Chapter 23
Katherine
No one knew where the egg lady was.
Katherine walked around the high-school gymnasium several times, but saw no one selling eggs.
The wooden floor was covered with rubber mats to protect the surface from wet boots.
The gym was horribly crowded, the sound of people talking a deafening buzz in her ears.
People in colorful layers jostled her, shouted greetings to one another, hugging and laughing.
A whole community connected, and there she was, the stranger in the dark cashmere coat, moving like a shadow among them.
She circled the market behind a family—husband, wife, two boys, one of whom looked to be about eight—the age Austin would be if he were alive.
The boy begged his father for a cider donut, and his father bought one, then broke it in half, making him share it with his younger brother.
The boy scowled beautifully and shoved his half of the donut into his mouth in one glorious bite, letting crumbs dribble down his chin.
Katherine’s eye went to the wall of paintings in the left corner, near the double doors in the back of the gym.
They were done in vivid colors and were playful, yet haunting.
There was a couple dancing on the roof of a barn while a wolf-faced moon stared down at them.
Another showed a man with antlers in a rowboat, gazing longingly at the shore.
She turned and continued walking around the gym.
A group of teenagers were gathered in front of the back doors, sharing a bag of maple cotton candy and laughing; they all looked nearly identical in their tall boots and bright ski jackets.
She passed a wooden-toy maker, a table from a local apiary selling honey and mead, piles of root vegetables and squash, coolers full of hand-stuffed sausage, a display of sweet rolls and breads, and a table of Unitarian Universalists doing a quilt raffle.
The vendors Katherine talked to didn’t seem to know a thing about the woman with the braid except that she was the egg lady and she knit beautiful warm socks. Katherine stopped to ask a woman in the corner who was spinning wool into chunky brown yarn.
“Oh, you mean Alice? I don’t know where she could be. She’s here every week. Never misses a market.”
“You don’t happen to know her last name, do you?” Katherine asked.
The woman shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t. Brenda Pierce, the market manager, would know, but she’s gone to Florida to be with her dad for open-heart surgery. Check back next week. I’m sure Alice will be here. I’ve never known her to miss a market.”
Alice,” Katherine said, back in her apartment, holding the tiny doll she’d fashioned yesterday from wire and papier-maché.
“I may not have found you, but at least you have a name now.”
She’d given the four-inch-high doll a long gray braid (embroidery floss) and dressed her in tiny blue jeans. She wore a bright sweater that Katherine had crocheted from turquoise and yellow yarn.
Katherine set Alice down in her box and went into the kitchen to find something to eat.
Alice, Alice. Go ask Alice. Alice down the rabbit hole.
Where are you, Alice?
She’d have to wait. She’d go back to the market next week—surely the egg lady would be back by then. If not, she’d talk to the market manager, get Alice’s last name, maybe even her phone number, if she got lucky.
She heated up some soup and made a cup of coffee. Outside, the late-afternoon sky darkened, and snow was beginning to fall more steadily.
After finishing her meager meal, Katherine dug around in her purse for her cigarettes, pulled one out, and lit it. She noticed the paper bag under her purse: the book she’d picked up yesterday.
She slid it out and opened it up. The first page showed a map of West Hall in 1850.
The page opposite it showed West Hall in the present day.
There were a few more streets, new churches and schools, but, really, Katherine was surprised at how little had actually changed.
The town green was right where it always was, gazebo in the center.
Gary would have loved this, the maps and photos pulled together to show the history of a town.
She flipped through and found photos of Jameson’s Tack and Feed, Cushing’s General Store, the West Hall Inn with its stained-glass windows.
Next to all of these were photographs of the same buildings in the present day: the sporting-goods store, the antique shop, Lou Lou’s Café, the bookstore.
It was odd, how recognizable each building was still, though the signs outside had changed, the roads were paved, and there were sidewalks with benches where hitching posts once stood.
Katherine took a drag of her cigarette and continued to page through the book.
Here was a team of horses pulling a giant roller to flatten the snow along the roads, and beside it, a present-day picture of the town garage with two huge orange snowplows.
Here were two photos that showed different generations of the same family collecting maple sap, one with tin buckets, the other with miles of plastic tubing.
Next came a dirty crew of men outside a sawmill that was now a craft gallery; then a sepia-toned photograph of rows of children with serious faces standing in front of a one-room school-house, and beside that a photo of the current school, West Hall Union, a low brick building built in 1979.
She turned the page and came to a photo showing a group of young men and women on a plaid blanket, with a huge rocky outcropping behind them: five stones rising from the earth.
Picnic at the Devil’s Hand, June 1898, read the hand-lettered caption.
Beside it, a photo of the same rocks, the woods behind them taller and denser, and without picnickers: The Devil’s Hand today.
She flipped to the next page. A white farmhouse with a long driveway, a barn behind it, and plowed fields off to the left. In the corner, more hand-lettering: Harrison Shea house and farm, Beacon Hill Road, 1905.
Katherine set her cigarette down in the ashtray and reached into her bag again for Gary’s copy of Visitors from the Other Side. She turned it over to compare the farmhouse Sara stood in front of to the one in the picture from the new book; they were a match.
She looked back down at the book of photographs, her eye on the opposite page: Harrison Shea house, present day.
The house looked nearly identical: same black shutters, brick chimney, and front steps.
The barn still stood, but the fields were overgrown, the woods closer.
Just to the left of the driveway, in the front yard, a woman and two girls tended a large vegetable garden.
The photo was taken from the road, and it was hard to make out too many details, but the woman, bent over, had a long gray braid and wore a brightly colored shawl.
Katherine’s heart pounded. Was her mind playing tricks on her?
She blinked and looked over at her worktable, where the Alice doll sat waiting in a tiny version of Lou Lou’s Café.
Then she turned back to the photo in the book, squinting down, half expecting that the woman with the braid wouldn’t be there—that she’d imagined it.
But there she was, hunched over next to a little girl in overalls and a taller girl with dark hair.
Could this woman between them with her head bent down possibly be Alice, the egg lady?
“Beacon Hill Road,” she said out loud, flipping back to the front of the book, where the maps were.
There it was. You just had to follow Main Street west out of town, take a right on Lower Road, which took you over the brook, and then the next right was Beacon Hill.
On the 1850 map, there was only one farmhouse drawn, though left unlabeled, about halfway down Beacon Hill Road before it intersected with Mountain Road.
Just to the north of that single house on Beacon Hill Road was a hill, and at the top of the hill were the words Devil’s Hand.
She checked the modern map and found Beacon Hill Road in the same place, and there, on the hill beyond, the Devil’s Hand. Mountain Road was now Route 6, of course.
It might be a wild leap, but it was something. And, aside from waiting until next week to try the farmers’ market again, she really didn’t have any other ideas for tracking down the egg lady.
She glanced out the living-room window; it was fully dark now. How was she going to know if it was even the right house? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until morning, to do this in the light of day?
No, she decided, reaching for her bag and keys.
This was perfect, really. She’d drive out there, and if she found the right house, she’d go and knock on the door, tell them she’d gotten lost in the bad weather, or had had a little car trouble.
Find out what she could that way. Maybe it wasn’t even Alice’s house, but belonged to some other woman with a long gray braid.
One way to find out.
She stood up and went to the closet to get her coat.