The Night Mark(47)

“You’re doing dishes now?” he asked.

“Of course, I—”

She nearly said, “I always do dishes” but that was Faye, not Faith.

“I only wanted to help,” Faye said.

“You can help all you want. You just never have... I mean, I know you aren’t used to housework.”

Another hint. Another clue. Faye looked at her hands—Faith’s hands. Smooth, no calluses, neatly trimmed nails. What sort of woman in 1921 wouldn’t have done her own housework? A rich woman, that was who. The wife of a rich man. Faith’s husband had money.

“There are lots of things I’ve never done before that I’m probably going to start doing.”

“Yeah, I noticed that last night.”

“Carrick, last night... I’m sorry. I was just overwhelmed,” Faye said.

“You weren’t the only one.” He smiled, but the smile didn’t last long. “About last night...” he began. “And the dishes. You aren’t trying to earn your keep around here, are you?”

She found herself blushing, still humiliated by how she’d tried to seduce this man, this total stranger, simply because he looked like and sounded just like Will.

“Because I would never ask that of you,” Carrick said. “You don’t have to pay for room and board here with your body. You don’t have to pay for it with anything at all. Not for me or Dolly. Dolly gets paid a good wage for her work, and she isn’t complaining.”

“She doesn’t think I’m lazy?”

“Well, she does, but she thinks that about everybody, myself included.”

“You’re the lighthouse keeper.”

“She sees me sleeping all day.”

“Because you work all night.’

“That she doesn’t see.”

Faye laughed. She had been a pretty hard-nosed teenager herself. No one had met her impossible standards.

“I don’t want to be lazy,” Faye said. “I don’t have much else to do. I’d rather help than sit around.”

“I’m sure Dolly would appreciate a hand, and I appreciate what she appreciates.”

“You’re a good man.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I threw myself at you last night, and you didn’t take advantage of me.”

“I’m not the sort of man to take someone else’s wife to bed, even if that man doesn’t deserve to kiss her baby toe.”

“Right. Of course you’re not,” she said. “Now you should get to bed, right?” Faye needed to end this conversation before she said anything else wrong, anything else that might give her away.

“Going. Wake me if you need anything.”

Once Faye was certain Carrick had gone to bed and shut the door behind him, she sprang into action. She couldn’t make any more gaffes. First stop, the kitchen. Faye went through the pantry and the cabinets, wanting to memorize what they had and where it was stored. It wouldn’t look good if Carrick asked her for a cracker or a cup of coffee and she couldn’t find them.

In the cabinet by the stove she found familiar items—baking powder (Clabber Girl brand, which she’d had at home), along with condensed milk, molasses, brown sugar, white sugar, yeast, cornmeal, spices, salt and pepper and Jell-O. Even in 1921 there was room for Jell-O.

With the vegetable garden and all this dry food, at least she knew she wouldn’t starve. She might drown, blow up in a gas explosion or contract malaria, but she wouldn’t starve. And she wouldn’t get scurvy, either, it seemed. Faye found several dozen jars of canned fruit preserves—cranberry, blackberry, cherry and orange marmalade. Plus, several cans of peaches, apples and cherries.

Under the sink she found bleach in an amber glass bottle and vinegar in a clear glass bottle. More baking soda, too. While the packaging wasn’t what she was used to, everything in the kitchen was recognizable. She took comfort in the little girl with the umbrella on the Morton’s salt canister. She never thought she’d welcome the sight of a familiar product logo. The kitchen reminded Faye of her grandmother’s. And it was certainly well stocked with pots and pans and silverware. Nothing looked foreign to her, except maybe the millet, whatever that was. Surely they had a dictionary in the house. Asking Siri, “What is millet?” wasn’t an option anymore. Faye almost missed Siri. Once in a dark and desperate moment she’d asked Siri to tell her a joke. She’d responded with “Two iPhones walk into a bar. They didn’t get a good reception.” That had been the night Hagen had pried the pill bottle out of her hand, the night she’d realized a telephone robot was her only friend in the world.

In the living room, Faye pulled the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog out from under the Bible, hopeful it would help her understand the world of 1921 America. She also wondered whatever happened to this Roebuck person. Had there been a dramatic falling-out, a breakup of sorts, between him and Mr. Sears? Were they the Beatles of their day—Sears was Paul McCartney and poor Roebuck John Lennon? On the cover in large letters it said, “Buy from the World’s Largest Store.”

“Oh, I get it,” Faye said to herself. “It’s the Amazon of 1921.”

As she leafed through the book, she stopped at random pages studying the goods and their prices.