As Waters Gone By Page 12

  “And the moral of the story is . . . ?”

  “You throw enough love up against a stony heart and it’s bound to crumble, sooner or later.”

  “Not every kind of rocky shoreline has caves like that. Some rock doesn’t . . . cave.”

  Bougie wiped her finger on her napkin. “If he’s a good man, he will.”

  “He’s a good man.” No more imperfect than she was.

  “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  Emmalyn could have told a cardiologist which specific arteries in her heart were blocked, judging by the stab of pain. “Rejection. Humiliation. Embarrassment.”

  “Oh, those,” Bougie said, dismissing the thoughts with a wave of her hand. “Grace outweighs them, too.”

  “I don’t know how to do this.” Emmalyn sensed she was pulling her feet, one at a time, from wet concrete on a 320-mile highway that led to Max’s prison cell. “And by morning, I may wonder why I should.”

  11

  Bayfield shimmered in the early morning light when Emmalyn drove her car off the ferry, through the parking lot, around the corner, and up the hill on Rittenhouse Avenue. The coffee shop—as unassuming as they come—nodded a greeting that suggested she’d find fortification within its walls. She ordered the daily brew and a crustless, muffin-shaped quiche with roasted red peppers and joined a handful of other patrons in the adjoining eat-in area. It looked as if a hole had been punched between two narrow storefronts to double the size of the coffee shop. Pressed tin ceiling, coffee crate tables, plump leather couches and chairs, South American burlap coffee bag pillows, and a coffee-colored hardwood floor invited her to linger.

  The day stretched long and full before her. But she accepted the invitation to soak in her surroundings for a few minutes. As she sipped, she thumbed through a Bayfield area attractions brochure and eavesdropped on local conversations. Emmalyn smiled. She almost missed the sound of a cookie jar lid.

  A touristy newspaper listed a unique mix of advertisers, including a hardware store in Washburn, just to the south on Highway 13. She keyed the phone number into her cell phone contacts list. Time to get serious. She’d call after she exited the coffee shop rather than force the conversation onto people who really didn’t care whether or not her cottage floors were a mess.

  The sweet rhythm of life floated between the two rooms. An artist on her way to take her turn staffing the co-op gallery across the street. The bookstore manager, who’d apparently hung a “Closed for Coffee” sign on the door of her shop near the art gallery. Two men discussing politics. A young mom with a little one in a snuggle sling that hung only slightly higher than where the baby had floated in amniotic fluid weeks earlier. The mom soothed the child with a hand on the curve of its back while she propped a book on the table with the other hand. She used her elbow to hold the book open to her spot when she picked up her coffee cup and bent her head to the cup.

  The woman caught Emmalyn staring. “He naps better here than he does at home in his cradle,” she said.

  Emmalyn’s smile wasn’t broad, but surprisingly heartfelt. A small victory. She was happy for someone else’s blessing.

  Yes, Max would have appreciated this place. Would appreciate it one day soon, she hoped. He’d make easy conversation with the men and find something kind to say to the proprietors. He’d notice details like the extra narrow restroom doors and find them as amusing as she did. He’d comment on the rich, dark flooring. Maybe she should rethink finishing the cottage floors in a light stain.

  Fortified for the heavy decision-making the day promised, she exited the coffee shop and placed the first call.

  “Yes. We rent floor sanders,” the phone voice said. “By the half-day, day, or week. What’s the square footage?”

  Mid-discussion, a tap on her shoulder jarred her. Cora. Emmalyn held up one finger to signal she’d soon be done on the phone. Cora nodded and moved a few steps away to wait.

  The estimate for the sander and polyurethane jostled her more than the shoulder tap. Even with all that work, all those hours—days, really—the floor would still be rustic at best. What other option did she have?

  “Bad news?” Cora was at her elbow again.

  If Emmalyn had filled out a friend-match application, she couldn’t have imagined either Bougie or Cora would have popped up as likely options. But she’d already grown to treasure their companionship and counsel. Cora’s question was rooted in genuine concern. Emmalyn could see it in her eyes. “Not bad, necessarily. Mildly disturbing.”

  “Want to get a cup of coffee and talk about it?”

  “Just came from there. I was headed to Washburn to rent a floor sander for the cottage. Now, I’m not sure.”

  “Do you plan to cover the water damage in the kitchen area with a big old rug or something? It may not sand out to a color that blends well with the rest of the floor unless you sand deep, and that can hurt the look of the grain.”

  Crisp leaves danced around their feet on the wide sidewalk on Rittenhouse. The breeze held a hint of the winter months around life’s corner. Emmalyn flipped up the collar on her jacket.

  Cora waved her to follow. “I’m on my way to my favorite indulgence. It looks as if you could use some, too.”

  “I don’t drink.” Especially since the disastrous night after Max’s attempts to drown his misery, if that’s what it was. Why hadn’t anyone seriously considered the effects of his sleep aid? Bizarre behavior like his—acting intoxicated, fleeing the scene, not remembering having done so, even the frantic call with no explanation—were all over the medical news.

  Cora turned and called over her shoulder, “Drink? Who said anything about drinking?”

  “What are you talking about, then?”

  Cora didn’t explain until they’d entered one of the gift shops, bypassed the main floor of the shop, and climbed the wide worn stairs to the second floor display area. The island’s multitasker straightened her posture. Arms extended, she glowed as she said, “This! Yarn!”

  “Yarn is your indulgence?”

  “Have you looked at it?”

  Emmalyn took in the sight—the entire second floor of the store devoted to yarn, wool, knitting needles, crochet hooks, cotton thread, patterns, instruction books. And the yarns were unlike any she was accustomed to. Alpaca, merino, blends in colors that looked like a Monet painting.

  “You need a warm scarf,” Cora said. “I don’t mind making your first one for you. After that, you’re on your own. Pick a color you like.”

  “One?”

  Cora’s laughter warmed the room. “Narrowing it down is the hardest part. Ooh! Look at these.” She pulled a skein from a cubby along the wall.

  “I could rent a floor sander for the price of a handknit sweater.”

  “Not nearly as much fun, though. Do you like this one? It’s as soft as doeskin.”

  They worked their way halfway around the room before Emmalyn said, “I wouldn’t have dreamed you’d have time to knit, Cora.”

  The woman’s expression registered just shy of shock. “You don’t knit because you have too much time on your hands. You knit to create.”

  Apparently the whole world knew that, except Emmalyn.

  Within minutes, the idea captivated her. Colors, textures, possibilities. A long winter lay ahead.

  “Does knitting help get you through January, February, March?”

  Cora didn’t lift her gaze from a set of circular bamboo needles. “And loss. And loneliness. And days like today when I’m ticked at my husband.” She looked up then. “Is that so shocking? That the Semper Fi wife of a military man on deployment to one of the most dangerous places on earth would dare get angry with a guy giving his life for his country?”

  Emmalyn searched the recesses of her mind for something to say in response. Nothing came.

  “Frankly, today I’m ticked because he’s giving his life for his country. How’s that for sacrilegious, blasphemous, and unpatriotic all in one lump?”

  “Well . .
. ” Still nothing.

  “Oh, I’ll get over it. I figure these four skeins of imported wool ought to do it.” Cora hugged them to her chest and sighed. “Or not.”

  The two had more in common than Emmalyn realized. “How do you keep going?” She’d voiced it aloud. Emmalyn feigned interest in samples of outrageously patterned handknit socks and a soft-as-goosedown baby layette of sweater, cap, and booties. Cora didn’t have to answer.

  But she did. “Figuring that out as we go along. After this many deployments, you’d think we’d have it mastered, wouldn’t you? Every day is a ‘Jesus, Help Me’ day.”

  “I can’t imagine that kind of worry, always concerned about his being in harm’s way.”

  “Oh. His safety. Yes, that too.”

  “What did you think I was talking about?” Emmalyn peeked around a display to catch Cora’s gaze.

  “Marriage.”

  The dead tissue surrounding Emmalyn’s heart twitched. One spasm after another.

  “You know better than most, I’m sure.” Cora’s voice dropped low, as if the empty room had other ears than theirs. “It’s not easy keeping a marriage healthy with that much distance between you. How do I make him know he’s a valuable part of this family when he has practically no influence over what goes on back here while he’s gone? Sure, we have email and texting and video now, when he isn’t incommunicado. But it is not the same. And not every military family gets a surprise reunion on national television, just so you know. Some of us slug it out to the end. It takes a lot of hard work to keep a marriage alive when everything’s changed.”

  Emmalyn’s thoughts darted in and out of the folds of her brain. “I can’t get his opinion on what to do about the cottage floors.”

  “I can’t get Wayne’s opinion on whether or not to replace the transmission on the company truck or junk it and get a new one.”

  The collar Emmalyn had turned up constricted her oxygen supply. “I can’t ask Max to scratch that spot in the middle of my back that I can’t reach.”

  “I can’t rub the knot out of Wayne’s neck, the one he gets when he sleeps on a bad pillow.”

  “I can’t ask him what he was thinking the night everything fell apart for us.”

  Cora pinched her lips together. The lines relaxed as she whispered, “I can’t tell Wayne I’m still upset with him for re-enlisting when we’d decided he wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, Cora.”

  “But I love him and we need each other and we’re as committed as tea bags dunked in the same cup of hot water.” Cora sobered. “I don’t want us to have to start from scratch on our relationship when he gets home.”

  Emmalyn sought out the curved comfort of the repurposed church pew now used as a bench for weary shoppers.

  Cora joined her, took what looked like a toes-deep breath and added, “Wayne and I can’t afford to let resentment make our marriage a glow-in-the-dark target for destruction. Do you know what the statistics are for divorce among military families?”

  “Do you know what the stats are for divorce among the incarcerated?”

  From the base of the stairs came a voice that said, “If you ladies need any help up there, just ask.”

  The two women looked at each other as if the question were utterly ridiculous. Any help?

  Their synchronized “Thank you” ended in suppressed laughter that snorted through their noses and phlpt-ed through their lips. Cora bent over her armful of wool, then reared back, rattling the bench. The two couldn’t look at each other without another fit of hysteria.

  “That’s . . . ” Cora gasped. “That’s one way we get through it.”

  “Embracing insanity?”

  Cora bumped her, shoulder to shoulder. “Finding humor to pad the pain.”

  “And knitting?”

  “Knitting. Yes.” Cora stroked the lanolin-rich fibers of one of the skeins in her lap. “Knitting. We can do this.”

  The adrenalin of laughter faded. Emmalyn lost her will to let her thought remain unspoken. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Maybe I just have a stronger God than you do.” Cora said it as if it weren’t an offense but an observation.

  “Same God,” Emmalyn said, emphasizing the weight of each word.

  “Oh. Then . . . ”

  The silence stretched, growing thinner and thinner until it could no longer sustain itself. A few weeks earlier, Emmalyn wouldn’t have imagined she would be the one to break anyone’s silence. “I like this color.” She rose and reached for a robin’s egg blue.

  Cora swiped at the corner of one eye. “Beautiful. It’ll look great with your dark hair. Long scarf or short?”

  “Can you do this?” She pointed to a display with a bulky rectangular scarf, asymmetrically buttoned at the collarbone level with a jar-lid sized wooden button.

  “Can I? Prepare to be amazed.” Cora’s hand flourish reminded Emmalyn of a flamenco dancer. It wouldn’t have surprised her in the least to discover Cora moonlighted in that role.

  They gathered their purchases and headed downstairs to the checkout counter. “Someday when I have more time, I need to explore this level of the shop.”

  “Ah,” Cora said. “Your flooring problem remains.”

  Emmalyn watched the shop owner key in Cora’s items. “Are you buying those bamboo knitting needles?”

  Cora’s smile was a combination of grace and mischief. “My gift to you and the health of your marriage.”

  “Bamboo.”

  “Renewable resource and all that.”

  No endless cycle of sanding, tack cloths, poly coat, sanding, tack cloths, poly coat . . . “I wonder how much it would cost to put bamboo flooring in the cottage.”

  “One of my favorites.”

  The shop owner agreed.

  “And if that dog keeps hanging around . . . ” Emmalyn let the sentence drop.

  “What dog?” Cora took her bag of purchases and receipt. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  “I didn’t either. It keeps showing up.”

  “Fluffy little thing with the cutest white and brown face you’ve ever seen?”

  “It’s your dog, Cora?”

  “No. Not mine. I think it’s made the rounds of every residence on Madeline Island at one time or another. It stays for a while, then disappears to show up someplace else.”

  Emmalyn’s heart hollowed again. She hadn’t thought she wanted the dog to choose her cottage as its home. She must have been wrong.

  “It’s the weirdest thing. She seems to show up where she’s most needed. A new widower’s house. Someone with a prodigal son or daughter. A house with a woman battling cancer. A young teen who broke her leg in gymnastics and needed a companion content to sit beside her. Then, after a while, she’ll take off to who knows where and show up someplace else. We just call her Dog.”

  “Who does she really belong to?”

  “I think her original owner may have been a tourist two summers ago, or someone on the island for a day trip. It’s too far to swim from Bayfield. We think of her as ours, collectively.”

  Cora and Emmalyn exited the store, braced against the breeze but turning their faces toward the autumn sun. “Were we talking about bamboo?” Cora asked.

  “I thought it might hold up to dog traffic. But it’s not that I have a dog.”

  “But you might.”

  “Temporarily.”

  Cora waved at a passing motorist. “Everything’s temporary, Emmalyn. And everyone. We love them while we have them.”

  * * *

  Cora’s son Nick had experience laying flooring, too. Emmalyn entertained the fleeting thought that she might single-handedly pay for his college education with her cottage projects, if she could have afforded it.

  She’d anticipated the initial expenses to ready the cottage. The bamboo flooring cut deeply into her budget.

  A week and a half later, the end result took her breath away. Beachy and crisp and durable.

  “Dog’s here,” Nick called
as he removed the last of his tools from the flooring project.

  “My dog?” Emmalyn asked without thinking.

  “Dog,” Nick answered.

  “Oh. That one.”

  “Want me to send it packing?”

  Sorry, Shawna. I . . . I have a dog. I made reservations for you at The Wild Iris. Scratch that. For Bougie’s sake, she’d get them rooms at one of the Bayfield B&Bs. “No, I guess it can come in.”

  Emmalyn held the screen door open as Dog entered. She trotted in as if expecting to find a water and food dish waiting for her in the kitchen. Finding none, she clicked her way to the fireplace hearth, curled up in an empty flooring box, and laid her head on her crossed paws. Home.

  If only it were that simple.

  “Dog needs a name,” Nick said, making one final pass with the Swiffer.

  “I think so too. But wherever she lands next might not want to use that name.”

  “Pick a name just between you two, then. Hold this end, would you?” He extended the handle of the Swiffer toward Emmalyn and peeled off the felted fabric.

  “A name between the two of us?”

  “Didn’t Boozie ever show you that verse at the end of the Bible, the one that talks about Jesus having a name picked out for us that only He knows? She usually includes that when people ask her about her name. Boozie Unfortunate.” He shook his head. Could he have been envisioning trying to get through high school with a name like that?

  “I’m not as familiar with the Bible as I probably should be.”

  Nick pulled his dog-eared version from his back pocket. “Me either.” He thumbed through several pages at the end of the book. “Here. This is it. Revelation 2:17. ‘I will give those who emerge victorious some of the hidden manna to eat. I will also give to each of them a white stone with a new name written on it, which no one knows except the one who receives it.’ ”

  A nineteen-year-old with an ankle bracelet monitor was teaching her what the Bible had to say. She had some catching up to do.

  Nick left. Dog stayed.