Daughters of the Lake(23)
Well, that’s all for now. Please write and let me know how you’re getting on.
Your friend,
Addie Cassatt
Addie folded the letter into its envelope and walked out of the house toward the post office, buttoning up her coat all the way to the neck, winding her scarf snugly around her head, and pulling on her hood for good measure. The first gale of the season was upon the tiny fishing village, and, as with many late fall storms on this Great Lake, it was punishing.
Snow and hard pellets of sleet plummeted down, coating everything they touched in a slick layer of ice. Worse even than that, the wind caught those tiny frozen shards in its breath and blew them in fierce gusts into the faces of those fool enough to venture outdoors. After walking in one of those ice storms, it was not uncommon to find one’s face covered in razor-thin cuts.
Any sensible person would be safe and warm inside, reading by the fire or cooking in front of a hot stove. Indeed, many eyes were delivering sidelong glances from their warm rooms behind frosty windowpanes, wondering what that foolish Cassatt girl was up to now, out walking on this kind of day. But for Addie, she was finished with her letter, and that meant it was time to walk to the post office. The weather simply didn’t enter into it.
She had been waiting almost two months for a letter from Jess. Why hadn’t he written immediately as he’d said he would? Addie ruminated on this for a while and concluded that he must be consumed with his new life, his college classes and a roommate, everyone and everything around him fresh and new and exciting. Home must seem quite dull indeed.
Addie had imagined they would be writing letters to each other as fast as the post could take them, and through those words and descriptions, she would experience a bit of his newfound life. She had further imagined that waiting for those letters—words from a faraway love—would add some excitement to her everyday existence. It was a romantic notion of a na?ve young girl. Waiting this long for letters that never came was a tedious exercise in frustration. At this rate, Jess’s four years of college would drag out to eternity for Addie.
Head down, eyes nearly closed, Addie slogged her way through the punishing sleet to the post office. Grateful for the brief respite indoors, she mailed the letter, exchanged a few pleasantries with the postmistress, and headed back outside toward home. She was distracted midway by the waves on the lake, enormous whitecaps roiling and bubbling on the surface of the water only to crash mightily and furiously onshore. Addie loved the lake in all its moods, but perhaps its fury most of all. The anger and power of the waves made her shudder. She felt small and helpless in the face of such power, yet she knew somehow that she would always be safe within it. She scrambled down the rocky embankment toward the lakeshore, and there she sat just out of the water’s grasp.
As little as a year ago, Addie might have been tempted to peel off her coat and walk into the water, knowing its anger and chill would warm her like a hot bath. But now that she was growing up, Addie didn’t let herself be drawn to the lake the way she had when she was a young girl.
It wasn’t suitable for a young woman to be seen playing and splashing like a baby, her mother had said when Addie turned thirteen that year. Although she still felt much like a child, Addie liked being referred to as a young woman and saw the wisdom of acting as though she was old enough for that title.
Addie always did her best thinking on the shoreline. There, with the lake’s tenor lapping in her ears, Addie found herself wondering about the life she would have when Jess finished college. Would he come home to her? Would they marry as they had planned? Or would he find another girl, someone pretty and exciting and closer to his age, at the university? She knew that’s what her parents hoped. But Addie could not even summon the image of Jess loving someone else. It seemed to violate the very order of things.
The waves were stronger now, louder. Amid this sound and fury, Addie concluded that all was well with the only man she would ever love, letters or no letters. She was worrying needlessly. Have faith, girl. Things are what they will be. She stood and turned toward home just as an enormous wave crashed into the shore where she had been sitting only seconds before, as if to weigh in on her decision. Had she not moved, it certainly would have engulfed her. The thought took Addie’s breath away. As she watched the wave recede, Addie was struck with a pang of doubt at the truth of the conclusion she had just reached. Something gnawed at her as she scrambled back up to the road, and it kept gnawing at her as she walked home.
Addie had no way of knowing that, at that very moment, Jess Stewart was hundreds of miles away, sitting across the table from a young woman named Sally, who he very much hoped would be completely taken with his charms.
On his first day away from home, as he stepped into the city from the train, Jess Stewart awoke to a new life. Great Bay, and everything in it, seemed so small and far away. College, a roommate from another town, classes, parties, tall buildings, people bustling here and there—Jess was entranced by it all. But especially by the women. This new breed of girl—worldly, sophisticated, lighthearted, fun—was so different from the sensible wives of the fishermen in Great Bay. Oh, he hadn’t forgotten Addie, but she was just thirteen years old. A child, really. Addie was not like these college girls. With distance, he could see it clearly. It wasn’t proper for a grown man to be carrying on a relationship with a child of Addie’s age. Their childhood closeness faded from his mind as he began to discover intimacy of another kind.