The Stroke of Winter, page 11
Tess had always been a touch superstitious. She didn’t have a firm belief in things otherworldly, but she was the kind of woman who wanted her bases covered, just in case.
She was finishing sweeping the floor when Storm rushed out of the room and down the back stairs, barking. Then she heard the rapping. Someone was at the back door.
Tess made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen and saw Wyatt’s smiling face peering in through the window.
She opened the door to let him in.
“Hi!” she said. She furrowed her brow at him and cocked her head to the side. “Did we have an appointment today? Am I forgetting something?”
Wyatt smiled. “I’m afraid this is an unauthorized stop-by,” he said. “Do you hate that? I was doing a little job down the block and thought I’d come by to talk about the renovations you want to do in the studio. We could talk over lunch?”
Tess didn’t particularly love the idea of people stopping by unannounced, but somehow, this felt okay. More than okay. She smiled back at him.
“Lunch?” she said, glancing at the clock. It was indeed about that time. The morning had flown by. “That sounds great. I haven’t been out to eat anywhere since I got here.”
“The Superior Café is open,” he said. “One of the few places that is open this time of year. They have great food.”
He gave her an expectant grin.
“Why not?” she said. “I didn’t know they were open in the winter. Sounds like fun. Just give me a minute to clean up. The coffee’s hot if you want to pour yourself a cup while you wait. Make yourself at home.”
Wyatt unzipped his parka and pulled off his hat and gloves. “I’ll do that. Thanks!”
Tess skittered up the stairs to her room and hurried over to her closet. She didn’t have time to take a shower, but she’d do what she could. She grabbed a flax-colored fisherman’s-knit sweater and a light denim shirt to wear under it, and a pair of soft—clean—jeans. Wriggling out of the clothes she was wearing and into the fresh outfit took just a minute, and then she was in the bathroom in front of the mirror, chagrined to find a streak of dirt on her forehead. Awesome.
She washed and moisturized her face and applied a little makeup and lip color and brushed her hair. She popped in a pair of earrings and eyed her reflection. Not exactly fit for a night on the town, but an afternoon in sleepy Wharton? She was good to go.
Back in the kitchen, she saw Wyatt placing his cup in the sink. He turned to her and smiled. “You clean up pretty good,” he said.
“Wait until you see me after I’ve actually showered,” she said, pulling on her jacket and boots.
Wyatt laughed out loud.
Tess looked around for Storm, who came trotting into the kitchen. She bent down and scratched behind his ears. “You be a good boy,” she said. “Guard the castle.”
“Oh, he will,” Wyatt said, as Tess pulled the door shut behind them. “You can bank on that.”
The Superior Café sat on the corner of Main and Front Street, just a block off the lake. As they walked in, Tess saw a long bar running the full length of the paneled room, with a fireplace on one end. It reminded her of a lodge in the woods she and Matt had visited before Eli was born. A second area, through French doors, was a sort of sunroom affair, with large windows on three sides. Tess could imagine all these opened on breezy summer days, the cool lake air wafting through. But today, it was warmed by the sun shining in. On such a cold afternoon, it felt like heaven.
A handful of people were enjoying their lunches—Beth St. John from the Just Read It bookstore; the police chief, Nick Stone, and his wife, Kate, who was the cousin of Tess’s friend Simon and helped him run Harrison’s House. There were a few others, whom Tess didn’t recognize. But Wyatt knew everyone.
“You all know Amethyst Bell?” Wyatt asked the room. “She’s renovating La Belle Vie into an inn.”
Hellos, waves, and greetings all around.
Kate pushed herself up from her chair and came over to Tess. “Welcome to the community,” she said, taking Tess’s hands. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch before. Simon is over the moon that you’re here permanently.”
“I am, too,” Tess said.
“How are the renovations going?” Kate asked.
Tess tried to suppress a wince as she thought about the scratching. And the paintings. “Great!” she said, with much more enthusiasm than she felt. “We’re starting on an owner’s suite now, and once that’s done, I’ll be ready to open. I’m hoping to be done with it all by summer.”
“Simon hooked you up with his antiquing mafia, I’m told,” Kate said, chuckling.
“He did,” Tess said. “We found some gorgeous furniture and accent pieces. The main part of the house looks really good. It’s this owner’s suite . . .” Her words stopped in midair. The very thought of transforming her grandfather’s studio into her private lair felt . . . wrong somehow. A desecration. That had been the plan all along, but now she was feeling unsure.
“You’re helping her out with that, I hear?” Kate said, turning her gaze to Wyatt.
“I don’t know how much help I’ve been, but yes,” he said.
A genuine warmth swirled through the air between them.
They made promises to get together for coffee soon, as Kate went back to her table. Tess and Wyatt found a spot by one of the windows. After ordering—a turkey, bacon, and avocado sandwich for him, a bowl of squash-and-apple soup for her—they sipped on their drinks and Tess realized, as she stared across the table at this man, that she didn’t know the first thing about him.
Well, she knew he had dogs. And that he was a friend of Jim’s. And that he knew just about everyone in Wharton, from the reception he got when they walked into the restaurant. She knew he helped people with their various projects and problems around their homes. He called a Scottish animal wrangler a friend. But that was about it.
“What brought you to Wharton?” she asked before blowing softly on her spoon filled with steaming soup as she brought it to her mouth.
A chuckle, then, from Beth St. John, who was passing by their table on her way out. “How long have you got?” she said to Tess with a grin. She winked at Wyatt and patted Tess on the back. “It’s a great story.”
Tess turned to Wyatt. “Oh?” she said, raising her eyebrows.
He smiled and shrugged. “My great-great-great-grandfather was John Wharton,” he said, and took a bite of his sandwich. “I guess you could say he founded the town.”
Tess’s spoon hung in midair on its way to her mouth. “You’re kidding.”
His grin grew wider. “Nope. Interested to hear about it?”
“Absolutely!”
Wyatt took a sip of his drink. And then he began to tell his tale.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
More than two centuries ago, John Wharton was a fur trapper and trader on the land that would become the town that bore his name. Long before LuAnn’s boarding house was built a hundred years ago to house them, long before there were streets and buildings and restaurants and anything else that made up the town of Wharton, John Wharton’s canoe found its way to this rocky shore.
Back then, it was pristine wilderness, filled with pine trees reaching up to the sky, wide beaches where the waves crashed, and otters, beavers, and other furry mammals scurrying up and down the shoreline on the prettiest bay on this side of the lake. Moose strode elegantly through the forests; wolves stole silently behind them. Foxes played in open meadows.
That was what John Wharton found when his canoe was blown off course during a storm on the other side of the lake in Canada. It was as though the lake itself had taken John’s canoe and, after a few harrowing days, set it gently on the shoreline that would become the Wharton ferry dock more than one hundred years later.
His canoe was filled with goods to trade for furs—blankets, metal tools, firearms and ammunition, even brass kettles. He also had traps of his own. The fur trade was big business around the Great Lakes during this time.
But the day that John Wharton’s canoe slid onto shore, he found something astonishing, something completely unexpected.
John had been battered by rain and wind, baked by the sun. So he wasn’t altogether himself when he was greeted by several men. Englishmen. Or Canadians. John wasn’t sure. They roused him from the canoe bottom and helped him to their village, a neighborhood of domed structures covered with bark where their people lived. It was nestled in the forest on the hill overlooking the water, safely protected from the lake’s harsh winds and crashing waves.
There, the people gave him food and drink, and after sleeping the night through, maybe longer, John awoke, refreshed, if a bit sunburned and sore.
He wasn’t completely sure where he was, but after some conversation with the men of the village he understood that he had been blown all the way across Lake Superior. It didn’t quite seem possible for him to have survived such a journey, but there he was, in a land he had never before seen, nor imagined.
The very woods seemed different here. It was almost as if they were enchanted, buzzing with an energy John couldn’t define. The sky seemed a deeper blue, the stars closer and more brilliant. The furs more plush, as though the animals themselves were of another ilk. The people themselves were kind—almost unnaturally kind—welcoming him for as long as he wanted to stay. There were long nights by the fire trading stories and laughter instead of goods and furs. They told him of the Indigenous peoples, Ojibwe, who were expert trappers and traders and taught them how to survive in this land. He took long walks in the forest or along the shoreline, marveling at the magnificence of it all.
But the most magnificent of all was Elizabeth. One of the women from the village. With her silky, dark hair, which she wore down, unlike most of the women of the day, she was the most beautiful woman John had ever seen. But there was more than that, so much more. Her smile. Her laughter. The touch of her hand.
John saw children happily running through the village, and soon he began to imagine children of his own.
John didn’t quite grasp how much time had passed. Days? Weeks? Years? It was as though he were caught out of time, somehow. But he didn’t much care about that. He didn’t care about getting back to his trading post. He only cared about Elizabeth and making a life for her.
And so they were married one summer evening on the shores of the lake that had brought him to them. It was the happiest John had ever been. He had a home, with a loving wife, and a loving and kind community around them. Soon, there would be children. Month after idyllic month passed.
Until that day. That horrible day.
John awoke to find himself lying on the rocky ground. Outside. He blinked and looked around, confused. Where were his cozy furs? Where was Elizabeth? He scrambled up to his feet and turned in a circle. Where was the village? Everything was gone. Every person. Every dwelling. Every tool and bucket and hide and fur.
What in the world was going on? How could this have happened? Did they all leave, every single one of them, during the night while he was sleeping? But how could that be? Did they take the houses, too?
A coldness wrapped itself around him then, as the realization of the impossible began to take hold. As he looked around, he saw that it was just the forest, undisturbed. As though the village had never been there at all.
But that could not be. John ran through the woods, calling for Elizabeth. Everyone else might have left, but she would not. His wife. His love. He ran down to the shoreline. There was nothing there, no canoes from the village. Only his own, pulled up onto shore. He hurried up to it and saw it was laden with his supplies. The very supplies he had brought with him when he washed up on shore all those months ago.
But then, he saw it. Lying on his pile of furs, as though it had been lovingly placed there. A single leaf from a maple tree. He took it as a sign. A terrible, horrific sign.
John dropped to his knees and let out a wail of anguish so fierce and so deep, all the birds and animals fell silent.
He was tempted to climb into that canoe and paddle fast and long to get far, far away. But then, as he looked around what had been the only happy home he had ever known, he knew he could not go.
“Please come back to me, Elizabeth,” John said, tears streaming down his face, his words carried away on the breeze.
John used what he had learned from the people of the village to build himself a dwelling. He made a roof out of bark and hides, as he had seen the villagers do, and lined the floor with cozy furs. He built a shelf where he stored his supplies and a firepit outside where he could cook his food—just as the people of the village had done. He had all the traps and tools he needed to survive—he had come with it, and somehow it had all ended up in his canoe after everything else disappeared.
He fished and hunted and took only what he needed, using the ways of the land. He spent many of his days gathering berries and mushrooms and wild onions and cattail roots, drying them in the warm sun.
He knew the ways of the forest and the water. The people of the village had taught him well. He would stay and wait for his love to return.
Weeks later, a long canoe of voyageurs—legendary French Canadian trappers—pulled up onto John Wharton’s rocky shore. They were there to trade with the Ojibwe, who lived a day’s paddle away. He invited them to stay the night and share a meal.
Around the fire, John told them of his experiences, how he had been blown off course and ended up here, in a strange land. How the whole village had taken him in and enraptured him with the beauty of the woods and the water. And then, just like that, it was all gone. Disappeared one night, as though it were never there.
“Oui,” one of the voyageurs said, nodding solemnly. “We have heard of a strangeness in these woods. Tales of shape-shifters enchanting travelers. I have heard of it happening elsewhere, as well. Entire settlements, vanishing without a trace.”
“Are you saying they were shape-shifters? Even my wife?”
“It is not for me to say. But will you stay? You are welcome to come with us. We have room for you in our longboat.”
John thought of the lake and all its moods, the animals scurrying up and down the shoreline or playing in the water, the graceful moose with their enormous racks, the steely wolves. The bounty of the land. The view as the sun rose.
“I will stay,” John said, gazing into the flames. “Even without my wife, my place is here.”
Because the area was so rich in furs and John was such a skilled trapper, the voyageurs made plans to help transport John and his furs to a trading post, a three days’ journey down this side of the shoreline. Soon, it was a thriving trade route. And since the man whom the traders were coming to see was John Wharton, the name stuck. “We’re traveling to Wharton,” they would say.
Then the fishermen came, when they heard tell of the bounty of these waters. More settlers arrived. Hands to repair the boats. Women to cook meals for the fishermen. A general store opened, to sell goods from the trading post. A town was growing. And John Wharton was growing older. Nearly a decade had passed since his village and his beloved Elizabeth had vanished.
One day, John rose from his cozy house to take a cup of coffee down to the lakeshore, as he did every morning. But on that morning, a young woman was standing on the shore, looking out over the water. He hadn’t seen her before, but when she turned, she looked so familiar, he gasped aloud.
“Elizabeth?” he said, his voice a whisper.
She squinted at him. “No,” she said. “I’m Cecelia Brown.” She held out her hand. “You must be John Wharton.”
“And that’s the tale of Wharton,” Wyatt said. “And of my family.”
Tess was listening with her chin in her hands.
“So, what? Did they get married? Have children?”
“That’s how the story goes,” Wyatt said. “They had four kids. Two girls and two boys. John lived to a ripe old age and is wholly responsible for this town being here.”
“Wow,” Tess mused. “How cool to know that part of your family history. What an immense connection you must feel to this place.”
Wyatt took a sip of his drink. “Yes, I do. My whole family does. We’ve still got some furs from that time and other mementoes of his. Diaries, too. That’s how we know the story. Apparently, his children were unaware of . . .” Wyatt stopped, choosing his words carefully. “Unaware of the whole village disappearing.”
“That was in his diaries?”
Wyatt nodded. “Exactly. They weren’t found until a generation or so later. He didn’t talk about that part of his life to his family. He kept it hidden.”
Tess could understand that. Every family had secrets, things they’d rather not see the light of day. Many of those secrets involved family members who had simply vanished, left for whatever reason, were never heard from again, made new lives elsewhere, with new people, rejecting what—and who—they had for the allure of something new.
She thought of her uncle Grey’s sudden disappearance, decades earlier. Her dad never talked about it, never speculated where his brother might have gone, or why. It was like he was erased, not just from holidays or family gatherings, but from existence. The only picture Tess had ever seen of him wasn’t a picture at all. It was the painting, Picnic at Mermaid Cove, that hung above the fireplace at La Belle Vie. Now that she thought about it, she wondered why her father insisted that the family hold on to it, given that he never spoke of his brother. Perhaps it reminded him of gentler times.
Tess brought her thoughts back to the moment and smiled at this man across the table. “Do you believe it? The disappearing part, I mean. One person, sure. But a whole village?”
“I don’t know,” Wyatt admitted. “You know how these tales tend to get taller over time. But I do know that he believed it to his dying day.”
He took a sip of his drink and looked off into, perhaps, the past. “I’ve always been sort of torn about it. I’m a pretty practical-thinking person, so, you know . . . Shape-shifters. Enchantment. The whole thing disappearing like Brigadoon.”
