The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [98]
“It was.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you, Lucy. I’ll check the lock when you go.”
And then I was standing on the loading dock in the full glare of the late-afternoon sun, the door clicking shut behind me.
Chapter 12
THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY, HOT FROM THE LATE AFTERNOON sun. I was so hungry I ate out of the refrigerator, tearing off pieces of bagel and dipping them into vanilla yogurt; there was nothing else but wilted-looking carrots and an unopened pound of butter. I ate quickly and without really tasting anything, and drank three glasses of water. Then I gathered all my things, with the rust-colored binder full of letters on top, and made my way upstairs to the cupola. The papers, piled on the window seat facing the lake, fluttered in the light breeze when I pushed open the windows. I’d searched this room carefully for more documents and had found nothing but two stray white buttons and a pair of small metal scissors. Still, I wanted to read these letters in a place where at least some trace of Rose had existed.
There were seven envelopes of different colors and sizes; some had been mailed and others had only Iris’s name across the front in Rose Jarrett’s now familiar handwriting. The one on top was addressed to Rose in New York City, the postmark too blurry to read. The letter itself was written on thick white paper, one side faintly shiny, the other porous, so that the ink spread out, blurring some of the letters, which had been written in a heavy, rather awkward hand. When I unfolded the single page, a lock of pale brown hair, tied with a piece of string, fell into my lap.
17 October 1914
Dear Rose,
I was on the farm all week. When I came into town your letter was in the silver tray. No one spoke of you, your name is never mentioned. I am happy to know you are safe.
You will be happy to know that Iris is fine. This is a piece of her hair I cut for you. She was playing on the porch, lining up pebbles from the lake from small to large. There were letters made from pebbles, also: R, I, S. I think Cora has been teaching her to spell, she is smart. I hope smart gets her further in life than it has gotten you, that’s all.
I am glad you found the money. I will send more if I can. Please send news. Mrs. Elliot goes on here as if nothing ever happened. I do not think she is your friend.
Fondly from your brother, Joseph.
I let the letter fall into my lap and stared out at the lake—smooth this early evening, and deep blue. This brief missive written by my great-grandfather was almost more astonishing to me than Rose’s longer letters had been. He had lived here, had worked on the cupola of this house, perhaps pausing to wipe sweat from his face and gaze out at the ever-changing lake, as I was doing now. His portrait hung over Arthur’s desk at Dream Master, and though Joseph Arthur Jarrett had died long before I was born, I’d grown up with that image of him as a middle-aged man, successful and certain, the master of all he surveyed, and I’d filled in the rest through imagination and story. The voice in this letter was as different from my image of the man as Rose’s story was from the family legends we’d grown up hearing. Kind, he seemed—there was the lock of hair—but also, by turns, terse and judgmental.
I folded the page back up and slipped it into the envelope with the lock of hair, remembering Rose’s first letter, where she’d talked about her daughter’s dandelion hair. The next letter was to Iris again, and I opened it to find several sheets of plain paper, tissue-thin, the ink once black but now fading to brown, the handwriting slanted, strong, and sure. It had no date, and on the later pages the color of the ink changed and grew lighter, then darkened again, as if the letter had been written over many days.
Dearest Iris,
I am at the station. People come and go. They did not meet me. I waited on the platform, but no one came. After a long time I found a bench and sat. The lobby is vast and grand and there is a clock in