Nora laid the photograph on the counter at the Chart & Compass, the only diner in Port Blossom that opened on Mondays, and turned it toward Ben. The print had curled at the corners like a dry leaf, so she held one edge flat with her thumb.
"That's as far as I've gotten with it," she said.
Ben wiped his hands on his napkin and leaned in. Behind them Marge was stacking menus and the fry cook was scraping the griddle, a sound like a shovel on gravel.
"I see two men and a wall," Ben said.
"Look closer."
"I'm looking." He tilted his head. "That's the cottage. North gable, before the roof went on. You can count the rafter tails."
"That's what I counted, too."
"Their faces are gone, Nora."
"I know."
Marge came by with the pot. "Warm-up?"
"Please."
"Blueberry pancakes this morning. Berries came down from the barrens over to Waldoboro."
"Thank you, Marge."
Nora ate one bite and set the fork down. The fog had sat on the harbor until nine and then lifted all at once, and the sun coming through the window made the water damage on the photograph look worse instead of better. Two eggs and toast cost five ninety-five at that counter and always had.
"Take it to Cora Jean," Ben said.
"She's turned me away twice. The blueprints burned in 1957, and that was the whole conversation."
"Third time." He turned his cup so the handle faced the salt. "Cora Jean Ripple wants to be the only one in this town who knows anything. Hand her something she doesn't know and she'll worry at it like a dog with a rope."
"You are not selling me on this."
"We'll see."
Nora lifted the photograph by its edges. "Ben. Did you ever hear anything about Silas's grandfather?"
"Some years back, in the shop. He said the family lost everything in the twenties and it was none of their doing."
"And you said?"
"I said that's a shame. He sold me a barometer."
On the town green, a crew was mowing, and a woman in a linen coat stood where the crew could see her. She raised a hand as Nora came up the walk.
"Good morning. You're the one with the island."
"Nora Vance."
"Judith Finch." She offered her hand the way other people offered a document. "My great-granduncle built your cottage. If you ever need anything from the Historical Society, you have only to ask."
"That's kind of you."
"It's a matter of stewardship." She smiled. "One does like to know how the old place is getting on."
The Town Hall clock ran fast; Nora had checked it against her phone twice before, so she subtracted and climbed to the second floor anyway. The cut grass smell followed her up the stairwell. The frosted door said TOWN ARCHIVES in gold letters, flaking at the T. She knocked, and when nothing happened she knocked again.
The door opened a crack. Cora Jean Ripple looked over the top of her bifocals.
"Nora Vance."
"Miss Ripple. I know you're closed to researchers on Mondays."
"We are."
"I brought you something."
Cora Jean glanced at the sleeve in Nora's hand. "I have told you everything the town holds on the Salt-Spray Cottage."
"You told me about the fire."
"Then we are finished."
Nora held the photograph up and did not let go of it. Cora Jean looked at it long enough that the mower outside turned at the end of its row and came back.
"Come in," she said. "And don't touch anything."
The archive was one long room with a radiator ticking under the window and a smell of paper and lemon oil. Cora Jean's desk held a green blotter, a fountain pen laid parallel to the edge, and a brass lamp with a green glass shade.
"On the blotter," she said.
Nora set it down and stepped back.
"Where did this come from?"
"Out of the ground, near the seawall."
"On Tern Island."
"On my property."
Cora Jean opened a drawer and came back with a magnifying glass the size of a saucer. She bent over the print, and her breath moved the curled corner.
"The west window has no sash in it," she said.
"I noticed."
"The cottage was framed in the fall of 1921 and finished the following summer. So the picture was taken in between, on the north side, in the morning." She straightened. "What are you?"
"A restorer."
"You said architect."
"An architectural restorer."
"Mm." Cora Jean bent to the glass again. "Architects draw buildings that don't exist yet. You measure what does."
"Somebody has to." Nora pulled the visitor's chair out and sat down. "What else do you see?"
Cora Jean moved the glass by inches across the left-hand figure, set it down, and crossed to a cabinet by the window. She came back with a long gray box.
"As the records clearly indicate," she said, "the Blackwood family kept a ship's chandlery on Water Street until the bank took it."
"I know the chandlery."
"You know the name. That's different."
She lifted out a stiff print in a paper sleeve and laid it beside Nora's photograph. A storefront, a wooden sign, a man in the doorway in a white apron, and on the back, in pencil, someone had written 1921.
"Look at his hands," Cora Jean said.
Nora looked. In both photographs the same man stood with his left hand visible, and on that hand was a heavy signet ring worn smooth at the crown.
"Same ring."
"Same mustache. Same set of the shoulders. The ring is the part that holds up, because rings don't change and mustaches do."
"Who is he?"
Cora Jean squared the magnifying glass with two fingers, the way she squared everything on that desk.
"That," she said, "is Jedediah Blackwood. Silas Blackwood's grandfather."
Nora's hand was flat on the blotter. She had not decided to put it there.
"The other one," she said. "The man with his hand on Jedediah's shoulder."
"Too far gone. I can give you a likelihood and the reasoning behind it."
"All right."
Cora Jean lifted the glass once more, looked, and put it down.
"The cottage. The year. The man standing beside Jedediah Blackwood with his coat off and his sleeves rolled." She tapped the paper. "Captain Alistair Finch. In 1921 they were partners in the chandlery and partners in the boat. That much is in the records. The rest is a guess."
"What rest?"
"The rest of what people want to know about those two."
Nora slid the photograph back into its sleeve.
"I want a copy for the files," Cora Jean said. "This photograph is not in my archive. It should be."
"I'll bring you one."
"See that you do." Cora Jean walked her to the door, which she had not done the other two times. "And Miss Vance. Say hello to Silas Blackwood for me."
The stairwell was cool and smelled of cut grass from the green. On the sidewalk, Nora stood with the sleeve flat between her palms and did the arithmetic she had been avoiding since Saturday.
Silas Blackwood had not been lying. Not about the box, not about the silver dollar, not about his grandfather. A man who has been telling the truth for years, in a town that has decided not to hear it, has a reason to be angry that has nothing to do with a stranger from away.
She still did not know what he was angry about.
Comments
Loading the conversation…