It’s a man’s chair and plenty big enough to hold my frame comfortably, but Cat thinks it’s hers. I’ve had to kick her off repeatedly. I couldn’t afford the leather, so settled instead for a brown upholstery. It has a deep spring seat and spring back and top roll. The arms and legs are of golden oak. I have figured out that at the current rate I’m going, I will have the house completely furnished by the time I’m fifty.
A LITTLE GIRL IN CENTRAL PARK 39
“Of their own volition, his legs carried him inside her self-made gallery.”
CHAPTER
79
Reeve stepped into the entry hall of Klausmeyer’s, two copies of his new book tucked beneath his arm. Nothing had changed in the fifteen months he’d been gone. The parlor still stretched out on the side, the furniture sat in the same place, the piano rested against the wall, the fireplace needed to be stoked.
Instead of the familiar bringing comfort, it was unnerving, for so much about him had changed. He was living a completely different life. He wrote fiction. He lived in a house he’d built himself. He played in basketball tournaments for the Y, and he had many casual friends and two really good ones.
His feelings for Flossie hadn’t changed, though. Because of them, because seeing her would be too painful, he’d not crossed the threshold of Klausmeyer’s again until today. But today was different. He simply couldn’t wait to show Maman his book. Hopefully, Flossie would be at work or tucked away in her attic room.
He hooked his hat and coat on the hall tree, then headed to Maman’s room. His old bedroom door was closed. Further down, Flossie’s former room was open. He knew she didn’t live in it anymore, yet his pulse quickened.
At Maman’s doorway, he paused. She’d fallen asleep in her chair. He took a minute to view her room through new eyes, the eyes of a son. He shook his head. After all his lecturing to Flossie, he’d actually been the one to end up with family at 438.
A large marble-top dresser held frames and candles. Jars and bottles. Vases and hat stands. The Tiffany pin he’d given her was part of a collection of pins sticking out of a fancy porcelain cup.
Doilies covered every surface, even the arms of the two upholstered chairs next to her heater—one of which she sat in, her head down, her knitting forgotten. It was so crowded. So . . . lived in. Especially compared to his place with its two spindle chairs, one table, one rocker, and a single pallet by the fire.
His attention drifted back to the woman he’d come to see. He smiled. Keeping his tone low and his voice soft, he spoke. “Hello, Maman.”
She jerked and looked up, disoriented, then her eyes lit with pleasure. Setting her needles aside, she stood and opened her arms. “Come here, my boy, and give this old woman a hug.”
Placing the books on a dresser, he walked into her embrace and stayed there. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too, though your letters are wonderful. You ought to be a writer.”
He chuckled, kissed the top of her head, and stepped back. “The books are here. I brought you a copy.”
Clapping her hands together, she pressed them against her mouth. “I can’t wait. Let me see.”
He picked one up and handed it to her.
She sat and simply held it. “I’m so proud of you, Reeve. So proud. Sit down and pour me some tea while I look at it. I’ve kept it warm for us.”
He stood flatfooted for a moment. Proud of him? No one had ever said those words to him. Not ever. The rush of well-being they induced surprised and somewhat embarrassed him. He headed toward the tea service, glad to have something to do. Glad she was already looking at the book and he wasn’t required to give her a response.
Her crooked hand smoothed the title page, then she ran her finger over the words I. D. Claire. “Whatever were you thinking?”
“I never intended to have to use it. Have regretted it a hundred times over.”
She patted it. “Don’t regret it, son. Not even for a minute.”
He harrumphed and poured tea into her cup, his hands shaking at the use of the word “son.” It was how she addressed all her letters to him, and he never tired of reading it, but he’d only heard her say it a few times. He prepared her tea the way she liked it with a tiny squeeze of lemon and lots of sugar. Then he poured himself one and sat in the cushy chair at a forty-five degree angle from hers.
She read the first page, smile lines beginning to form. Resting an ankle on his knee, he took a sip of the weak brew, observing her over the cup, listening to the sound of pages being turned. Watching as her shoulders lifted and fell in a sigh. As her hand touched her throat, then her heart.
“Oh, Reeve. It’s wonderful. I can’t wait to read the whole thing, but I must put it aside and not use up our precious time. How are you, my dear? You look marvelous.”
“As do you.”
“Thank you.” She gave him a quizzical look. “Interesting dedication in your book.”
“So it is. How’s your foot? Still bothering you?”
She accepted the change of subject and, as with every time he saw her, the hours flew by while they talked nonstop.
“It’s not a home, Maman. Not like this.” He swept his arm in front of him, indicating her room.
“It needs a woman’s touch,” she said.
He nodded. “Please, take the place in hand and do what you will.”
“No, no, not me. I’m terrible at that kind of thing. Now, Flossie, being an artist and all, I imagine she’d be quite good. Perhaps you could hire her. She’d welcome the extra work, I’m sure.”
He raised a brow. “I will not be hiring Miss Jayne. Shame on you for trying to maneuver me.”
She pouted. “My Herschel was much easier to influence.”
“Well, you know what they say about children. They’re all so different.”
She gave a soft laugh. “I see you brought an extra book.”
“I did.”
“And who might that be for?”
He gave her a pointed look. “You know good and well who it’s for. Will you see that she gets it?”
“I most certainly will not. You want her to have it, you can go put it in her room same as I can.”
He pressed back into the chair. “I can’t go way up into her attic room. That would be unseemly, don’t you think?”
“She’s not in the attic anymore.”
“She’s not?”
“No, she’s moved.”
Uncrossing his legs, he pulled himself up off the back cushion. “Moved? Away?”
“No.” She pointed a crooked finger toward her door. “Across the hall.”
He blinked, then followed with his gaze the direction of her finger. “Across the hall? To, to my room?”
Picking up her knitting needles, she began to click them together in a staccato rhythm. “Mm-hm.”
He gripped the armrests. “Is she in there right now?”
“No, she keeps the door closed so that her paints don’t smell up the whole downstairs.”
He eased his grip. “Why didn’t you tell me she’d moved?”
“You didn’t ask.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t ask about Mrs. Holliday, yet you told me when she went to and from Texas to visit her parents. I didn’t ask about Oyster, yet you told me when he left. I didn’t ask about Miss Love, yet you told me when she got a new roommate.”
“You did, too, ask me about Mr. Oyster—and that’s when Flossie moved to your room, by the way.”
He stared at his, or her, door.
“Don’t worry,” Maman said. “You needn’t go in if you don’t want to. She should be home in fifteen minutes and you can give the book directly to her.”
He glanced at a clock on the wall, then surged to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”
Swiping the book off the dresser, he crossed the hall, opened his old door, and froze. The potent odor of oil paints and turpentine hit him full force. The bed was in the same place as before, but it was covered with he
r white, fluffy linens. His desk held a palette, jars with brushes, tubes of oil paints, rags with an assortment of colored stains, and a jar of dirty turpentine.
His chair had been moved by the window, where she had an easel set up. Resting upon it was a canvas with a partially painted child wrapped in winter clothing and attempting to skate on the ice.
Completed paintings covered the walls. All of them with her signature in the corner. Of their own volition, his legs carried him inside her self-made gallery. A young girl with yellow sausage curls fed ducks at Central Park, a scruffy boy sold newspapers on a corner, a nanny pushed an elaborate baby carriage down a walkway.
But it was an oversized portrait of Cat that drew him like the gravitational pull of the earth. Cat was on her back and her paws swatted at a man’s hand, a hand that was obviously playing with her, a hand that looked very familiar.
Swallowing, he turned away, then froze again. Wedged between the wall and the mirror was the phenakistascope he’d left behind. Removing it, he studied the photographs. The feelings he’d had for Flossie that day resurfaced in a surprising rush.
He held the phenakistascope in front of the mirror, spun it, then watched the two of them dance. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the dress she’d been wearing or the way her hair had loosened or the scent of rosewater on her neck. He squeezed the handle. Die and be blamed, but he missed her. He returned it to its spot, wondering if she ever watched it anymore or if it was there merely to keep from hurting Mr. Holliday’s feelings.
Tossing the book onto the bed, he exited the room, closed the door, crossed the hall, and pulled Maman to her feet. “I have to go.”
“Running away, are we?”
“Absolutely.” He gave her a fierce hug. “I love you. I’ll try to see you within the next couple of weeks—before Christmas, in any event.”
“Coward,” she mumbled.
“Shrew,” he quipped back. Then he gave her a kiss and all but flew out the door to the streetcar stop, until he realized Flossie would be disembarking there. Spinning around, he walked to a different one. He didn’t want to force her into a meeting with him. Fifteen months might have passed since he’d last seen her, but that didn’t mean time had healed her wounds. Of course, she’d sent him that Christmas card last year, but no matter how many times he read it, it was simply too cryptic. It left too much room for interpretation.
Even if it had been an olive branch, what if she didn’t like the new him? With all the things that were different about him, he wouldn’t even know where to start with her. What to say.
No, he’d done as she’d asked. He’d written her a book, and there was nothing cryptic about it. He’d laid himself completely bare. Either she’d accept the new him or she wouldn’t.
By the time he arrived at the unfamiliar streetcar stop, he was cold, wet, and nervous. Yet his thoughts kept circling back to the notion that through the summer, the fall, and well into the winter she’d been working at his desk, sitting in his chair, and sleeping in his bed.
FRONTISPIECE 40
“Friendship is a sheltering tree.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1797
CHAPTER
80
Opening her door, Flossie stepped into her room and closed her eyes, filling her lungs with the wonderful scent of paints. It was good to be home. She pulled off her gloves, then noticed a black book making an indention on her white downy bed.
Picking it up, she glanced at the spine, the title embossed in gold. Beneath a Sheltering Tree. Frowning, she opened it, then froze. By I. D. Claire.
Reeve had written a book? How had it gotten in her room?
She looked over her shoulder, then walked to her door and peered down the hall. It was empty. The click-click-click of Mrs. Dinwiddie’s knitting needles drew her attention.
She crossed the hall. “Mrs. Dinwiddie?”
“Hello, my dear. Welcome home. How was work?”
“Fine, fine. Um, I found this on my bed.” She lifted the book.
Mrs. Dinwiddie nodded. “Yes, it’s Reeve’s new novel. Isn’t it marvelous?”
“I didn’t know he’d written one.”
“Oh, my, yes. He started working on it right after Christmas.”
Flossie rubbed a thumb against the spine. She’d asked him to write a book in the Christmas card she’d sent him, but he’d not bothered to respond, hadn’t so much as acknowledged the candy or fruitcake, nor the card she’d painted—though Mrs. Dinwiddie had assured her he’d received them.
She shook out her skirt. “Had he been working on the book before Christmas?”
“No, he had no plans whatsoever to write fiction again until suddenly, right after Christmas, he started a book out of the blue. Finished it in February, sold it in March. Now, here it is. He brought it over himself.”
Flossie looked down at it again. Had her card been the impetus for it after all? “He was here? At 438?”
“He certainly was. You just missed him.”
Crinkling her brows, she glanced again down the hallway. She would have loved to have seen him. He had to have known she’d be home any minute. If she’d just missed him, then it was because he’d wanted her to.
Mrs. Dinwiddie pulled at the yarn in her basket, then continued to knit. “I told him it was okay to leave the book in your room. I hope that’s all right.”
“Yes, of course. It was very generous of him to give one to me. Did he bring one for everyone?”
“Generosity had nothing to do with it. And no, he brought only you a copy. And me, of course.”
“Of course.” Generosity had nothing to do with it? What did that mean? But she couldn’t quite get up the gumption to ask. Mrs. Dinwiddie was well ensconced in Reeve’s camp. Flossie had seen the deluge of letters he’d written to the woman and feared that anything said might very well be reported back to him.
If only Mrs. Dinwiddie had shared his letters with her, but the woman had never offered and Flossie had never asked.
She bit her lip. “How is he?”
“Handsome and charming as ever.”
“I see.” In a bit of a daze, Flossie took a step back. “Well, thank you. I was—I was just wondering.”
Mrs. Dinwiddie continued to knit, the click-click-click of her needles loud in the sudden silence.
Flossie returned to her room, then closed the door and leaned against it. He’d been in her room. Her gaze shot to the painting of Cat, then to the phenakistascope, then to the collection of scrapbooks by her bed. They appeared undisturbed, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t seen them.
Rushing to them, she picked up the one on top. It had all of the features he’d written this year. The scrapbook below it held his articles from last year. The scrapbook below that had each installment from The Merry Maid of Mumford Street. She’d saved them even before she’d known who I. D. Claire really was.
She’d almost burned them when she’d discovered the identity of Marylee Merrily, but something had kept her from it, and that same something had prodded her to glue them into a scrapbook.
She sank down onto the bed, her stomach bobbing like a buoy. What if he’d seen them? What would he think? And what had he thought when he’d discovered she was in his room? Had he thought she was pining for him? How desperate she must have looked. Just like the old maid in the board game.
She covered her face with her hands, then remembered he’d brought her a book. A book he’d started writing after he’d received her Christmas card.
She peeked up over her hands at the black volume she’d tossed on the bed. Grabbing a buttonhook on her side table, she undid her boots, pulled them off, then removed her watch pin from her shirtwaist. Six o’clock already.
She took off her skirt and shirtwaist, draped them over her chair, then crawled up into bed in her petticoats and held the book in her lap.
Who was the heroine? Was it Marylee? Or someone like her? Surely not. Still, her heart began to hammer.
She opened it.
BENEA
TH A SHELTERING TREE
by
I. D. Claire
She studied the frontispiece of a man standing beneath a leafless tree in the winter, alone and exposed. She tried to read the artist’s signature, but couldn’t make it out. She read the caption beneath it.
“Friendship is a sheltering tree.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1797
She turned the page.
DEDICATION
To my little magpie.
The songbird who changed my winter to spring.
You are never far from my thoughts, my mind, my heart.
I’m sorry.
She covered her mouth with her hand. Her pulse shot up. Her face turned hot. Her breathing became labored. She read the words over and over, trying to comprehend, wanting to believe. Believe that perhaps, just perhaps, he hadn’t forgotten about her after all.
He was sorry? For what? Then she knew. For something she’d forgiven him for so long ago that she’d almost forgotten their last words. Her last words.
A pox on you, Reeve Wilder, you spineless, arrogant, lily-livered, son of a sea cook!
Oh, how she’d regretted those words, wished she could take them back. She’d read Marylee’s story over and over. At first, she’d read it as a sort of self-flagellation, but the more she’d read it, the more she saw when Reeve’s feelings for her had begun to change. When he’d begun to respect her as a person, then desire her as a woman. That’s when she’d realized he was Mr. Bookish.
As the year progressed, her older and wiser self began to recognize the naiveté he’d seen in her and then portrayed in Marylee. At first, he’d portrayed it in a most uncomplimentary fashion. But as Marylee and Mr. Bookish began to walk down the path of The Old Maid Board Game, the things that Bookish had at first despised, he eventually came to cherish. When Marylee’s foolishness endangered her, Bookish stepped in and protected her, saved her, even when, at times, he was saving her from herself.