South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [127]
He couldn’t help but laugh, a real laugh. Something inside him felt less weighted down for an instant. “She didn’t see it that way.”
“Well, then she’s blind. Anyway, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“You’re too old for her anyway.”
“Thanks!”
“I didn’t mean—I meant she’s too young for you.”
“Great.” Paul made it sound sour, but he was smiling. He was going to miss Madeline. Greyson, Madeline, the smell of the water always in the air, the outlines of this town that had become so familiar, everything. He couldn’t think about it.
The door of the hotel opened and Greyson came out holding something in his hand. A kaleidoscope. He held it out to Paul. “This is like looking at the stars,” he said. “Only you can look anytime, even when it’s light. It’s really cool, you want me to show you how it works?”
A great quietness descended over Madeline after Paul left.
“I’m going Upstairs,” Greyson said, sounding flattened. Madeline nodded, but pretty soon she decided this was no good. She trotted Up the stairs and banged on his door and flung it open. He was lying on his bed, staring Up at the ceiling, tossing a rubber ball in the air. “Come on, get Up.” She grabbed his ankle and shook it.
“I don’t want to.”
“Too bad. There’s someplace we have to go.”
“Where?” he said, without interest.
“It’s a secret. Put on your shoes.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Too bad,” she said again. She went to her own room to get a knapsack, and after a moment heard his feet hit the floor.
It was dark before they got back. Madeline fixed grilled cheese sandwiches with the last of her energy, and watched Greyson nearly nod off over his plate. “Go on, get ready for bed,” she told him when he’d finished eating. “I’ll be Up in a few minutes.”
He nodded, yawning. When she checked on him ten minutes later he was already asleep, one arm flung over his head, the other curled around Marley, who gazed at Madeline with a satisfied expression. Greyson was still in his clothes and wearing a sneaker. He’d probably crashed before he ever got his teeth brushed. Good. He was worn out from their excursion.
He’d perked Up a little when they turned off the highway onto the two-track that led to Stone Lake, and by the time they climbed Up the small rise to the shore of the vanished water, he’d shed several layers of sadness. So had she, at least temporarily.
It didn’t change the fact that they would miss Paul. They would. But they’d have to go on. They’d survive this. Madeline felt as though a hole had opened in the fabric of her fledgling life here; it must’ve felt the same way to Greyson. But it was a hole she’d just have to figure out how to mend, or jump over, or live with. They both would.
28
Suddenly it was the twelfth of November. In two days the hunters would arrive. Madeline was almost ready to pull the little chain to light Up Gladys’s sign that said “Rooms to Let.”
She quit at eleven o’clock that night. The sofa and easy chairs she’d had delivered looked plump and inviting; the antiques that had been in the lobby—two plant stands with marble tops (now topped with Boston ferns she hoped wouldn’t freeze when winter came), a curio cabinet, a library table, a china cupboard—shone with polish. A fire flickered in the woodstove, casting a soft light on the modestly stocked shelves. She’d found a dozen rugs rolled Up Under the eaves in a corner of the attic early in the fall, runners woven on Gladys’s grandmother’s rug loom, and cleaned them with a scrub brush and hot water and hung them outside to dry. Now they lay on the wooden floors as if they’d never been taken Up and stashed away.
The rug loom itself sat in a corner, reassembled by Madeline with the help of Gladys. It wasn’t strung yet, but she thought visitors would like to see it. Someday she’d learn to Use it. She had vague ideas of selling rugs, eventually. It was a four-harness loom, Gladys had told her. A good one, you could make patterns instead of just stripes if you knew what you were doing. Which she did not, Madeline pointed out. Gladys had better