Chapter 14
Back at the farmhouse, Hannah naps after lunch while Alice and I sit at the dining room table.
I tell her about Brady’s brilliant idea to get her farmhouse on the National Register of Historic Places, and the work involved.
Fortunately, she loves the idea, though I am careful to tell her it is not a guarantee for keeping the farm.
Our first order of business is to prove that something of historical significance occurred here, and we get to work comparing the names in Rose’s ledger with those on Lenny’s list. Our excitement builds every time we make a connection.
We ultimately find twenty-two women reflected in both lists over three summers.
Lenny’s list even notes the locations where various women worked: the dairy, the orchard, the cannery.
“O’Brien’s Dairy,” Alice notes. “They’re still up and running.”
I feel a rush of adrenaline. Maybe the dairy has historical archives.
Alice and I start to wonder about these women.
Could any of them still be alive? It’s possible but not likely.
They would be over one hundred years old now.
But maybe they shared stories with their families?
Left behind journals or correspondence? Any evidence that could tell us more about living in this farmhouse over eighty years ago would be a plus.
“Well, I already thought my grandmother was amazing, and now, I think she was the coolest woman in the world,” Alice announces. “How wonderful the man working at the museum found you this list.”
“Lenny,” I say, grinning. “He seemed very fond of history . . . and very fond of you.”
“Me? I don’t even know him.”
“Well, he knows you. He buys your jam, apparently. I think you have a secret admirer, Alice. Though I guess it isn’t a secret anymore.”
“Lenny?” Alice repeats, trying to place him.
“Tall and thin, gray hair.”
Alice shakes her head.
“Well, I should introduce you. Maybe you two will hit it off?”
Alice laughs and waves the idea away. “I think that ship has sailed.”
I wonder about Alice’s past relationships. Was there ever a special someone in her life? Before I can ask, Alice stands and moves to the kitchen counter.
“All this history research has worked up my appetite,” she says. “Would you like a little something to tide you over until dinner?”
I shake my head. “Maybe just a cup of tea. My stomach is a little off today.”
Alice sits back down after putting on the kettle. “Penny for your thoughts?”
Now that we’ve finished combing through the ledger, my interaction with Brady resurfaces. I finally tell Alice about his invitation for a sunset picnic tonight.
“I said no,” I add.
“And you regret that?”
The whole scene—his question, my answer, the expression on his face—keeps replaying on a loop. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Alice places a hand on my shoulder. “You like him,” she says.
I teeter my head. “If I was in a position to like someone, then yes, I might. But I’m not.”
“Why not?”
“Because we have all of this going on,” I say, gesturing at the work in front of us.
Alice eyes me critically. “Is that really why?”
I shrug. “It’s too soon.”
“Who says?”
“I say.”
“Why?”
“I have Han . . .” Hannah is napping upstairs, but I lower my voice anyway. “I have responsibilities.”
Alice matches my volume. “You can’t get to know a man because you have responsibilities?”
Hannah never knew her father, just like I never knew mine. It doesn’t seem fair to introduce another man to play that role, when Sean desperately wanted to be her dad. It would be different if he left us on purpose. Just ran off. But he didn’t leave us. At least, not like that.
Alice and I sit in silence for a beat, her question lingering.
“I read an article about Sean’s drowning,” Alice finally says, her voice soft, gentle. “I found it when I looked you up online at the library.”
Over the past three days, Alice and I had talked about Sean, but not about how he died, not about that day. Alice had been polite in not asking, not bringing it up. Until now.
“I can’t imagine how traumatic that was for you,” she adds. “But I also wonder if maybe . . . you could still be angry with him?”
I feel my heart pulse. “Angry? I’m not angry,” I protest.
She purses her lips.
“Why do you think I’m angry?” I ask in a calmer tone.
She shrugs. “Because Sean didn’t stop to think about you and the baby before he jumped into that water. He risked his life, not for you or the baby or himself, but for a stranger, a little girl he didn’t know.”
“But she was a child,” I argue. I feel heat rise in my throat.
“And he didn’t have time to think. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in a moment of crisis?
Not think. Do. That’s just who Sean was.
He was a Boy Scout, an Eagle Scout. He did what was expected of him.
He was brave. He was a good man. A noble man.
He went into autopilot.” I shake my head.
“I can’t be angry with him for being selfless. For saving someone.”
Alice remains calm, cocks her head. “Can’t you?”
“I shouldn’t.”
“But?”
“But . . .” I repeat. “But it seems as if saving that girl . . . doing the right thing, in that moment, was more important to him than his wife and unborn child.”
There it is.
“Shouldn’t he have thought of us?” The words come out before I can think.
It’s as if I’ve passed the point of no return.
I begin to rant. “Shouldn’t it have crossed his mind that we needed him too?
That his responsibility was to us? Couldn’t he have helped the girl another way?
Maybe found a large branch to offer her?
Couldn’t he have thrown our cooler into the water to buoy her until someone called 911 and help arrived?
I know this is all hindsight. I know. But why?
Why did he have to jump into the water? Why did he have to be a hero? ”
I start to cry, and Alice wraps her meaty arms around me. Her hug feels like being strapped into a seat on a roller coaster. I may go up and down, left and right, and even upside down.
But I won’t fall off the edge.
We all go to bed early, but I can’t sleep.
I finally drift off, then open my eyes forty-five minutes later, wide awake.
I toss and turn for a while, then decide to just get up.
Feeling the need for fresh air, I head to the porch.
The evening air feels cool and a bit moist; there’s an earthy smell of dirt and grass and tree bark and the faint but lingering smell of smoke from what I guess is a neighbor’s bonfire.
It smells like a Friday night high school football game. It smells like camping.
It smells like adventure.
After my talk with Alice earlier, after saying all the things I never said after Sean died, things I should have said to the therapist I saw that first year, I can’t settle my mind.
It feels like whiplash, processing emotions I didn’t even know I had so long after the fact. Anger. Disappointment. Abandonment.
I didn’t even know I was angry.
Is this why I haven’t been able to let go of Sean?
I need to move. It’s too dark out to take a walk—the sky is jet black without the light pollution of a big city—so I pace the porch.
My fingers wriggle, itching to do something.
I don’t want to wake Alice and Hannah, but I need to expel this energy.
I head back inside, and as soon as I see the kitchen, I know what I need to do.
I need to bake bread.
I think back to that morning, after Hannah’s graduation, when I wanted to make her fluffy French toast for breakfast but had just finished the last two end pieces of our bread.
I didn’t have enough flour on hand for a new loaf, not even enough for pancakes.
But I know Alice’s canisters are full. The absolute best French toast starts with the absolute best bread.
And I figure if I make a loaf of challah now, I can transform it into that perfectly thick, eggy, syrup-drenched French toast Hannah loves come the morning.
I work methodically—quietly grabbing flour, yeast, sugar, and eggs.
As I start to dissolve the yeast in water, I think back to sixth grade, to when my mother came home to find me baking bread for the first time.
We had flour and sugar in the pantry, but I had to get the yeast from our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Holloway.
She was always home and essentially on call to assist me until my mother arrived.
When she handed me the yeast, she said she wasn’t sure how old it was, and that I should “bloom” it first to see if it was still “alive.” I nodded as if I knew exactly what she meant, then immediately looked up the word bloom in the dictionary.
I followed the definition that made most sense, after many references to flowers, to add the yeast to warm water and a touch of sugar and wait for it to get foamy, to prove its viability.
What grew inside the bowl in the next five minutes looked like a fuzzy science experiment.
I figured that was a good sign, so I went ahead with the recipe directions.
I mixed and stirred and kneaded the sticky glob until I got something that resembled bread dough.
Now, I peek at my yeast, water, and sugar combination and smile at the frothy growth.
Proof of life.
The rest of the steps unfold seamlessly.
I mix the dry ingredients and crack eggs, then observe as a shaggy dough forms, then vanishes, as I knead it on the countertop.
By the time I braid the dough on its second rise, I notice my heart feels lighter, the tightly coiled rope loosened. As if there’s more room in there now.
Space. For something—or someone.
“You like Brady,” I say out loud in the quiet kitchen. It’s the truth, and I feel no need to retract the statement. “You wanted to go with him tonight.”
I did. I imagine now what the night would have been like, had I said yes to Brady.
We would have shared a picnic somewhere beautiful—some spot that only he knows—and then lost our breath watching the sunset in magnificent pinks and oranges and purples over the river.
We would have talked and laughed. It would have been easy.
Natural. Much like that night Sean and I picnicked on the beach, before the storm came.
Except instead of ending in tragedy, this could end with promise.
Brady would have taken my hand as we walked back to his truck. And when we said goodbye . . .
As I wipe flour from the countertop, I vow to stop by the camp and tell Brady that, if his offer still stands, I’d like to go for that sunset picnic after all.
Suddenly, I hear Alice’s house phone ringing. I don’t know exactly what time it is. I’ve been in a baking coma. But it’s late, has to be past midnight. Who would be calling at this hour?
Before I can pick up, the rings stop, and I tackle the stairs to find my aunt sitting up in bed, the side lamp on, an old-fashioned pale-yellow phone receiver up to her ear, the cord a long stretch of curlicues.
“What is it?” I ask, assessing the expression on her face.
She holds a finger up.
“Where?” she asks into the phone. And then, “How long do you think that will be?”
Then finally: “Thank you for letting us know.”
My heart pounds suddenly as I wait for her to hang up the receiver.
“That was Gerry, the owner of Camp Stockholm,” she says. “There was a fire.”
I remember the scent outside when I was on the porch, the smell of smoke I assumed was coming from a nearby bonfire. “A fire? Where?”
“It started in the kitchen building, and then spread to the two next-door cabins.”
“But that’s Brady’s cabin. And the girls from Scandinavia.”
Alice touches my arm. “The girls are safe. Brady got them out,” she assures me.
“And Brady?” I ask.
She sighs. “He was taken by ambulance to the county hospital.”