The Shadow Box(94)

It was late afternoon, but the sun was still high. We were approaching the longest day of the year. I wondered who was at the Bluff, who might be looking out the window. If they saw me, would they think I had risen from the dead? Wade and Leonora were probably home, ready to start their cocktail hour.

I didn’t care who saw me. Jackie knew I was here, and I was ready for this to end.

Crossing the lawn, I heard a car pulling into our driveway, doors opening and slamming, and distant voices. My back stiffened and my heart pounded—habitual fear. I ran to my studio and stepped inside.

I looked out the window toward the house. No sign of anyone outdoors and no one was coming toward my studio, so I figured I hadn’t yet been seen. Good, it would give me time; besides, I felt reassured by the almost certain knowledge that Conor would be on his way here as soon as he spoke to Jackie.

My studio was tidy. It wasn’t always this way—when in the midst of a project, I lost track of space and spread my materials out all over the place. But having finished my work for the exhibition, I had cleared nearly every surface. The exception was the rustic farmhouse table in the corner—the table itself bought at a flea market in the Berkshires when Griffin and I were first married.

We had gone cross-country skiing, were staying at an old inn just north of Stockbridge. The trails had been beautiful—fields covered with fresh powder on top of a deep packed base, lined with tall pines and spruce, limbs heavy with snow. If there were a manual for romantic winter weekends, this one—at least the first night—would have its own chapter. A fire in our bedroom fireplace, snow falling outside, the coziness of an 1890 inn. Griffin had bought me a first-edition book of poems by Emily Dickinson. She had lived in Amherst, just an hour east.

“Thank you, I love it,” I said, holding the book. Not just because I adored poems but because he had been so thoughtful, had brought me an unexpected gift. I’d been on edge, walking on eggshells with him to avoid setting off his moods, and the weekend was a healing balm. No stress. No anger.

“Let me read one to you,” he said.

“Should I choose it?” I asked.

“No, let me.”

We were lying on the rug in front of the fireplace, snuggled up with down bed pillows and comforter, firelight reflecting on the ceiling above us.

“Here’s one,” he said and read one of her most exuberant:

“Wild nights—Wild nights

Were I with thee

Wild nights should be . . .”

I laughed and held him tight, loving the spirit of the poem, the energy and emotion he put into reading it. We joked about having our own wild night, and our passion kept us up so late that we slept through breakfast and didn’t start skiing until nearly noon.

On the way home, we stopped at the Long Brook flea market, wanting to buy something to always remind us of the weekend and our wild night. I had thought it would be something for us to share, but as soon as he saw the table—old scarred maple, held together with wooden pegs—he said I had to have it.

“For your studio,” he said. “So you can spend all day working and thinking of me.”

“I always think of you,” I said.

“But this will be different,” he said, putting his arm around me. “This table will hold your supplies. Your boxy things.”

“Shadow boxes,” I said.

“Right,” he said, chuckling—and that laugh was my signal that it was all about to change. “Shadow boxes, sorry. Sounds like something kids make in art class. Anyway, this table will hold all the weird little things you pick up. It’ll support them, hold them up, the way I do for you.”

“Well, we do that for each other,” I said. I didn’t know if he was referring to money—he certainly had more than I did, but I sold my art, earned a living.

“Don’t pretend it’s equal,” he said. We were standing at the checkout; he had his credit card ready.

“Which part?” I asked.

“Support,” he said. “I’m giving you all I have.”

“And I’m not doing that for you?”

“You could be more understanding,” he said, his jaw set and his eyes darkening. I knew I had a choice—I could fight him on his statement, stand up for myself and say it was hard to be understanding of someone who flew off the handle so easily. But instead I took his hand, squeezed it, and forced myself to smile. I chose to believe that the weekend was a new start.

I tried not to think of Nate—easygoing, even-tempered Nate, the husband I had taken for granted and had left. I told myself that Griffin had been through so much in his childhood, had gone through a bad time with Margot, and that it was up to me to be patient while he learned how to love me. Yes, I was in the running to be a new age saint.

We loaded the table into the back of the Jeep. When we got home to Catamount Bluff, Wade Lockwood met us on the road; he helped Griffin carry my new worktable into the studio, setting it down in this very spot where I now stood. I hadn’t moved it since.

It held the materials I had started to gather to build the shadow box for Max Coffin. I had sketched Ravenscrag from memory—from the walk I’d taken with Evans and Max to the seawall, when I’d looked back at the house and noticed all the bizarre features.

My drawing was still on the spiral-bound sketchpad. I had collected a basket of black feathers—whether they came from crows, grackles, red-winged blackbirds, or ravens, I wasn’t sure.