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By Root 1211 0

I told him briefly about the letters in the cupola and the windows in Keegan’s studio and the church. Again, I didn’t mention Rose. Blake was interested but distracted, too; he kept glancing around the store to see if there were any customers in need of help. Then Zoe came in, ringing the little bells on the door, and when she saw me she ran over and hugged me with the exuberance of early adolescence, then started talking a mile a minute about a play she was in. She’d grown so tall since I’d last seen her, and wore dangling earrings, and once in a while she spoke of herself in the third person—“Zoe is so excited!”—as if she were posting on Facebook and not talking to me in person. She looked a lot like Joey, with the same intense Jarrett eyes, her dark hair. Blake smiled, raised his eyebrows slightly, and drifted off.

I promised Zoe I would see her again before I left and she said she was coming to the solstice party with her parents. Then I left Dream Master and walked back into town, got a sandwich and drink from the grocery store, and sat on a bench by the outlet while I ate. Light made dancing patterns on the water and a few seagulls hovered on the concrete seawall, waiting for crumbs. I tossed them little pieces of bread, thinking about my discoveries at the church and my conversation with Art.

When I finished eating, I wadded up my lunch papers and tossed them out, pausing in the shade of an oak tree to look at the pictures I’d taken of the Wisdom window on my phone. The resolution wasn’t very good, but still the imagery was vibrant, striking. Had Rose designed them? And who had she been?

Yoshi had sent several messages regarding his flights. I didn’t call because it would be after midnight there by now, but I went to my saved messages and played the two he had left, telling me about a job he’d heard about, one I might like, and that my students missed me and he did, too. I closed my eyes and played them again, listening to the cadence of his voice.

Keegan had left a voice message, too, about the windows in the chapel. I tried to call him back, but he didn’t pick up.

When a break came in the traffic, I darted across the street and slipped into the library, which had once been a private home. Built of gray stone, it had a deep front porch facing the lake and a wooden screen door that creaked and slammed shut behind me, causing the librarian, a young man with short hair, to glance up. I passed the bulletin board thick with flyers: lost cats, town meetings, a poster from the white deer consortium, an open meeting of the Iroquois coalition. I sat at one of the long cherry tables where I used to do homework. Now there were computers at every seat. I typed in “Frank Westrum.” To my surprise, several articles appeared. Though I couldn’t trust them all, I read the first entry with some excitement anyway. Westrum had existed, clearly, and as more than a local artist who’d faded obscurely away.

Frank George Westrum, 1868-1942. Glass artisan. Associated with the studios of La Farge, where he apprenticed 1894-1901. Married Beatrice Mansfield in 1896, and in 1919 moved from New York City to Rochester, New York, to open an independent glass studio. Consultant to Corning Glass. Two children, Marcus Westrum b. 1896 and Annabeth Westrum b. 1897.

At the end of the article there was a link to the Frank Westrum House in Rochester. A photo came up of a stained-glass window, a simple sphere in shades of ivory against a dark square background. A long-stemmed tulip followed the inner curve of the sphere, the leaves fluid, as if floating, the single red flower blooming. The patterns did not match the border pattern on the windows in Keegan’s studio or the church, but stylistically the resemblance was clear. Below was a single paragraph.

Home and studio of glass artist Frank Westrum from 1920 until his death in 1942, this house contains 27 striking examples of his stained-glass work in wide variety, from the grand windows in the stairwell to modest transoms. Sold to private owners in 1945, this dwelling was purchased by the Frank