Summer Friends Page 6

  Delphine fought back a sigh. This, she thought, is like being stalked. Though stalkers were probably a lot less polite. It couldn’t be healthy in the long run, but she supposed that “for old times’ sake” she could share a few more awkward lunches in the office or on a bench in Perkins Cove. Not that she put much stock in “old times.”

  “Why don’t you come by the house around nine tomorrow morning,” she suggested reluctantly. “My neighbor Jemima is stopping by. We could have coffee.”

  Maggie smiled. “That would be great,” she said. “I’d love to see your house. Oh, and I could show you mine. I’ve got some photos on my iPhone that were taken last year when we were thinking about putting the house on the market.”

  Delphine tried to imagine the sort of luxurious home Maggie and her family might live in. Would there be walk-in closets and an in-ground heated pool? Would there be central air-conditioning and a Jacuzzi in the master bathroom? “Okay,” she said. “So, I’ll see you then.”

  Delphine gave Maggie directions to her house and again watched as she drove off in her sleek, pristine car. She wondered what Maggie would do with herself for the rest of the day and felt momentarily guilty that she hadn’t offered an invitation for dinner, that she hadn’t even suggested some local activities that Maggie might enjoy. There was a new exhibit at the Barn Gallery, and another at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. Neither place would threaten the whiteness of her jeans. She could take a drive out to the Nubble Lighthouse or go shopping up in Portland. Neither one of those activities would cause too much damage to heeled sandals.

  She turned and went back to her desk. She had her own life to live and her own responsibilities to bear, and those responsibilities, copious though they were, did not include being Maggie Weldon Wilkes’s social director.

  8

  It was almost nine o’clock on Tuesday morning. Delphine had been up since five and had already been out to the farm. Then she had stopped in to her parents’ house for a second cup of coffee and to see how her father, who had a light cold, was feeling. Better, was the answer, though Patrice had convinced him to stay home that morning and let her handle the diner on her own. Then Delphine had driven to her brother’s house to drop off a jigsaw puzzle—it was a picture of kittens in a basket—she had bought for Kitty at a yard sale. She had made it back home in time to welcome her closest friend in Ogunquit, Jemima Larkin, who would be coming by soon. Not that Jemima needed a formal welcome. Besides, even if Delphine wasn’t yet home, Jemima had a key.

  Delphine looked around her living room and sighed. She wished she hadn’t invited Maggie to come by the house. Not that she was in the least ashamed of it; not at all, she was proud of her home. Still, in all the years she had lived there, no one other than family and a few select locals, neighbors such as Jemima and, of course, Harry, had ever been there. Delphine had come to feel protective of her privacy. There was a very satisfying feeling of safety and quiet and seclusion that she cherished when she was home alone with Melchior.

  The house itself had been in the Crandall family since it was built around 1925. The first floor was comprised of a living room and a kitchen, off of which was a pantry that Delphine kept well stocked with dry goods and jars of her mother’s sauerkraut, pickles, and blueberry preserves.

  A staircase against the right-hand wall of the living room led to the second floor, where off a short, narrow hallway there were two rooms and a bathroom. The larger room, the one in the back, was Delphine’s bedroom. The bed had an iron frame and foot- and headboard. On the bed was a quilt her mother had made for her one Christmas. Under the window sat an old oak desk, on which sat her laptop, a chipped clay mug containing pens and pencils, and a spiral-bound notebook. The pine dresser, both tall and wide, had belonged to her grandmother. On it were a framed photograph of Kitty and one of her parents on their wedding day. For many years there had also been a picture of Delphine on her graduation from Bartley College, but eventually that had migrated to a drawer. There were no framed pictures of Harry. On the wide pine board floor were two braided rugs that had been around since Delphine’s childhood. She had a vague notion that her grandmother, her mother’s mother, had made them, but she would have to check with Patrice to be sure.

  The second room, the smaller one, faced the front of the house. It had no closet. The walls were painted white and the floor was painted robin’s egg blue. This was where Delphine stored her many skeins of wool and knitting cotton, fleecy wools, and Shetland wool, and cotton wool blends; her various kinds of needles, wood and metal, circular and double pointed; and her collection of patterns, both new and vintage, that she found from all sorts of sources, from the Internet, to the Central Yarn Shop in Portland, to yard sales.

  Against one entire wall stood a simple wooden bookcase, built by her brother. It was packed with books, some from her childhood, others from college, others she had bought at yard sales and secondhand bookstores over the years. Mostly there were the classics of the Western canon. With a few exceptions, Delphine was a traditionalist in her reading. There was an old, water-damaged copy of Jane Eyre. There was a paperback collection of Jane Austen’s novels, none of which had cost more than two dollars. The showpiece of her collection was a complete set of the work of Charles Dickens. Published in the late nineteenth century, the books were tall and heavy and bound in dark green leather with tooled gilt writing. The works were printed in four columns per page, the print minuscule. She had found the set in an antique shop, at the bottom of a box of old, musty clothing. The set had cost six dollars. Sometimes she thought it was the best six dollars she had ever spent.

  The bathroom was fairly small and dominated by an old claw-footed tub. Delphine had installed a shower, with Dave Sr.’s help, when she first moved in. Wood paneling, painted white, reached up the walls about a third of the way. Above the paneling, Delphine had painted the walls a pale mint green. The white towels were fairly worn, though the bath mat was new, a bargain Jemima had picked up for her at Marden’s.

  Delphine checked her watch. Almost nine o’clock.

  “Ready for guests?” she asked Melchior.

  He didn’t reply. He was sitting on the back of the couch. It was one of his favorite perches because it gave him an unobstructed view of the front porch and, more important, of the hummingbirds fluttering madly at the feeder. Hummingbirds were okay—to Melchior, they looked like tasty snacks—but he didn’t care for the crows that occasionally gathered out front. Some of them were almost as big as he was. When they began their awful screeching and cawing he retreated to the interior of the house. And if Melchior happened to witness a male wild turkey or, worse, a mother with her brood, strutting out of the woods behind the house, he charged under the living room couch. Maine coon cats were known as great mousers. Not Melchior.

  Delphine straightened a large stack of library books. They were due back that day. Nancy, the town’s librarian, did an excellent job of seeking out the books Delphine wanted to read, but the library’s resources were limited. Delphine made a mental note to stop at the recently renovated library in Portland the next time she had reason to head north on a weekday. Jackie usually drove the produce to Portland for the summer farmers’ markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Maybe one Wednesday she would join her.

  Jemima arrived at five minutes to nine. She was wearing an oversized flowered shirt over a pair of baggy striped shorts. If Delphine’s wardrobe was less than fashionable, Jemima’s was a travesty of style. In fact, clothes seemed almost an afterthought to her. The only jewelry she wore was a slim gold wedding band, now embedded into the flesh of her ring finger, and a tiny silver-toned watch that had once belonged to an aunt.

  “I made corn muffins,” she said, holding up a plate loosely covered in tinfoil. “They’re still warm.” Of course, Jemima had made them from scratch; she was an excellent cook and baker.

  Jemima was originally from Connecticut but had lived in Ogunquit for twenty-five years, ever since she had married Jim Larkin,
a native of Norridgewock, Maine. Some people still considered Jemima as “from away,” but in her own mind, which was all that counted with Jemima, she was a genuine Mainer. Jemima had three children. The oldest, a young man named Kurt, whose father was her first husband, was “on the road” at the moment, and that’s pretty much all anyone knew. Occasionally, Jemima would receive a postcard informing her that he was alive, well, and currently in Alaska or Montana or Florida. The second child, a boy named Jake, was studying at the University of Southern Maine. Sarah, the youngest, was in high school and lived at home. Recently she had informed her parents that she wanted to go to college in California. “Roaming must be in their genes,” Jemima had told Delphine, with a sad shake of her head. “Some ancestor of mine was probably a pioneer.”

  After Jemima had put the plate of corn muffins in the kitchen, she returned to the living room just in time to witness Maggie pulling up to the house and parking next to her own thirteen-year-old Mazda. It was missing three hubcaps and part of the front fender had been eaten away by rust.

  “Well, will you look at that car?” Jemima frowned, as if offended by the obvious display of wealth. “That must have cost a pretty penny.”

  “A lot of pretty pennies,” Delphine said. “But I guess she can afford it. She has a big job in Boston.”

  Jemima murmured what sounded an awful lot like, “Big deal.”

  Maggie got out of the car carrying a large bouquet of flowers—lush pink peonies—wrapped in shiny cellophane. She paused for a moment to look up at the house. She was wearing a pair of slim-fitting tan Capri pants and a navy cropped blazer over a white T-shirt. Her flats and her bag were navy patent leather. Delphine couldn’t help but survey her own clothing, thrown on without thought at the crack of dawn, clean, but not ready for prime time.

  “I’ll get the door,” she said, before Maggie had time to knock. “Hey,” she said. “I see my directions were clear.”

  “Perfectly.” Maggie stepped inside and offered the bouquet to Delphine. “These are for you. I had no idea what your décor would be like, so I thought flowers would be a safe bet. But I guess I didn’t think it through. You have such a lovely garden right out front.”

  Delphine took the bouquet. It was from the most expensive florist in town. “Thanks,” she said. “I love flowers so—”

  Maggie suddenly spotted Melchior. “Oh, my God,” she said, her hand to her heart, “that cat is huge.”

  “His name is Melchior.”

  “Appropriate,” Maggie said, as Melchior stood, stretched, and turned his back on the women.

  Delphine smiled. “I forgot you’re not a big fan of animals.”

  “No, I guess I’m not,” Maggie admitted. “I remember that massive dog you had years ago, when we were just kids. What was his name? I practically fainted the first time I saw him. He was up to my shoulder. Well, almost.”

  “Longfellow. My father named him after the poet. Longfellow was big,” she told Jemima, “a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, but he had the sweetest nature. I remember Joey teasing Maggie about being afraid of being in the same room with him. Anyway, Jemima, this is Maggie Weldon Wilkes.”

  Maggie reached out to shake Jemima’s hand. Jemima hesitated, and then responded with a bone-crunching grasp and one hearty pump that made Maggie wince.

  “So,” Jemima said by way of greeting, “you don’t have pets?”

  Maggie shook her head. “No. I didn’t grow up with pets. My mother didn’t like the mess they made. When my girls were little they wanted a dog, but Gregory and I were on the road so much it just didn’t make sense. Kim had a goldfish for a while. Or maybe it was Caitlin, I can’t remember. It went down the toilet after a few weeks.”

  “My husband and I have three dogs,” Jemima said, “all from shelters, and a tame raccoon. They’re no trouble at all. We call them our fur children.”

  “A tame raccoon?” Maggie looked horror stricken. “I didn’t think there could be such a thing. Don’t raccoons carry rabies?”

  “They can. But Ben is all right; he’s had his shots.”

  Maggie’s dubious expression betrayed her doubts about Ben the raccoon’s health. She stretched the fingers of the hand Jemima had crunched and surveyed the living room.

  “This room is charming,” she said. “I love the fireplace. It must be so cozy in here in the winter.”

  “I mostly use the wood stove to heat the house,” Delphine explained, laying the bouquet on a side table. “It can still be fairly cold upstairs at night, but I have plenty of extra blankets.”

  Jemima pretended to fan herself with her hand. “And it’s as hot as hell in the summer.”

  “It feels cool now,” Maggie commented.

  “That’s because Delphine finally caved and got an air conditioner.”

  Delphine shrugged. “I don’t feel the heat as badly as some people.”

  Jemima smiled. “We make sacrifices for our friends.”

  Jemima, Maggie thought, must spend a fair amount of time at Delphine’s house if Delphine bought an air conditioner for her. She looked between the two women and realized that she felt jealous of their friendship. Once upon a time, she had shared an easy rapport with Delphine. What had gone so wrong? Oh. Right. Delphine had walked away. And after a time, Maggie had ceased to follow. But she was back now and things could be what they once were. She truly believed that. Mostly.

  Maggie’s attention was drawn to the stack of books on the coffee table in front of the couch.

  “You’re still a voracious reader, I see.”

  Delphine smiled. “Yes. And I have to return these books to the library today.”

  “I could take them on my way out.”

  “Thanks, Jemima,” Delphine said. “That would be a help.”

  Maggie peered more closely at the top book in the stack. It was a survey of the English Civil Wars. “I hate using the library,” she said. “Number one, I just don’t have the time to be reading on someone else’s schedule. And the library is hardly ever open when I have the time to run in. And when you take a book out of the library you have no idea who’s been touching it. I’ve found food stains and even dead bugs on the pages of library books.”

  “Well,” Delphine said, hating the note of apology she heard in her voice, “new books are so expensive, especially the hardcover ones . . . I’m afraid I’d be lost without the library.”

  “And people up here are more respectful of public property than people in the city, I’d say,” Jemima added, looking pointedly at Maggie. “We don’t have those sorts of vandalism problems in Ogunquit.”

  Maggie tensed. She didn’t like this woman at all. First she had tried to break her hand and now she was implying that she lived in a den of iniquity? “Then you’re lucky,” she said. “I suppose there are benefits to living in such an out-of-the-way place.”

  “Come,” Delphine said a bit too brightly, “let me show you the rest of the house.”

  “That would be great,” Maggie said.

  Jemima followed the other two women to the stairs. Maggie wondered why she was coming along for the tour. Maybe, she thought, Jemima was scared to leave Delphine alone with the woman from the big, bad city.

  Delphine led the way up the stairs and to the smaller, front bedroom. “This is a sort of catchall room,” she explained. “My library and my workroom.”

  “Wow,” Maggie said. “All the wool, the needles—is this all yours? I didn’t know that you knit.” She walked over to the worktable, on which several pieces in various degrees of completion were laid out. “You’re so skilled. Look at all these different stitches. Delphine, your work is amazing.”

  Delphine shrugged. “Thanks. I took up knitting a few years after college.”

  “You sell your work, of course. These pieces are too beautiful to just give away.”

  Delphine wasn’t sure she understood the logic in that reasoning but let it pass without comment. “Yes, I sell a bit in the summer. I have a sign I put on the porch. ‘Blue
berry Cove Designs.’ It sounds a bit pretentious to me, but Jackie came up with it and, well, I guess it works. People stop by.”

  “But your house is kind of out-of-the-way,” Maggie noted. “You can’t get much traffic. And what happens if someone does come by and you’re not home?”

  “What happens? I don’t know. They come back, I guess. If they’re really interested.”

  “Do you advertise in other places, besides the front porch?” Maggie asked. “You know, signs in town, ads in the local papers, flyers in the hotels.”

  “No, not really,” Delphine said. “Well, no, not at all, actually.”

  Maggie tried to hide her exasperation. “You should, Delphine. I mean really, your work is exquisite. How much inventory do you have? Do you design to order? I’m assuming you buy your materials wholesale—”

  “Wait!” Delphine laughed. “Maggie, my knitting is not a big business. It’s a hobby. I just like to knit. Well, I love it, really. But it’s not my job.”

  Maggie didn’t look convinced. She pointed to a completed sweater that hung on a padded hanger from what was originally meant to be a hat rack. “Please tell me this sweater is for sale. I want to buy it right now. I absolutely love the color. Blondes always look good in periwinkle. And the work around the collar is gorgeous. How much is it?”

  Delphine felt a little panicked. “I can’t charge a . . . an old friend.”

  “Yes, you can. I don’t care what you say, Delphine, this is a business,” she argued. “And it’s special because it’s all your own. It’s not one of your family’s ventures.”

  Jemima had said nothing during this exchange, but Delphine could feel disapproval, maybe unreasonable, emanating from her. She risked a glance and then hurriedly looked away from Jemima’s frown. “I suppose I could offer a ‘family and friends discount.’ ” She named a price significantly lower than what she would charge a stranger.