Chat - Archer Mayor [62]
He watched her vanish through a side door leading to a hallway. Suddenly alone, he eyed the armchair momentarily but yielded to taking a small tour of the photographs newly on the walls and lining the baseboards, still awaiting hanging.
Some were family pictures in which he thought he could see, in the freckled face of a laughing child, the woman he was beginning to know, surrounded by a tired-looking mother, two older brothers, and a dark-complected father with a thick mustache, rough hands, and a steady, unsmiling look to his eyes. The pictures, taken at picnics, a restaurant, and—one—on a small, weather-beaten fishing boat, were snapshots only, slightly blurry, the color fading, and, despite their careful mounting and framing, eloquent of an economically marginal existence.
Most of the newer pictures were of a different young girl growing up. She was accompanied by a handsome, distracted-looking man in the early shots only, and then alone or with Lyn. These mother-daughter shots tended to show Lyn with the watchful look of the novice photographer, wondering if the camera’s self-timer was going to work—suggesting there was no one either behind the camera or in their lives.
Joe studied the ascent of the child through grade school and puberty, as caught on stage, in a cheerleader’s outfit, at the high school prom, and at the desk of what looked like a newspaper office, where she was gazing perplexedly at a computer screen. She was a pretty girl with long hair, slim like her mother.
“That’s Coryn,” Lyn said from behind him.
He turned and saw her standing by the open door to the hallway, two mugs on a small tray in one hand—a practiced stance for someone used to delivering drinks and snacks to tables.
“She’s very pretty,” he said, crossing over to take the tray and set it on a coffee table between the armchair and the sofa, by the fire.
“Pretty,” her mother agreed. “Also smart, stubborn, opinionated, and private. I love that child like nothing else on earth, but I’m not so sure I’ll ever figure out what makes her tick.”
“Gave you some troubles over the years?” he asked.
Her answer surprised him. “Never. A completely even keel. Everybody kept expecting her to flip out, especially as a teenager, only because she was so steady, we all assumed she was building up for a huge blow. But it never happened. She’s twenty-three now. I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Lyn sat in the middle of the sofa. Also on the tray were small containers of milk and sugar. “What do you take in your tea?”
He took the armchair opposite and chuckled at the question. “A little of both will work.”
But she paused. “You’re hedging somehow. How do you usually take it?”
“You’re going to think it’s like a bad Vermont advertisement. But if there’s a choice, I put maple syrup in with the milk.”
She immediately rose and headed back toward the kitchen. “I have some, right out in the open. Won’t take a second.”
She was back in almost that time, unscrewing a glass bottle as she entered. “This I’ve got to try. I love maple syrup, but I’ve never tried it in tea.”
“Coffee, too,” he said, adding, “but I may be alone there. Nobody else I know does that.”
She sat again and prepared the mugs, smiling up at him. “You’ve got a sweet tooth.”
He accepted the proffered mug. “Yeah, I’ve been told that.” He took a sip. “Perfect.”
She tried her own and nodded approvingly. “That’s great. I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Where’s Coryn now?” he asked, settling into the armchair’s embrace, enjoying watching her on the sofa.
“She works for some newspaper in Boston, learning the ropes and hoping for something bigger soon.”
“The Globe?”
Lyn shrugged. “No—that she would’ve mentioned. I did ask her, but that’s what I meant. She keeps her own counsel. For all I know, she’ll be calling me tomorrow from the L.A. Times. I hope not, though. I would really miss her.”
“You see a lot of each other?”
“Not as much as a mother would like, but we talk on the phone pretty often.”
“Is she it for your family?” he asked, nodding toward the photographs.
Lyn gazed in that direction,