And then it was over. The day just as normal as it had been before. The cicadas buzzing just as they had been, the sun beating down upon her just as before, the sky the same shade of robin’s-egg blue. But when she looked into the eyes of Jess Stewart and he looked back at her, she knew something had changed. They had lived a lifetime together already.
Addie didn’t know it then, she never knew it, but Jess felt the same thing that day when they first held hands. But the pictures that flashed before his eyes were a good deal more disturbing than those seen by the little girl. He shook them out of his head and led Addie into the life that fate had created for them.
Marie saw what was happening between the two children and wasn’t surprised, on Addie’s first day of school, to open the door and find Jess Stewart standing there, scrubbed and ready for the day, his unruly hair combed into neat submission.
“I thought I’d walk Addie to school,” the boy announced. “I’ll get her settled, show her the ropes. I’ll bring her home, too, at the end of the day.”
Marie folded her arms and looked the boy up and down, squinting.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Cassatt,” Jess said. “I’ll take good care of her.”
Marie remembered the morning of Addie’s birth, how Jess was the one who found her. She nodded, knowing she was powerless over what had been put in motion that day five years earlier.
“Come right home after school, do you hear?” she warned him, wagging her finger. “I don’t want to be worrying about where you are.”
But watching her daughter walk down the lane, hand in hand with Jess Stewart, Marie knew she had nothing to fear.
It was then she remembered the book.
CHAPTER SIX
Night had fallen by the time Kate and Alaska pulled into Wharton, a tiny portside community an hour down the shoreline from her home. Best known for its quaint, New England–like atmosphere and stunning views of the islands just offshore, Wharton was home to expensive yachts, small galleries featuring the work of local artisans, gourmet restaurants, and several mom-and-pop operations like ice cream shops and smoked-fish stands that gave the town its personality. More than any other place on the lake, Wharton had always been a tourist mecca. But that’s not what Kate loved about it. For Kate, and for many locals who knew its history, Wharton was a magical place.
The town had sprung up in the wilderness, far from any other city, in the 1700s, when fur trappers, missionaries, explorers, and later, wealthy businessmen learned to appreciate its oddly temperate climate and unsettlingly warm winds. Street after street was filled with grand homes boasting enormous front porches, well-manicured lawns, and flourishing gardens. In this harsh northern land where it was winter much of the year, the air in Wharton was so warm that magnolia trees grew.
Scientists postulated that the oddly warm weather had something to do with the rocky cliffs that surrounded the town on three sides. Others argued it was the presence of several islands just offshore to buffer the cold winds that blew across the lake. Legend had it that Wharton was blessed with its temperate climate by the spirit of the lake itself, because this was where it had found its true love centuries before. But in modern times, people didn’t think too much of that mythical hogwash. Wharton’s climate was what it was. And what it was was a tourist draw.
Many of Wharton’s grandest old houses were now bed-and-breakfast inns, catering to tourists who came to shop for local artwork, to explore the islands by ferry, to kayak or row out to the “sea caves” hewn into the rocky cliffs, or to simply wander hand in hand through town with one’s beloved, marveling at the romance of this charming village, set in the middle of nowhere. Visitors said the town radiated a sense of peace unlike anything they’d ever experienced. Kate came here often because of it.
As Kate pulled into town, summer tourist season was rapidly evaporating with the falling temperatures. Which was not to say that Wharton was closed up tight with the coming of winter. On the contrary. The town’s unusually warm climate drew people all year long, and although tourists couldn’t enjoy the lake itself in the winter, they came for quiet weekends at the inns, long walks in the temperate air, and hours of sitting outside under a blanket with a book and a glass of wine, grateful for the odd respite from the harsh winter that surrounded the town but somehow didn’t penetrate it.
Kate loved this quaint harbor village. By design, no building was taller than two stories—with the exception of the grand old mansions that lined the residential streets. Visitors were always surprised to find no fast food restaurants, no big department stores, no discount retailers, no strip malls. Unlike the downtown areas of many small communities, which had devolved into ghost towns, Wharton’s downtown was still thriving with the everyday business of people’s lives. Residents visited their family doctor in her office on Main Street and got their prescriptions filled at the local pharmacy two doors down. They bought everything from light bulbs to window cleaner at Frank’s Hardware, which had been owned and operated by the same family for three generations. They got their fresh produce at the market across the street, exchanged town gossip at the diner, and congregated at the coffee shop, all of which were located within three blocks of each other.
The myriad upscale galleries and shops surrounding those core businesses existed mainly for tourists, but everyone, tourist and local alike, loved the restaurants, which were welcoming the first of their dinner guests for the evening as Kate drove through town. She passed Antonio’s, which served Italian fare. Just down the block was the Flamingo, an eclectic place with a long mahogany bar serving fine wines and microbrews and a decidedly American menu including big salads and burgers. Kate saw a crowd gathering at The Dock, located right on the water and offering local specialties like lake trout, wild rice, and Cornish pasty, and the best lake view in town.
Kate turned from the main street and made her way up the hill toward her destination, one of the grandest old homes in town. The building had begun its life more than a century earlier as the home of Harrison Connor, a young, self-made millionaire who had been savvy enough to position himself in the right place at the right time during the shipping boom at the turn of the last century. The history of the place always swam in Kate’s mind whenever she came here. It was her own family history, after all.
She knew that Harrison’s opulent lifestyle in Wharton was a far cry from his upbringing as a farm boy. His father, Claus, a German immigrant, had built a farm—forced it into being with the sheer power of his determination—out of a rocky, windswept field near the border of North and South Dakota. His land wasn’t filled with the rich soil that turned the region into the breadbasket of the world and, as such, it didn’t take well to the wheat and sunflowers he grew, but he owned it outright, along with a few cows, chickens, and pigs.
Survival on those unforgiving, desolate plains was a constant struggle, no matter the season. The intense heat of summer punished farmers in the fields who had not so much as a tree for relief. The harsh winds of winter stirred up blinding blizzards that confused and consumed men who knew the land as well as they knew their own souls. By the time Claus was thirty years old, he looked decades older, hardened by the effort of exerting his will against the land, day after backbreaking day.