Down Jasper Lane (Amherst Island Trilogy)

“You’re hardly ill, Uncle Hamish.”

“You’re darn right I’m not! I’m fit as a fiddle, and I don’t need a nurse. You go to Santa Fe. See your da. What he’s done or not done doesn’t matter. He’s still your da, and he wants you now.”

“Now,” Ellen repeated with just a trace of bitterness, and awkwardly Hamish put his arm around her.

“Ah, Ellen. We can’t choose the way people love us. They just do.”

“I know that.” She sighed and hugged him just as awkwardly back. “I’m not going to be bitter or angry anymore. Ruth was right, there’s no point in it.”

“Good girl.” He smiled at her. “And if you’re not returning to that nursing school, what about doing something with those sketches? I always thought you had a rare talent.”

“Oh, Uncle Hamish—”

“You did say you didn’t want to choose the safest path.”

She laughed and shook her head. “No, I suppose not. I shall think about it, at any rate.”

“Good.”

“Yes,” Ellen said slowly. “It is good.”

She’d spent so much of her life hiding from truth, from opportunity, and all out of fear or anger. She wouldn’t do that anymore, not if she could help it. “Who knows what might happen,” she said, and Hamish smiled, pleased. Ellen smiled back, a fragile new joy billowing up within her. Suddenly the road in front of her seemed, if not bright with possibility, than at least not so shadowed in uncertainty. She could see the patches of sunlight and she would walk in them.

Later that evening, as Hamish closed up the store and the sun began its lazy descent, Ellen dug out her most recent sketchbook and flipped through its pages. She took a pencil, her fingers closing around it awkwardly. It had been so long. She hadn’t even had the faintest spark of ambition or desire in her heart to draw; it had been as if she’d shut away that part of herself forever. She took a shuddering breath and closed her eyes, thought of Ruth’s words. Her smile. Then she thought of so many others’ words and smiles: all the people who had encouraged and loved her. Her mother and even her father, Hamish, Rose and Dyle. Lucas and even Jed, in his own way. She remembered Ruth’s bright eyes and trembling smile, the way her thin fingers had closed over her own and squeezed, and opening her eyes, Ellen began to draw.

SEVEN

A week later Ellen returned to Amherst Island. Hamish had insisted she visit Rose, especially as he knew his sister would want to hear Ellen’s news.

Indeed, Rose came running down Jasper Lane even before Dyle’s wagon had drawn up to the front door.

“Ellen! I’m so pleased to see you!” Rose wrapped her in a warm embrace. “We were all so saddened to hear about Ruth. We wish we could have been there.”

“Hamish knows of your regard,” Ellen murmured. “The distance was too far.”

“Still...” Rose bit her lip. “You look completely worn out. We must get you well fed before you return to nursing school.”

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nbsp; “Yes, about that.” Ellen answered with a smile. “I’m not staying long. There’s a train leaving Kingston for Chicago in two weeks’ time and I plan to be on it. And I’m not returning to nursing school, either.” And as Dyle and Rose both gaped at her, she prepared to explain—at least as much as she could. As much as she knew.

It was lovely being back at Jasper Lane, although Ellen was conscious of skirting the Lyman property and carefully asking about the family as a whole rather than its individual members. She was not ready to see Jed; she didn’t know what she’d say to him when she did. She didn’t know what she’d say to Lucas, either. She’d made a hash of her friendship with both brothers.

She was content to visit friends, congratulating Lily on her engagement to Johnny Spearson, who at twenty was just as clumsy as he’d ever been. Miss Gardiner had left the school to marry a banker from Toronto, and Julia Charbonneau had gone to Quebec for university. Despite all these changes, the island was ever the same and just as dear, and Ellen cherished her time with the McCafferty children, although she could hardly call them children anymore. Little Andrew was seven years old this summer, and Peter nearly a man at sixteen years old and thinking of university. Ruthie was ten and Sarah, still weak from her illness of years ago, was pale and lovely at thirteen. Caro would head to Glebe in the autumn.

No matter what their age, they were as fun and rapscallion as ever, and between helping Rose in the kitchen and garden, Ellen romped with them, playing games and picking berries, enjoying the moments of stillness and peace which seemed to have come so rarely to her this last year.

And she drew. After a year of blank numbness, Ellen felt her creative spirit was coming alive again. She drew everything, yet she found herself returning again and again to Ruth as a subject, images of Ruth she didn’t know she possessed. Ruth smiling, laughing, looking thoughtful or sad. Humor lurking in eyes that Ellen had once believed only to be flinty and hard. Whether it was the Ruth she remembered or the one she wished she’d known, Ellen couldn’t say. But she drew the images as they came, unbidden and plentiful, and they soothed her spirit and nourished her soul.

Late one afternoon she strolled down Jasper Lane to hunt for a stray chicken, when she saw a familiar figure ambling slowly towards her. Her heart leapt within her and her mouth turned dry as her heart and soul both framed one word: Jed. Of course she couldn’t have avoided him forever, and she hadn’t really wanted to.

Yet as the figure came closer, she saw it wasn’t Jed at all. It was Lucas. How had she never noticed how similar the brothers were? Lucas had fairer hair and eyes, but he had the same broad shoulders and steady gait as Jed. She’d just never seen it before.

“I’ve been wanting to see you,” he said with a cautious smile as he approached, and Ellen smiled back.

“I’m sorry I haven’t stopped by, Lucas.”

“I know you’ve been busy. I was sorry to hear about your aunt.”