Down Jasper Lane (Amherst Island Trilogy)

Ellen bit her lip, unsure if she could explain. Unsure if she even knew. “It just is.”

“I won’t laugh, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“You will so laugh!” Ellen retorted. “When have you missed an opportunity to tease me?”

“Rarely, it’s true.” Jed grinned and slowly crossed his heart. “Promise, though.” He paused, his hand on the sketchbook, the laughter gone from his gaze. “May I?”

Ellen took a deep breath. “All right.” She realized two things then: first, the thought of Jed seeing her sketches terrified her; and second, she desperately wanted him to see and like them. Her heart thudded with a new, thrilling anxiety as Jed slowly turned the pages. There were several months of sketches in there—she usually filled a book quite quickly, and Mrs. Smith at the general store laughed that Ellen kept them in business just with all the paper she bought.

He gazed at each sketch silently, his expression unfathomable. Ellen sat with her hands clenched in her lap, watching as the sketches went by under his fingers. There was a chipmunk peeking out from a pile of logs; the birch trees with a few leaves beginning to flutter down; Rose caught in an unguarded moment, leaning against the kitchen table, her expression thoughtful and a bit weary.

And then there was Jed. Ellen bit her lip; she’d forgotten that particular sketch was in the book. She’d drawn Jed from memory, putting him in a setting she’d never actually seen. He leaned against a fence post, hands shoved in his pockets, his gaze faraway and wistful. It was an intimate sketch, showing a vulnerability that Ellen hadn’t fully realized was there until they were both staring at it.

She felt as if that sketch revealed something about Jed, but even more so it revealed something about her. She felt her cheeks warm and she looked away, studied a distant birch tree with desperate concentration even as she waited for Jed to finish, to say something—

After a long, silent moment, Jed turned the page. He finished looking at the sketches, and then he handed back the book.

“Thank you,” Ellen murmured. She couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

“I suppose no one is safe from your pencil,” Jed said lightly, and Ellen felt both relieved and disappointed that he was going to dismiss the sketch—and that funny, intense moment—so quickly. Yet in the past few months there had been more moments such as that, moments that suddenly turned tense and expectant and made Ellen wonder just what she wanted from Jed. Just what she felt for him.

Yet as soon as her mind grasped that idea, it skittered away again. Whatever she felt, it didn’t bear much thinking about. Not when she had no idea what Jed thought or felt.

Jed stood up, reaching his hand down to help Ellen to her feet. “I imagine it’s dinnertime at the McCaffertys as well as the Lymans.”

“Did you like the sketch?” Ellen blurted, then felt her cheeks turn bright red. Why had she asked that? He would have told her if he did.

“I liked them all,” Jed answered, and they didn’t speak again as he walked her back to Jasper Lane. Ellen slowly walked up the lane, and she felt rather than saw Jed watching her from the copse of beeches at its end.

The night before Ellen was due to leave with the others, Rose came i

n as she was packing her valise. “You have everything you need?” she asked, placing a stack of lace handkerchiefs embroidered with Ellen’s initials on top of her other things.

“Oh, those are lovely,” Ellen exclaimed with a smile. “Thank you, Aunt Rose.”

Rose sat on the edge of Ellen’s bed, smoothing the old patchwork quilt. “It shall feel so strange to have you gone,” she said quietly. “You’ve become part of the family, Ellen, as much one of my own as if I’d given birth to you myself.”

Tears pricked Ellen’s eyes and she refolded a chemise, blinking hard. “I feel part of this family, Aunt Rose,” she said, when she trusted herself to speak without bursting into noisy sobs like a child. “I shall miss you all so very much.”

“And we shall miss you. Will you come back at Christmas, or do you think you’ll go to Vermont?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t seen Aunt Ruth and Uncle Hamish since last spring.” In the three years since Ellen had been living with the McCaffertys, she’d gone back to Vermont only once for a few weeks. She’d been surprised at how much older and careworn her Aunt Ruth and Uncle Hamish had looked. The visit had been subdued yet also pleasant enough, although without, Ellen thought, any genuine love or affection on either side. In any case, she had been glad to see them—but also glad to return to her real home. “I’d rather come back here,” she said, and Rose smiled sadly.

“Don’t you think they might want to see you?”

Ellen gave a little shrug. “We had a nice enough visit the last time, but I think we all breathe a sigh of relief when I leave.”

Rose was silent for a moment, her fingers tracing the vine pattern in the quilt. “I think you’re confusing what seems so with what truly is.”

“What do you mean? What do you think truly is, with Aunt Ruth and Uncle Hamish?”

Rose sighed. “It’s difficult to know, especially with someone as prickly as Ruth. But think on things Ruth and Hamish have done for you, not just how they acted when they were with you. Didn’t Ruth send you a lovely Christmas parcel last winter? There was some beautiful rose wool in it, as I recall, enough for two dresses.”

“Yes...” Ellen had dutifully written a thank you letter, but even Aunt Ruth’s gifts sometimes felt grudging.

“And,” Rose continued, “there have been letters from your aunt and uncle nearly every week.”

Ellen recalled the dry missives from Aunt Ruth, a list of all the happenings in Seaton. Ellen had replied dutifully to each one, yet the letters were so without humor or affection that she could barely get through reading them. Yet now, listening to Aunt Rose, she wondered with a prickling sense of guilt if the feeling of begrudging duty was as much on her side as her aunt’s.