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SEVEN
The following winter was long and cold in Seaton. Blizzards blew from the north and covered the town in snow, weighing branches down heavily and delaying the trains. The little creek in the woods beyond the Copleys’ house froze completely, and an ice-encased branch broke off in a storm and smashed one of the windows of the store, although Hamish had it repaired quickly enough. Even with the wood stoves heating the inside of the store, things froze; Ellen spent several afternoons lining jars of honey up in front of the stove to thaw them out.
Even at the beginning of April the ground was covered with a hardened crust of snow and the trees looked dead and black, their branches stark against a pewter sky. Spring was slow coming to Seaton that year, and Ellen felt it painfully.
She had passed the months slowly, ticking each one off on the Farmer’s Almanac calendar Hamish had given her from the store. There had been a few letters to liven the long, cold days: two from Da, as brief and uninformative as ever. He had settled in Santa Fe, and was now working on the engines. He’d even sent a silver dollar, and although Ellen could think of a dozen ways to spend it, she’d dutifully handed the coin over to Aunt Ruth, who had taken it with a brisk little nod.
“That will help some,” she’d said, and with an icy wave of dread Ellen had turned to her.
“Hasn’t my da sent other money, for my keep?”
Aunt Ruth had said nothing, and although her expression remained as stern and unyielding as ever, Ellen thought she saw a flicker of pity in those gray-blue eyes. Her father hadn’t sent any money, she knew in that moment. She’d been foolish to think he might have at all. He’d offloaded her like an unwanted parcel nearly the moment he’d arrived. Her gut churned and her eyes stung. She really was dependent on her aunt and uncle’s grudging charity.
Knowing her father was well and truly settled, and hadn’t sent any money, gave her a leaden feeling in her middle, for it made it all the more certain that he would not return. That he didn’t even want to return. She hadn’t seen him in a year and a half, and in all that time there had only been three letters, with barely enough words to fill a single sheet of paper.
Yet there had been other letters, cheerful, newsy missives that filled page after page, and Ellen determined to forget about her father’s decided lack of communication and concentrate on those. Rose had written, and Caro and Sarah and Lily; Lucas had written too—he was cataloguing all the plants of Amherst Island and sent Ellen pressed specimens which she kept between the pages of her rapidly filling sketchbook.
Each letter from the island was like a burst of light into Ellen’s dreary existence; she sat silently through school before returning back to her aunt and uncle’s to do her chores or help in the store. The evenings were spent in quiet and usually solitary pursuits, although once in a while her uncle asked her to play checkers in the parlor, with Aunt Ruth sitting in her usual rocking chair, darning briskly, shooting them glances every so often that to Ellen, seemed full of censure.
Yet one wintry evening, to her surprise, Hamish glanced over at Ruth and asked her to play jackstraws with them. Ruth’s mouth tightened and she darned all the faster.
“I’ve these stockings to see to, Hamish, as you can very well see for yourself.”
“Stockings will keep,” Hamish said in his easy way, although Ellen thought there was something a bit tentative about his expression, a shadow in his eyes. “Come play with us, Ruth.”
Ellen waited for Ruth’s ringing set down, for she could not imagine her aunt playing anything. Then, to her utter shock, Ruth put her darning back in the basket. “Very well,” she said briskly, as if she were setting to just another chore. “One game of jackstraws.”
Hamish grinned and spilled the jackstraws out from their jar, turning to give Ellen a sideways smile. “Our Ruth always was the best at jackstraws.”
“It just takes patience,” Ruth said as she carefully studied the spill of jackstraws; the goal of the game was to withdraw one of the spindly sticks at a time without disturbing any of the others.
Ellen gazed at her aunt and uncle, amazed by these small revelations. She could not imagine her aunt ever playing jackstraws, although she could certainly imagine her being the best at them. Aunt Ruth was the kind of person who was the best at anything she did. And yet at one time she must have been young and hopeful, full of dreams and maybe even laughter. Ellen tried to remember her aunt from the early days in Springburn, before they’d emigrated, but she could not. All of Springburn felt blurry now, as distant and faded as an old photograph, never mind when she was as young as three or four years old.
“Now let’s see...” Aunt Ruth murmured, and carefully, with two slender fingers, she withdrew a jackstraw with silent grace. Hamish cheered, and Ellen grinned, for no one could mistake the triumphant gleam in her aunt’s eyes. “Now that is how it is done,” she said as she sat back with a smile, and Hamish took his turn.
The game only lasted a few minutes, yet Ellen thought it the most pleasant time she’d ever had with her aunt and uncle. And yet somehow even this little joy made her sad; why could they have not played jackstraws when she’d first arrived? Why couldn’t Ruth have softened, and Hamish been more natural, and they’d have somehow made a family, the three of them, odd as it was?
As she and Hamish put the jackstraws back in their jar and Ruth returned to her darning, Ellen knew it was too late for such hopes.
School, for Ellen, remained mostly something to be endured. She enjoyed her lessons under Miss Evans, and in November Louisa came down with scarlet fever and didn’t return to school until the spring, which made Ellen’s day to day existence much easier. Still, the other girls her age had yet to really welcome her, and Ellen recognized it was as much her fault as theirs. She had no interest anymore in becoming friends with the girls of Seaton; she simply wanted her island friends. Her island life.
As for high school, she had not let herself think about it, and had not yet told Miss Evans whether she would sit the entrance exam in May. Lucas wanted her to go to high school in Kingston, but Ellen did not see how that would be possible—she couldn’t take the entrance exam for Glebe Collegiate all the way from Vermont. All she could hold onto was the promise of returning to the island in a few months, and hope that the other tangled threads of her life would form themselves into a pattern.
One morning in April as Ellen was finishing her oatmeal in her usual silence, Aunt Ruth bustled in, hands on her hips, and announced, “Louisa is recovering and would like visitors.”
Ellen’s spoon hovered halfway to her mouth as she stared at her aunt in surprise. “Surely you don’t mean me.”
“Why else would I be telling you?” Ruth replied in her usual sharp way. She moved around the kitchen, wiping the already clean counter top and moving the
sugar bowl two inches to the right of its perfectly good place.
Ellen sat still. She could tell Ruth was bothered, and not by her own actions for once. “She asked for me in particular?”
“Yes. Of course. You’re to go this afternoon, and take a present. Something from the store, a hair ribbon or some such.”
Ellen nodded, her mind still whirling. Why would Louisa want to see her? Could it be just to poke fun from her sickbed? Surely not, and yet... Ellen couldn’t think of another reason. Louisa had not had a kind word for her in nearly a year. Had being ill changed her? Ellen felt a chill of foreboding. She didn’t want to see Louisa, changed or the same. She didn’t want to see Louisa at all, for she knew no good could come of it.
Yet judging from Ruth’s indomitable expression, her mouth set in a puckered line, Ellen knew there would be no arguing. There never was with Ruth.
