The Words Between Us, page 28
Peter and I are going to Isle Royale for the winter. And after that . . . ? So I’m deeding the building that currently houses Brick & Mortar Books over to you. You once studied art here as a student. Now you will be the teacher. Dawt Pi should have given you the keys. There’s a spare in this envelope. We’ll work out all the technical details later. For now, sell everything you don’t want—books, shelves, my furniture—and use that money to set up shop.
Give Ryan my best when you see him next. And apologize to him for me. He’s a nice guy. But he’s not Peter.
I’ll be in touch,
Robin
I slip the letter and the key into an envelope, seal it, and write Sarah’s name across it. I place it on the old wooden counter and then follow Peter out the door and into the next chapter of my life.
41
Now
No one notices the last robin of fall. Because of course, you can never be sure which one will be your last. But I am fairly certain that the one I see hopping from branch to branch in the white pine tree at the foot of the trail will be the last one of the year for me. He should have left already. I watch closely, trying to burn him into my memory. But Peter’s gone on ahead and I must catch up.
“There you are.” He puts an arm around my shoulders. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I could never get lost here. I know these trails better than anyone alive today.”
During the long drive, I had filled in the blanks of my life, telling him all about my silent years with Dave Dewitt, working for Pictured Rocks. It’s remarkable to think that, had I just stayed there, Peter would still have found me eventually, just as he’d hoped.
Now we walk side by side down the wide path to where it disappears in the snow-covered sand. Beyond the sheltering trees, the wind stings my face as a snowstorm sweeps down from Canada and over the big lake. My lake. Along my own personal leg of the North Country Trail.
Just as the first time I saw these waters, I hear the waves crashing against the shore before I can see them. We crest the top of the hill and brace ourselves against the wind. To the right rise the Grand Sable Dunes. To the left, the cliffs stand firm against the relentless lashing of the icy waves.
“You know I’ve been down there?” I say, pointing to the strip of shore three hundred feet below. “When I lived with Dave all those years I used to come up here now and then to watch the sunset, and I did go down the Log Slide once. They’re not kidding with those warning signs. It took a couple minutes to get to the bottom and a couple hours to get back up to the top. It was pitch-black and freezing by the time I got back up. Dave never came looking for me, and I couldn’t call for help because, of course, he didn’t think I could talk.”
“I cannot believe you didn’t talk for eleven years,” Peter says. “That is by far the most unbelievable thing you have ever told me.”
“Well, I talked to The Professor. And if you knew Dave, you’d realize how very easy it was to do.”
Peter gazes out across the dunes. “It’s incredible to think that in a few hundred years or so this shoreline will look completely different.”
“What?”
“These dunes will have moved inland or be gone entirely. The cliffs will have a different shape altogether. Arches will collapse and become pillars, and then they’ll wear away to nothing but sand. The wind and the water are always changing the landscape in a place like this.”
“I’d never thought of that.”
“No? Your Dave Dewitt never talked about that?”
“He probably did, but when someone talks constantly, you kind of tune them out sometimes. And he was much more interested in the flora and fauna anyway.” I survey the shoreline to the west. “I’d always thought of this shore as something I wanted to be like.”
“How so?”
“You know, stable. Unmoved. The water churns and crashes, but the rocks stand firm.”
“These cliffs are anything but stable. A few years back they lost a whole section of the North Country Trail near Grand Portal Point. Just collapsed—boom!—disappeared into the lake.”
“I wish Dave had been around to see that.”
Peter smiles. “You can’t fight the elements. Wind and water always win. Even against stone. It’s why we have the Grand Canyon and the Arches in Utah and Niagara Falls. You can’t tame the waves and you can’t hold back the wind. You’ve got to move with it. But that’s not to say you have to let it take you wherever it will. Think of a sailboat. The wind moves it, but it’s not what steers it. The captain of the ship decides where it will go. You’re the captain of your ship.”
“That’s awfully philosophical for a Saturday morning.”
Peter laughs, and the wind sweeps the sound away to some other place. “I’m freezing, and we’ve got a long way to drive yet before the really bad weather hits.”
We start back toward the parking lot.
“You’re sure I’ll be able to get calls up there, right? I have to be reachable in case my dad’s lawyer calls.”
“Don’t worry. There are reliable landlines. You can call him the minute we get there and give him the number.”
“And if they need me to testify about—”
“Yes, I told you. You can get off the island in winter. It’s just a little pricey.” He stops walking. “You’re not backing out on me, are you?”
“Not at all. Winter was one of the best parts of living up here. I loved being snug in a cabin under twenty feet of snow for five months. It’s a good thing we have all of your books.”
“Your books.”
“Our books.”
He smiles and the lines around his eyes deepen. “I almost forgot to tell you. I do have one more.”
Back in the Explorer, Peter cranks up the heat. He reaches back around his seat and pulls a messenger bag onto his lap. “Close your eyes.”
I do. A moment later, something heavy is on my lap.
“Okay, open them.”
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I flip through the pages. The marks and underlines, the dog-ears—they’re all there. It’s the same copy I stole from—and then returned to—Emily Flynt’s grave.
“I’ll loan that to you,” Peter says. “That is, unless you have the means to pay for it.”
He puts the Explorer in gear and heads out of the parking lot. It feels like the whirling snow outside the car is whizzing around in my stomach.
“I haven’t written a poem in a really long time.”
Peter reaches into the pocket behind my seat and produces a spiral notebook. Then he pulls a pen from the console. “Now’s the perfect time to start.”
He turns his attention to the road, leaving me in contemplative quiet. Not a word is spoken as we cut through the snow to Copper Harbor where we will board a small plane to Isle Royale. There, two tiny cabins await us, along with a second chance at what might have been. As the forgiving snow covers the evidence of life in this forbidding landscape, I let go of the encumbering past and feel, for perhaps the first time, that I am truly home.
Then I put pen to paper and invite poetry back into my life.
Acknowledgments
To all of the authors, dead and alive, who have been part of my literary upbringing, I offer my gratitude. Whether your books made me smile or cry, whether they woke me up or put me to sleep, whether they promoted lively discussion or caused fractious arguments, they have worked their way into who I am as a person. They live on, even when their creators do not. And I am so grateful to be part of the conversation.
To my high school English teachers, especially John VanLooy, Ilse Irving, and Kevin Discher, and my college English professors, especially David Alvarez, Rob Franciosi, and David Ihrman—thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing your passion for literature with me. Your words helped determine the course of my life.
To my mother, who took me to the library any time I asked, and the librarians who helped me find stories to fall in love with—thank you for feeding my insatiable desire for books.
To those who read early drafts of this story and offered their critique—Valerie Marvin, Andrew Spector, Heather Brewer, Twila Bennett, and Orly Konig—I extend my heartfelt thanks for your encouragement and your input.
To Alma Staub and Joel Spector, thank you for sharing your legal expertise so that I could make the experiences of Norman and Lindy Windsor true to life (and for lending your names to the lawyer in the story . . . By the way, is it okay if I name the lawyer after the two of you?).
To my agent, Nephele Tempest, for pushing me to make this manuscript better. To my editor, Kelsey Bowen, for her unbridled enthusiasm for this story. To eagle-eyed Jessica English, who is the most aptly named copyeditor in the business. To Michele Misiak and Karen Steele for their ongoing work to introduce readers to my writing. To everyone else at Revell Books for the integral parts they have played in getting The Words between Us into the hands of readers.
And to Zachary, who has shared my story since I was fifteen. May each new chapter bring us something else to celebrate.
1
DETROIT, JULY
The Lafayette Coney Island was not a comfortable place to be early. It wasn’t a comfortable place, period. It was cramped and dingy and packed, and seat saving, such as I was attempting at the lunch rush, was not appreciated.
Thankfully, at precisely noon as promised, an older black gentleman in a baggy Detroit Lions jersey shuffled through the door, ratty leather bag slung over one drooped shoulder.
“Mr. Rich?” I called over the din.
He slid into the chair across from me. I’d fought hard for that chair. Hopefully this meeting would be worth the effort.
“How’d you know it was me?” he said.
“You said you’d be wearing a Lions jersey.”
“Oh yes. I did, didn’t I? My son gave me this.”
“You ready to order? I only have twenty minutes.”
Mr. Rich was looking back toward the door. “Well, I was hoping that . . . Oh! Here we go.”
The door swung open and a tall, well-built man sporting a slick suit and a head of short black dreads walked in. He looked vaguely familiar.
“Denny! We’re just about to order.” Mr. Rich set the leather bag on his lap and slid over in his seat to accommodate the newcomer.
The man sat on the eight inches of chair Mr. Rich had managed to unearth from his own backside, but most of him spilled out into the already narrow aisle.
“This is my son, Linden.”
Something clicked and my eyes flew to one of the many photos on the wall of famous people who’d eaten here over the years. There he was, between Eminem and Drew Barrymore, towering over the smiling staff.
I sat a little straighter. “The Linden Rich who kicks for the Lions?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And you are . . . ?”
“This is Elizabeth Balsam,” Mr. Rich supplied, “the lady who writes all those scandal stories in the Free Press about corruption and land grabbing and those ten thousand—eleven thousand?—untested rape kits they found awhile back and such. She covered the Kilpatrick trial.”
I offered up a little smile, one I’d practiced in the mirror every morning since college, one I hoped made me look equal parts approachable and intelligent.
“Oh, yeah, okay,” Linden said. “I see the resemblance. In the eyes.”
“I told you,” Mr. Rich said.
“You did.”
“I’m sorry,” I broke in, “what resemblance?”
A waiter in a filthy white T-shirt balancing ten plates on one arm came up to the table just then and said, “Denny! Whaddayawant?”
We ordered our coney dogs—coney sauce and onions for me, everything they had in the kitchen for Linden, and just coney sauce for Mr. Rich, who explained, “I can’t eat onions no more.”
“And I need silverware,” I added in an undertone.
When the waiter shouted the order to the old man at the grill, Linden was already talking. “You are not giving her that camera.”
“You said the photos—the photos should stay for now,” Mr. Rich said. “Why shouldn’t I give her the camera? It ain’t yours, Denny.”
“It ain’t hers either.”
“No, she’s going to give it to Nora.”
Linden took a deep breath and looked off to the side. Though probably anyone else would have been embarrassed to be so obviously talked about as if she wasn’t even there, years of cutthroat journalism had largely squelched that entirely natural impulse in my brain.
I jumped on the dead air to start my own line of questioning. “On the phone you said you’d been given a few things that were found in a police evidence locker—that belonged to a relative of yours?”
“No, they belong to a relative of yours. Maybe I should just start from the beginning.”
I resisted the urge to pull out my phone and start recording the conversation.
But before Mr. Rich could begin, our coney dogs were plunked down on the table in no particular order. We slid the plates around to their proper owners. The men across from me bit into their dogs. I began to cut mine with a knife and fork, eliciting a you-gotta-be-kidding-me look from Linden.
“I’ve been reading the Free Press over the years,” Mr. Rich began, “and I kept seeing your byline. I don’t know if I would have noticed that all those articles were by the same person if I didn’t have a connection to your family name.”
I nodded to let him know I was tracking with him.
“And I got to thinking, maybe this Elizabeth Balsam is related to the Balsam I know. It’s not a real common name in Detroit. I don’t know if I’d ever heard it outside of my own association with a Nora Balsam. Now, is that name familiar to you?”
I speared a bit of bun and sopped up some sauce. “Sorry, no. I don’t think I know anyone by that name.”
Linden lifted his hand up to his father as if to say, “See?”
“Now, hold on,” the older man said in his son’s direction. “You said yourself she looks like her.”
“I’ll admit you do look like her,” Linden said. “But—no offense and all—you do kind of all look the same.”
I laughed. As a white person in a city that was over eighty percent black, I was used to occasional reminders of what minority races had to contend with in most parts of the country. I didn’t mind it. It helped me remember that the readership I served wasn’t only made up of people just like me.
“I wouldn’t say you’re the spitting image,” Mr. Rich said, “but there’s a definite resemblance in the eyes. If you had blonde hair, maybe a different chin, it’d be spot-on.”
I took a sip of water. “I still don’t know who you’re talking about. Or what this meeting is all about.”
Mr. Rich shut his eyes and shook his head. “Yeah, we’re getting ahead of ourselves again. Now, you know well as anyone lots of things have gone by the wayside in this city. We got too many problems to deal with them all. Well, I been looking for something that’s been lost for a very long time. I knew the police had to have it, but you try getting someone on the phone who knows what they’re talking about in an organization that had five police chiefs in five years. And I get it. They got way more important things to do than find some old bag collecting dust on a shelf.” He paused and smiled broadly. “But I finally found it. Got the call a couple years ago and got it back—and a bit more I hadn’t bargained for.” He tapped the bag on his lap, still miraculously free of coney sauce. “This camera belongs to Nora Balsam. And I have a box full of photographs for her as well.”
I realized I’d been squinting, trying to put the pieces together in my head as to what any of this really had to do with me. I relaxed my face and tried to look sympathetic. “And you think I’m related and I therefore can get them to her?”
“That’s what I hoped.”
I wiped my already clean hands on my napkin. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rich, but I think you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’ve never heard of her.”
The old man looked disappointed, but I was relieved. I had bigger fish to fry and a deadline that was breathing down my neck. I didn’t have time to courier old photos to someone. I glanced at my phone. I didn’t even have time to finish lunch.
“I’m so sorry not to have better news for you. But unfortunately, I have to get going.” I started to pull some bills from my wallet.
Linden held up his hand. “It’s on me.”
“Thanks.” I drained my water glass, pulled my purse strap onto my shoulder, and pushed back my chair a couple inches, which was as far as it would go in the tight space. “Just out of curiosity, why was this stuff at a police station? What are these pictures of?”
Linden looked at his father, who looked down at his plate as if the answer were written there in the smear of coney sauce.
“They’re from the ’67 riots.”
I felt my heart rate tick up, scooted back up to the table, and leaned in. “Did you bring them?”
“Denny didn’t think I should.”
“Why not?”
“Because of that,” Linden said. “Because you weren’t interested until you knew what they were, and I knew it would play out this way.” He turned to his father. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say she’d only be interested in getting her hands on the photos?”
I sat back, trying to play it cool, trying to put that approachable-yet-intelligent smile back on my face. “Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve built my entire reputation on exposing corruption and neglect in this city. Photos of historic significance left to rot in a police station are just one more symptom of the larger problem. And I’m working on a big piece right now on the riots. Those photos have never been published—I assume. I’m sure the Free Press would pay handsomely to have the privilege of sharing them with the world.”
