Daughters of the Lake(24)

Back in Great Bay, Addie shuddered, and for the first time that day, she felt cold deep inside. She tightened her scarf, buttoned her coat, and pulled the hood closer around her face in preparation for the walk home.

A few weeks later, Addie came home from school one afternoon to find a letter waiting for her on the table in the hallway. She squealed and ripped it open, dropping her schoolbooks in the process.

December 1

Dear Addie,

Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write. You can’t imagine how busy I’ve been! This university life is exhausting!

To answer your questions, I am indeed enjoying my classes—history, literature, economics, and science—but, like you have found with your new teacher, I’m finding that my courses are a great deal of work. After classes have concluded for the day, I spend the rest of the afternoon in the library studying until dinnertime.

My roommate is a fellow from the Dakotas whose parents own a farm in the midst of the flat prairie. His descriptions of the landscape make it sound austere and empty, very different from what we’re used to—no lakes nearby, a stream here and there, flat land as far as the eye can see. He says you can see miles and miles of horizon. Can you imagine great fields of sunflowers? He plays the trombone as well—enough said about that! Now you can see why I spend so much time in the library.

About the food—nothing here is as good as my mother’s pasty. Write again soon and tell me about life at home.

I regret to tell you that I will not be coming home for Christmas this year. My roommate and I have been invited to the home of a man who lives here in town. It just seemed easier this way. My parents are unhappy about this, and of course I wished to see you, but the idea of a long trip in the dead of winter convinced me to remain in town.

Your friend,

Jess Stewart

Addie slumped onto her bed. Jess wasn’t coming home for the holiday, after all.

She read the letter over and over before putting it in a wooden box with a velvet lining, which she thought would be a perfect place for such correspondence. She kept the box on the writing desk by the window in her bedroom and had hoped to fill it to bursting with his letters over the course of these four lonely years.

“I thought that boy would’ve outgrown her by now,” Marcus grumbled to his wife as he donned his coat and hat to shovel the driveway one snowy morning. “Girls her age shouldn’t be writing to college men.”

What could they do about it, he wanted to know. Forbid her from writing? Intercept any more letters that came? Marcus lobbied for that course of action, but Marie saw the folly in it.

“He’s not coming home for Christmas,” Marie whispered, not wanting Addie to hear. “Maybe he’s got a sweetheart at the university.”

Marcus’s eyes lit up at this suggestion.

Marie continued, “Whether he does or doesn’t, he’s going to be there for four long years. He’ll come home now and then, to be sure, but by the time he leaves that place for good, Addie will be old enough to make her own decisions. Maybe he’ll come home and marry her. Or maybe he will have met someone, a grown woman, who will take his eyes away from our daughter. You never know.”

“Marry her!” Marcus was aghast. “She’s just a child!”

“She’s thirteen years old, Marcus,” Marie said. “When Jess Stewart is finished with college, she’ll be seventeen. That’s plenty old enough.”

“That’s still too young,” Marcus grumbled some more.

“Oh, you,” Marie laughed. “Need I remind you that I was but eighteen when we married?”

The couple shared a laugh, then marveled at how many years had passed in an instant. Their daughter, meanwhile, was upstairs in her bedroom, sitting at her writing desk, believing time had slowed to a crawl.

December 12

Dear Jess,

Your letter came in the mail today. It’s a bright day here on the lakeshore. The water has not completely frozen over, and it’s wonderful to hear the ice patches wash into the shore here and there. Slush, slosh, slush. I remember how you used to love listening to that.

Your description of the Dakotas sounds so different from what we have here. Fields of sunflowers! Imagine! I cannot comprehend the idea of living somewhere that didn’t touch the water.

I am sorry to learn that you are not coming home for Christmas, but in truth, I did not expect you to do so. Remember what I said that day at Widow’s Cove? Your intentions to come home are good, but I know it is a long trip.

You will be a different person when you come home to stay, but I know that, no matter how much living you do without me, you will not forget.

Merry Christmas, Jess.

Your friend,

Addie

That night, Addie tossed and turned in her bed. Sleep would not come. She lay on the bed in her darkened room and looked out the window at the impossibly tall, thin jack pine trees swaying in the wind. A light dusting of snow covered their branches, which were illuminated by the full moon and a sky filled with stars. Addie watched as, every now and then, a stray cloud seemed at once to hang close to the earth and wisp over the moon. It was a perfect, crisp winter night, but her thoughts weren’t dwelling on the beauty of the landscape.

Addie was kept awake that night imagining the time when Jess would finally return home for good. Her eyes strayed over the snow-covered ground, and she thought of how wonderful it would be if Jess arrived right then, driving a horse-drawn sleigh. It’s not so unusual an idea, she thought. Several families in the small community kept horses, and though she didn’t have one of her own, Addie loved their soft coats and musky scent. She loved the way she could see their breath on winter days. They seemed so intelligent with their enormous, kind eyes.