Daughters of the Lake(41)

Harrison mouthed a heartfelt “Thank you” to the doctor as he gently led Celeste back to their bed. When she awoke the next morning, she did not ask about the baby. She would not speak to Harrison, nor to anyone, about what had occurred the night before. She simply packed away all the baby’s things, the gown that would’ve been used for her baptism, the blanket her grandmother had crocheted, the silver cup. All those precious memories, packed forever into a trunk, out of sight, out of mind.

To the world, Celeste was dealing with the loss beautifully and pragmatically, like any sensible woman of the day. Infant death was not a rarity at that time and place—it seemed every family had seen this type of tragedy. But Celeste never recovered from the loss. A second daughter, Hadley; a loving husband; and more money than she would need in five lifetimes did nothing to ease her sadness. It ate away at her body. When she died, she was looking expectantly toward heaven, wondering if Clementine would finally be able to sleep now that her mother could, at long last, hold her in her arms.

But Simon and Kate knew nothing of this as they held up those tiny relics of their great-grandmother’s undoing. They didn’t know about Clementine. Things such as an infant’s death weren’t talked about in Celeste and Harrison’s day. The parents were expected to carry on with a brave face, no matter the extent of their grief. So, their great-grandchildren unknowingly sifted through Clementine’s belongings, among others’, looking for books and photographs to display.

A few hours and several trunks later, they had finally accumulated many such items. Simon had migrated across the room to another trunk, where he found several photographs of the family that he intended to frame and hang in the guest rooms.

“Look at this one,” he said to Kate. “This must be Harrison and Celeste when they were first married.”

She walked over to his side of the room and regarded the photo.

“They were so good looking, weren’t they?” She smiled. “How dashing he was!”

“Those are the genes that brought you all of your glory,” Simon said, holding up a stack of photographs. “Here’s a bunch more. Help me look through the rest of these and then we’ll call it a day.”

Kate sat down next to Simon and took a pile of photos. He was right, Kate thought, these shots must’ve been taken early on in their marriage. The couple looked so young and so happy. Dusk was starting to fall beyond the room, but still the pair kept sifting through photos, both mesmerized by the dalliance into their collective past.

Simon held one of the images in his hands, squinting to see it in the fading light. “You’ve got to see this one,” he murmured to Kate. “It looks like Harry and Celeste with another young couple on a picnic. What a fun shot. We’ve got to frame this one.”

Kate took the photo from Simon. It was indeed a shot of their great-grandparents, posed sitting on a blanket at the edge of the lake. A picnic basket was in the foreground, and Kate could see a bottle of wine and a plate of food in front of the couples. Along with Harry and Celeste, there was another pair, a man and a woman of approximately the same age. All four of them appeared to be in great spirits.

The image caused Kate to take a quick breath in.

“My God,” she murmured, squinting at the photo to get a closer look. “It can’t be. It just cannot be.”

“What?” Simon asked.

Kate looked up from the image and stared at him, open mouthed. “We’ve got to get this picture into the light where I can see it better.” She scrambled to her feet and ran to the door.

“What is it, for God’s sake?” Simon called after her. But Kate didn’t stop to listen. In an instant she was flying down the stairs toward the second-floor landing, just as she and Simon had when they were children. She burst out of the dimly lit staircase into the vibrantly colored hallway, squinting and blinking at the harshness of the light. Simon was following close at her heels. He found Kate standing in the middle of the hallway under a bright light, staring at the photograph in her trembling hands.

“What?” he asked again.

Kate could barely squeak out the words: “This woman in the photograph, the one with Harrison and Celeste. It’s her.” She grasped her cousin’s arm so tightly it made him wince.

“Who?”

“It’s my woman,” Kate whispered, shaking Simon’s arm and looking deeply into his eyes. “This”—she waved the photo back and forth—“is the woman in my dreams. This is the woman who washed up dead on my beach last week.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Now it was Simon’s turn to stare, wide eyed.

“Simon, I’m not kidding,” Kate whispered. “It’s her. This is her. And that man sitting there with her is her husband. I’ve seen them both in my dreams. I know it as surely as I know my own name.”





CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Great Bay, 1906

Addie awoke and looked out the window—it had to be the middle of the night, as there was no hint of dawn on the horizon. But she saw the purples and greens of the aurora borealis dancing high in the atmosphere. The sight of the northern lights always calmed Addie, and she lay there, watching the show and thinking.

It had been four years since Jess had left Great Bay. As Addie had suspected after the first letters, Jess had not returned home for Christmas or summer breaks, preferring to stay in the city with his roommate and various other friends he had made. Although they did not see each other during those years, Jess and Addie exchanged many letters and in doing so, created a closeness that perhaps wouldn’t have existed without the ability to write about what they saw, did, and felt. Jess enjoyed sitting down after a long day and putting his thoughts on paper. Writing to Addie allowed him to sort out how he felt about all the various things that were happening with him—classes, work, friendships. He wasn’t so much opening up to Addie in those letters as he was opening up to himself.