He was waiting for them.
• • •
Carl had been inside the main house exactly once, upon his hiring five years earlier. That day, he had entered through the kitchen door; inside, the housekeeper had set out lemonade and cookies while he talked with his future boss.
“It’s hard work,” Hewitt had said. “I won’t lie to you. Lotta land, not much staff. Runs all year, too, not just in summer.”
Carl had nodded, but he couldn’t focus. It was his good luck that he’d even heard about the job from a cousin who knew the last gardener—and that the last gardener had finally retired. Carl had only a small amount of experience with gardening, but he had a library card. He would have taken any job that was offered him. He had a sick kid, and no money. He’d worked at the paper mill in town until recently, when the plant closed down, releasing sixty-odd men from their longtime employment.
“I like to work,” said Carl. He was hungry: he thought about taking one of the cookies, a lacy brown thing that looked more decorative than nourishing. At last, he decided against it. Hewitt hadn’t taken one.
“Do you know about flowers and that?” said Hewitt.
“Oh, yeah,” said Carl. “I grew up on a farm.”
“But flowers,” said Hewitt, doubtfully.
Again, Carl nodded. “My mother grew them. Won contests at the county fair.” The last was an embellishment: his mother, still alive, had entered contests annually, and annually complained about her failure to place.
“Taught me everything she knew,” said Carl. His tone, he understood, was bordering on desperate.
“You’re Joe Stoddard’s cousin, are you?” said Hewitt.
Carl nodded.
Hewitt rapped the tabletop with his knuckle, at last, and told him the job was his if he wanted it.
He did.
He found out later that his cousin Joe had told Hewitt he had a kid in the hospital in Albany, a fact that neither he nor Vic Hewitt ever acknowledged. By 1961 Carl had been working there half a decade, five years of fast learning that had only this year produced the desired results. It was a miracle, frankly, that he hadn’t been fired by Hewitt or by Mr. Van Laar himself—though he had the suspicion that the former had at times fallen on the sword when the latter complained.
• • •
It was Vic Hewitt, now, who greeted the four of them as they walked up the lawn in his direction.
He lifted one of his hands wordlessly into the air. Let it drop again at his side.
“You heard, I guess,” he said to them, when they were in earshot.
He nodded to Carl. Shook hands with the others.
Carl glanced sideways at Dick Shattuck, who normally spoke for them. But Dick was only returning his gaze.
It occurred to Carl then that his employment here meant that he was expected to take the lead, and the realization unnerved him. He’d never liked leading anything or anyone. Not even back in high school: he’d rejected his coach’s offer to make him captain of the football team.
“What’s the latest?” said Carl, after a pause, because he could think of nothing else to say.
“No news,” said Hewitt. “Boy’s still gone. Been out looking in those woods going on five hours now.”
He hunched his shoulders. Looked down at the ground.
Vic was a stoic man, a skillful guide. By the outside world, he was perceived to be tough to the point of ferocity. Visual evidence of this came in the form of a missing right earlobe, rumored to have been the work of a black bear that Vic had subsequently wrestled to the ground. But he was a father too, Carl knew. Had a girl, Tessie Jo, twelve or thirteen, a tomboy who’d been raised by her dad and was now his near-twin, working side by side with him whenever she wasn’t at school. Carl could tell he was thinking of her—just as Carl was thinking of his own children. Imagining them lost, overnight, in the underbrush, now damp from an earlier storm. Remembering Scotty as he drew in breath after ragged breath on the white-sheeted hospital bed.
Vic Hewitt turned and looked over his own shoulder, past the house, toward the edge of the woods.
“Now, look,” he said. “It’s a sad scene in there. Mrs. V’s beside herself. Whole family is, and all the guests. Tread carefully, is what I mean. No need to worry them further.”
With that, he led them wordlessly toward the house, toward the large front door—through which Carl had never once, in all his years of employment, passed.
Alice
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975
In the Van Laar family, planning for the weeklong affair of the Blackfly Good-by began in late May.
The first order of business was determining whom to invite. The main house, with its ten bedrooms, could comfortably accommodate sixteen. The outbuildings could house eighteen more. Some of the decisions were simple: the regular attendees included the McLellans, the Van Laar family’s closest friends and business associates across two generations; and the Barlows—Peter’s friend George and Alice’s sister Delphine. Alice’s parents, too, were invited—although Peter made it very clear that the Wards’ inclusion was a favor he was doing for his wife. Then there were more of Peter’s college friends, and then came the business owners Peter was seeking to woo as clients of the bank; these varied every year, and generally got dropped from the list as soon as a commitment had been made. Finally, there were the minor celebrities he had met somehow downstate, and invited mainly for entertainment. These “extra” guests were limited mainly to pretty and harmless women, or very funny men, all of whom came solo and slept in the outbuildings.
After the guests were selected, and the rooms assigned, the other business was attended to. Flowers were ordered. A local fiddle-and-dulcimer ensemble was booked, along with a caller for the square dance that happened midweek. The Preserve, which had once contained its own working farm—before cars and trucks were quotidian—now relied on local producers to supply a week’s worth of food for the thirty or so guests who descended on the house.
• • •
In general, each of these weeklong parties went off without a hitch, buoyed by Peter’s careful planning, and by Alice’s adherence to his instructions.
But the year of Bear’s fifth birthday brought with it a challenge: George Barlow, Alice’s brother-in-law and Peter’s good friend, had died unexpectedly in June—a heart attack—leaving her sister Delphine bereft, and also leaving open the question of whether or not to invite Delphine.
Alice was conflicted. The truth was that she had not been as attentive to her sister as she could have been in the wake of her husband’s death. They lived four hours apart. Alice had a child; Delphine did not. For years, their only prolonged visits had taken place at the Blackfly Good-by itself; but now Alice panicked slightly at the thought that their first correspondence since the funeral would be an invitation to a cheerful weeklong fling.
Peter scoffed when she voiced this concern.
“Nonsense,” he said. “It will do Delphine good. Give her a bit of distraction. Besides,” he said, “she’s an intelligent person. I’m certain she’s capable of deciding for herself whether to accept.”
In his choice of words, Alice sensed a slight. Intelligence was a quality that Peter valued highly: one, she was certain, he would not ascribe to his own wife.
• • •
As it turned out, Delphine accepted the invitation. “With pleasure,” she wrote in her reply.
Alice was relieved. Perhaps, she thought, this would be a chance to reconnect with her sister. To apologize for her years of absence. To start anew with Delphine, whom she had looked up to so much as a child that she might have been a celebrity. Now that they were both adult women, thought Alice, perhaps they could be friends.
• • •
On Friday, the day the first guests were due to arrive, Alice dressed carefully. Then she walked down the hall to the sunroom, where she stood before the window, steeling herself for her duties as hostess.
She turned to a small bar table, ready to perform her ritual. She lifted a tumbler. Poured herself a glass of brandy—really a type of wine, she reasoned.
She lifted it to her lips.
Behind her, a quick movement caught her eye, and she saw Vic Hewitt leaving the room.
