“Maybe I can’t go to high school,” she finally said. “I’m not as clever as you are, Lucas, no matter what you say, and I might not pass the exam. And it’s expensive, you know.” She blushed, hating to mention money, but she and Lucas had surely become too close not to be honest.
“It is, at that,” Lucas agreed after a moment. “I think Pa was a bit relieved Jed didn’t go back for a second year.”
“As was Jed, I suppose.” She hadn’t spoken to him much at all this summer, yet she assumed he was happier back on the island. She hoped he was.
“I think he couldn’t hightail it back here fast enough,” Lucas said, and again Ellen thought she heard a slight sneer in Lucas’ voice that she didn’t like. Then Lucas’ expression sobered and he gazed unseeingly at the bright blue sky visible through the loft’s hatch. “I hope I can go in the autumn,” he said in a low voice. “Is that wrong of me?”
Ellen shook her head. She knew what Lucas meant; he might be needed on the farm this year to help with his ailing mother. High school might have to wait. “I know about wanting things,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t make it wrong.”
Lucas was silent for a moment, his expression still grim. Then he sighed and gave Ellen a half-smile. “Well, you need to decide what you want.”
What did she want? Lucas’ question stuck with Ellen, fluttered around in her mind like a caged bird seeking the freedom of the open air. What dreams did she really have? In all her years she hadn’t allowed herself to want much. So many of her young hopes had come to nothing. She thought of the house Pa was going to build, the pretty little bedroom she’d been meant to have, and then the two kittens, Silk and Satin, as well as the dog for Da. None of it had come to anything at all.
Now she was afraid to hope for high school, even though Ruth had said they’d see if she passed the exam. Maybe she wouldn’t, and that would be that. She wasn’t nearly as clever as Lucas. And then there was the matter of money. At fourteen she could be making a living wage rather than having someone pay for her schooling and board, whether it was Ruth or Rose, Hamish or Dyle.
And then of course there were other, deeper dreams, vague formless things she could not even share with Lucas. Dreams of her drawings being framed on museum walls, and even more secret dreams of her own farmhouse on Amherst Island, with her own family. Not Pa, because Ellen now accepted he’d never settle anywhere. But when she was grown, and she had a husband and children of her own...? Would she settle here, and live the kind of life she’d always wanted, for real, for always?
&n
bsp; That was a dream she didn’t speak of to anyone. Still Lucas encouraged her in what she told him, and one afternoon up in the hayloft Ellen got up the nerve to show him her sketchbook.
“These are good,” he said quietly as they sat amidst the hay and sunshine. He turned the pages slowly, giving each drawing careful and intent study.
Ellen ducked her head and tucked her bare feet under her skirt. Louisa chided her for running around the island barefooted like a hoyden, but Ellen loved feeling so free.
“Thank you,” she said. “But to tell the truth, I’m not sure it matters to me whether they’re good or not. It’s just something I need to do.”
“Which makes it all the more important,” Lucas said. He gazed at her sternly over her sketchbook. “Ellen, you could have a serious future as an artist—”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin—”
“All the more reason to find out,” Lucas interjected firmly. “I’m going to high school to learn things, Ellen. To know things. You could, as well, about art.”
Ellen looked away. “I told you, high school costs money.”
Lucas was silent for a moment, and Ellen wished she hadn’t said anything. “You could sell your drawings,” he said at last. “You know day trippers come to the island in the summer, from Kingston and even New York State. You could sell them at the ferry office, or even on the dockside. I wager people would snap them up.”
Ellen turned to him, her mouth dropping open. “I couldn’t!” The idea was both ludicrous and frightening.
“Why not?”
“Because...” Ellen shook her head. She didn’t want to explain to Lucas that the idea of nameless tourists pawing through her drawings, dismissing them out of hand, liking one but discarding another, was too terrible to contemplate.
“What if it’s the only way to go to high school?” Lucas persisted. “Is your pride too high a price to pay?”
“It isn’t just pride—”
“And what about a book of sketches eventually? Island Life, you could call it. I bet it would sell in Kingston or even Ottawa. Who knows?”
“Away with you.” Ellen shook her head, trying to laugh, to dismiss it all as fanciful folly. She was afraid to do anything else, and she still wasn’t sure how she felt about anyone beside Lucas seeing her drawings. “I’ve never even taken a course, or been taught properly. I’m sure I’d be laughed out of a gallery or studio... I wouldn’t even know...”
“You could learn,” Lucas insisted earnestly.
Ellen looked down at the sketchbook, open to a drawing of Jed tossing Ruthie into the air. She’d been proud of the way she’d captured the look in Jed’s eyes, simple pleasure hidden by the usual gruffness. Something in his look made her stomach tighten, and her heart hardened with resolve.
She shook her head. “I’m flattered you think these are worth selling, but I’ve no plans like that. They’re really just for me. I couldn’t bear to think of them being looked at and not liked—thrown away even, like yesterday’s newspaper. They mean too much.”
Lucas nodded slowly, accepting defeat. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, “when something or someone means that much, you need to take a risk.”