Chapter Twenty
The next morning was sunny, and the temperature on the dashboard thermometer read forty-three degrees. The early forecast predicted it would go up to the low fifties by the afternoon. Practically a heat wave.
This morning she’d avoid Ruthie’s—she just wasn’t in the mood to talk about what had been happening out at the house just yet, so she drove directly toward the camp.
From beneath the piles of snow that lined the roadside, water flowed in swift rivulets.
Kit wondered if this was normal spring melt-off or just a tease from Mother Nature, who would turn the temperature back down tomorrow and let the stubborn cold return.
She hoped not. She was longing to see the camp in spring, with the many trees budding and the garden beds showing off just enough greenery for her to guess at what lovelies were to come.
There would be gardens, wouldn’t there? Surely, over the years someone had planted some perennials.
But of course, she wouldn’t be there to see what pretty things might bloom come summer.
Way to cheer yourself up, she mocked as she unlocked the farmhouse door.
The sun coming in through the large windows had warmed the front hall and the living room, so she put her bag down next to the uncovered sofa.
The room seemed cheerier somehow; she could almost call it friendly, and it made her resolve to take care of business there in the house even stronger.
There were so many things on her to-do list, she’d have to prioritize and go in order of necessity if she hoped to accomplish all that needed to be done.
But first things first. She made coffee and a slice of toast, which she ate standing up in the kitchen, looking out the window and hoping for a wildlife moment.
Kit took a sip of coffee and sighed. She really should see Russ before he left for his trip.
But once back in Bryn Mawr, would she lose her resolve to return to Maine?
Would she give up and tell Banks to sell it all and be done with it?
Somehow thinking about going back to her Bryn Mawr home did not make her feel nostalgic.
It made her anxious, especially since her last conversation with Russ had ended with him hanging up on her.
She couldn’t explain how she felt being in the house where so much of her family history had been made.
She liked being there, liked thinking about her mother growing up there and falling in love with her father.
She wanted to know more about her mother and Maxine’s childhood days, when surely they’d been loving sisters.
But most recently, Maxine’s sad love story had taken center stage and found a place in her heart, and she knew there was so much more to learn.
After more than a week in Maine, Kit felt more of a sense of purpose than she had at home, where everything was smooth and easy and the most difficult task she set herself on any given day was finishing the New York Times crossword puzzle.
More than anything, she wanted to learn the secrets her mother had kept from her for her entire life.
The more she thought about it, the more she came to believe that whatever it was that Maxine had whispered to her in her dream, it had only been an echo of what she had suspected from the beginning.
That Maxine had wanted her there for a reason, to know something.
If only she’d been more forthcoming about whatever it was she wanted her niece to know, or at the very least, given her a clue or two to point her in the right direction.
If Maxine had left something for her to find that would point her in the right direction, where would that have been?
Maybe in her desk?
Kit walked into the front hall and pulled the wooden chair closer to the desk.
She sat and opened the top center drawer.
Inside, along with the expected pens and pencils and paper clips, she found stacks of business cards.
Some were from local businesses, others from out of state.
An electrician from Ohio, another from New Jersey.
Lawyers from New York and North Carolina and Massachusetts, and one from Philadelphia whose commercials she’d seen on the local TV station.
She left them where she’d found them, then decided to deal with the papers that remained on the desktop and left room for nothing else.
Once she straightened the pile and moved it to one side, she noticed the message light on the desk phone was blinking.
She lifted the receiver and heard the beeping tone that indicated waiting voice messages, and a prompt to enter the code to retrieve them.
Kit hung up. She tried to imagine what Maxine would have chosen.
Her birthday? Kit didn’t know when Maxine was born.
Banks or Greta would probably know, but it was too early to call either of them.
Kit lifted the receiver again and considered the keys. The two easiest sets of numbers and most commonly used codes would be 123 and 99.
She pressed the nine two times, which was the code she’d used on her old landline.
“You have twenty-seven new messages. To listen to your messages, press pound now . . .”
Kit followed the instructions.
“Hey, Maxine, this is Dave Hunter. Hope you’re well.
We just realized we hadn’t heard back from you about our reservations for the summer.
We missed the last few years due to some family issues, but we miss the camp and can’t wait to get back.
Ricky is taking swimming lessons so he’ll be ready to take on the lake this year.
Give us a call back, please. Oh, and hey, we missed you, too. ”
Kit wrote down the caller’s name and phone number and went on to message number two.
Carl Thompson’s message was almost the same as Dave Hunter’s before him, and Angie Donaldson’s after.
A few hang-up calls were interspersed, but mostly the calls were from campers wanting to make reservations.
Kit wrote down every name and number. Reluctantly, she knew she was going to have to return their calls.
Kit took the list into the living room, found a comfy chair, and started the callbacks.
She wasn’t prepared for the reactions of the people on the other end of the line.
“Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry for—you said you were Maxine’s niece? Had we met you at camp? I know I don’t have to tell you how wonderful your aunt was . . .”
“Maxine made everyone at that camp feel like family. We considered her family. My kids called her Aunt Maxine when they were little. My entire family will be devastated when I tell them she’s gone . . .”
“Oh, I can’t believe it. I knew she’d had that stroke but she promised she’d be back this summer. I cannot tell you how sorry I am for your loss. Well, for all our loss.”
“She was one in a million, and we loved that camp like it was our own summer cottage. You’re going to reopen it this summer, aren’t you? Oh, please say you are. The Camp in the Meadows was our favorite place for family vacations. We were all looking forward to coming back in July.”
After a dozen or so such conversations, Kit put her phone down.
More than one call had ended in tears and she wasn’t sure she could take much more.
For a moment she considered simply ignoring the rest of the callers, but she felt the weight of generations of Meadowses leaning on her to do the right thing.
She counted the number of calls still to be returned.
If she did some tomorrow and some the next, she’d have contacted everyone who’d called.
The thought that she had to return to Bryn Mawr before Russ left poked at her conscience more and more, and was becoming harder to ignore.
She really should go back to Bryn Mawr, if for no other reason than to wish Russ a safe trip.
But of course, she’d be coming back to Tolerance. Something about the callers’ devotion to Maxine and the camp itself had jarred something inside her. She knew without question she’d be returning.
She felt drained after having made so many phone calls. There’d been so many genuine expressions of sympathy.
“Of course,” she’d said a dozen or more times. “I’ll be in touch as soon as we know if the camp will reopen.”
She knew she should tell the truth, admit that the Camp in the Meadows was a thing of the past. She chided herself for not coming out and saying, “I’m sorry, but the camp will not be reopening, unless, of course, I’m successful in selling it.
In which case it probably won’t reopen until next year and may not be the same as you remember it. ”
She just couldn’t make those words come.
She wanted to kick herself every time she hung up a call having left the would-be camper with the hope that they’d be back in their favorite cabin come the summer. It wasn’t fair, Kit knew that. But it was as if some cosmic force had hold of her tongue.
She thought the force might be Maxine, but she’d never really believed in that sort of thing. Of course, though, there had been that dream about Beth, and it appeared that was coming true. And there had been that dream about the cabin’s fire . . .
She’d learned so much about Maxine in the brief time she’d spent in Maine.
Not everything she needed to know, but she now knew that her beautiful aunt had had a love affair for the ages, had loved hard enough to have never loved again once Miles was gone.
She’d loved her family enough to have single-handedly kept their family business going, had been beloved by the people who came to spend a week or two or a month.
She’d kept the same friends for decades and was well spoken of by everyone Kit met.
She’d worked hard into her eighties, until her body had broken down and she’d finally given up, spending most of her time watching TV and reading in her room on the second floor, and reading about her lost love in old magazines that she kept close by her side.
But for all she’d learned of Maxine and the person she’d been, the greater the mystery grew: What could have come between a woman like that and the mother Kit had known to have been kind and loving?