Before We Were Yours(106)

Even though the gardens around the house are overgrown right now, they were obviously an elaborate labor of love. Arbors and benches and birdbaths wait beside carefully laid stone paths. The little house sits on short piers, prepared to withstand high water. Judging by the weathered wooden window frames and the tin-paneled roof, I’d say it’s been here for decades.

So this was my grandmother’s destination. It’s easy to imagine that she enjoyed coming here. This would’ve been a place where she could leave behind her obligations, her cares, her duties, the family reputation, the public eye—everything that filled those carefully managed appointment books.

“You wouldn’t know this was here.” Trent admires the little hideaway as we walk around to the front, where a wide screened porch peeks through the trees. Lace curtains hang inside the front windows. A wind chime sings the sweet, soft music of midday. Twigs and leaves on the steps confirm that no one has swept since before the last set of storms.

“No, you wouldn’t.” Is this May Crandall’s home, the place where she was discovered keeping company with her sister’s dead body?

Trent lets us through the crooked gate. It scrapes the stone path, protesting the intrusion. “Looks pretty quiet. Let’s see if anyone’s home.”

We climb the steps together, and he sets Jonah down on the porch as the screen door creaks its way closed behind us.

We knock on the door and wait, and finally peer through the lace curtains. Inside, a flowered settee framed with Queen Anne tables and Tiffany lamps seems out of step with the humble river cottage. Paintings and photos line the walls of the small living room, but I can’t see them clearly from here. At the far end, there’s a kitchen. Doors off the main room appear to lead to bedrooms and a back porch that’s been closed in.

I’ve moved to the other window to get a better view when I hear Trent trying the doorknob.

“What are you doing?” Glancing over my shoulder, I half expect sirens or, worse yet, a shotgun aimed our way.

Trent winks at me, a mischievous twinkle in his eye as the knob clicks. “Checking on a potential listing. I think somebody called me to do an appraisal of the place.”

He’s inside before I have the chance to argue. I’m not sure I would anyway. I can’t leave without knowing more, without finding out what’s been going on here. It’s hard to picture how someone in May’s condition could have lived this far off the beaten path.

“Jonah, you stay right there on the porch. No going out the screen door.” Trent casts a commanding look over his shoulder.

“?’Kay.” Jonah is busy picking up acorns that some squirrel must have spirited through the torn corner of the screen door. He’s counting them when I follow Trent inside. “One, two, fwee…seven…eight…fowty-fow.”

The count drifts away as I stand on the small rag rug inside the doorway and look around the room. It’s not what I expected. There’s no layer of dust, no gathering of dead insects along the windowsills. Everything is neat as a pin. There’s a definite sense of occupation, but the only sounds come from the wind chime, the birds, the leaves, Jonah’s whispery voice, and the call of a river bird.

Trent fingers an envelope that’s lying on the kitchen counter, twists to look at it. “May Crandall.” He presents the evidence, but I only half see it.

I’m focused on a painting over the fireplace. The bright sun hats, the crisply ironed sixties sundresses, the smiles, the golden curls lifted by the salt breeze, the laughter you can see but not hear…

I recognize the scene, if not the exact pose. In this one, the four women are looking at one another and laughing. The boys playing in the sand are gone from the background. The photo I found in Trent Senior’s workshop was black-and-white, and the women were smiling for the camera. The snapshot that inspired this painting must have been taken an instant before or after the other one. The portrait artist added the vibrant colors. There is no hue for painting laughter, yet the captured moment radiates joy. The women stand with their arms linked at the elbows as they throw back their heads. One of them kicks a spray of seawater at the photographer.

I move closer to the painting to study the signature in the bottom corner. Fern, it reads.

A brass plate on the frame titles the work: SISTERS’ DAY.

My grandmother is on the left. The other three, based on the story told to us at the nursing home, are May, Lark, and Fern.

With their heads tipped back and sun rather than shadow over the faces, the women really look like sisters.

Even my grandmother.

“That’s not the only one.” Trent pivots, surveying the room. Everywhere, there are photographs. Different decades, different locations, an assortment of frames and sizes, but always these same four women. On the dock by the river, their jeans rolled up and fishing poles in their hands; enjoying tea by the climbing roses behind this little house; in red canoes, paddles at the ready.

Trent leans over a table, opens a frayed black photo album, and leafs through. “They spent a lot of time here.”

I take a step toward him.

Suddenly a dog barks outside. Both of us freeze as the sound rushes closer. Toenails clatter up the porch steps. In four hurried strides, Trent is across the room and out the front door, but he’s not fast enough. A big black dog is growling from the other side of the screen, and Jonah stands frozen.