and made it that much harder not to cry. “You’ll be back before you know it. We’ll make sure of that.”
Ellen just nodded, her throat too tight to speak. Rose pulled her into another hug. “Remember what I said,” she whispered, “about Ruth.”
Ellen did remember; Rose seemed to think Ruth loved her, in her own way. Despite the velvet dress, Ellen had her doubts. And she still didn’t want to go back to Seaton to find out if Rose was right or not.
She hugged all the little ones before climbing into the boat, waving madly as Captain Jonah pushed off from the dock, and the blue-green waters of Lake Ontario churned up, foaming white.
The island was just on the cusp of spring, and Ellen longed to stay to see the cherry trees burst into glorious blossom and then the tiny wild strawberries growing in the fields by the Lymans’ farm. Caro had told her all about it, and Ellen wished desperately that she could be there for summer. She wanted to pick strawberries and raspberries and apples, to swim in the pond that separated the McCaffertys’ property from the Lymans’, to help Rose plant and weed and harvest the kitchen garden, and have long, glorious summer days to enjoy with her friends and family.
It was not to be. Amherst Island grew smaller and smaller until it was no more than a gray-green smudge on the horizon, and then it was gone completely, almost as if it had never been.
“You stayed here a good part of the year,” Captain Jonah said in commiseration. Like most islanders he considered returning to the mainland something best avoided.
Ellen merely smiled in reply, for her mind churned with the thoughts of what she would miss this summer, as well as what she already missed. The warm, lighted kitchen at the end of Jasper Lane, everyone gathered around the long pine table; Patch, now six months old, at Ellen’s knee, begging for scraps. She’d miss the walks to school, the snug warmth of the schoolhouse, wrestling through her arithmetic with Miss Gardiner, or teaching the little ones their letters, slates on their laps, Sarah’s head against her shoulder.
She’d miss the lake, having captured its many moods on paper, from the dazzling blue-green of morning to the golden sheen of sunset.
And she’d miss the people... Dyle, spinning stories by the fire, always good-natured and lovably forgetful; Rose, practical and full of humor; the children, who buzzed around her like happy bees; and Lucas, who shyly asked to see her drawings and lent her his favorite books.
And Jed. This gave Ellen a little jolt, for what was there to miss about Jed? He was sullen and unpleasant and lost no opportunity to tease her. And yet... he’d given her a puppy, and he made sure no one else teased her, and Ellen knew she would miss him too.
“Almost there,” Captain Jonah called, and Ellen saw that the faint, dark line on
the horizon had become a bustling town, boats bobbing in the harbor, smoke unfurling into the blue sky.
She thought of the long train ride ahead, the night spent in an unfamiliar boarding house, and at the end of it, her life back in Seaton, and her stomach felt as if she’d swallowed a stone.
Seaton... with Uncle Hamish and Aunt Ruth, who both seemed as pale and insubstantial as ghosts, yet would be very real and present in just another day, looking at her as if she didn’t belong and never would.
Taking a breath and squaring her shoulders, Ellen smiled at Captain Jonah. Maybe life in Seaton wouldn’t be as bad as it used to be. Maybe it would be better, or at least different. Things would be different now, she told herself, because she was different. She certainly wouldn’t care if the girls turned their noses up at her, or Mrs. Cardle made fun of her accent.
Captain Jonah watched her with a certain understanding, and smiled in approval. “That’s my girl,” he said. “You’ll be back soon enough.”
Just twenty-four hours later the train from Rouse’s Point was rolling into Seaton, and Ellen peered out the window at a town that had become both familiar and strange. Had anything changed in Seaton, she wondered. Had anything happened? The town seemed just as smugly content as it had been when she left, with its neat wooden buildings, the impressive brick bank with its polished marble steps.
“Why, is it Ellen Copley?” The Seaton stationmaster started forward as Ellen came off the train. “Ruth said something, but you have grown a bit. I scarcely recognized you.”
“It’s been some time,” Ellen allowed. “Is Aunt Ruth here? Or Uncle Hamish?” She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear as she scanned the empty station platform. This time she’d made sure to look neat upon her arrival; she’d brushed her hair and scrubbed her face with her handkerchief. “I wrote them with the train times.”
There was an uncomfortable pause and then the stationmaster said, his tone as jovial as Uncle Hamish’s, “You know how they are about minding the store. I expect Hamish will be along soon.”
Ellen nodded, suppressing the twinge of disappointment and even hurt she felt at her relatives’ absence. She seemed destined to be unmet at stations. “I know the way,” she said. “I think I’ll walk to the store. Uncle Hamish can retrieve my valise later.”
“Walk? But...”
“I’ll be fine,” Ellen said firmly, and set off towards Seaton’s main street. There was a light breeze, and fleecy clouds scudded across a pale blue sky. The trees were farther along here than on the island, she noted, and she smiled at the cherry blossoms just beginning to open, committing them to memory to draw later.
As Ellen entered the town proper, several people narrowed their eyes in speculative curiosity, but no one called out a greeting.
They don’t recognize me, Ellen realized in surprise. I must have grown. I must have changed more than I thought.
She felt changed—taller, prouder, more certain of who she was, even if the rest of this town had no idea. Straightening, her shoulders back, she looked forward to showing them.
