The Wedding Shawl (8 page)

Nell looked up and started to say something, but Cass filled in the words before she had a chance. “
Never say never.
But I can say
maybe never
, right?” Then she laughed, a slightly too-loud laugh that made the others laugh, too. She looked again at the shawl. “But I must admit, if there’d be a shawl like that in my future, I might be forced to reconsider.”

Izzy took the three steps down into the room as one, then came to a sudden stop. She stood in front of the table, hand covering her mouth. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“Oh, my,” she whispered.

“You will look so lovely, Izzy,” Birdie said. She rested one small hand on Izzy’s arm.

Izzy’s eyes traveled over the intricately stitched rows. She had watched the shawl grow as it passed from Birdie to Nell to Cass and then began its round again.

It was a sacred ritual, passing from hand to hand.

But each week it was a surprise. Each week the rippling effect was more real and the lacy design more lovely. Each week it brought the ocean to life.

Birdie sat down on the couch with the end of the shawl stretched across her knees.

Nell brought her bag over and pulled out a bright green sweater, but her eyes shifted between Izzy and the wedding shawl.

Izzy was sitting in silence, her eyes following Birdie’s fingers as they knit, slipped stitches, performed yarn overs, all with ease and expertise.

And they were all imagining her in her simple white dress, the shawl loose around her shoulders.

The ceremony would be simple. No bridesmaids, Izzy had decided after much distress. But blessings from friends. Her circle of friends. They’d each pick out a simple black summer dress—and Izzy would provide them each with a touch of color. A surprise, she said.

Cass reached over and fingered the soft, silky yarn, then settled back with a much smaller project, her annual hat collection that she doled out to her fellow fishermen every fall. She’d advanced to cables this year and worked carefully on a thick, wooly blend of black and gold.

No one noticed the time until Birdie complained that if she didn’t get up soon, she’d be permanently anchored to the well-worn leather couch.

“Me, too,” Nell said. “I should check on Claire and make sure she has what she needs.”

“Aunt Nell, you’re not running a hotel,” Izzy said.

Nell brushed away the teasing. Izzy was right. Claire was a grown woman and could make herself at home just fine. And if she needed anything, she’d ask. She rummaged in her purse, looking for keys.

“Voilà,” she said, dangling them in the air. “Come, Birdie, your chariot awaits.”

Although Birdie had several cars at her disposal, including the gas-guzzling Lincoln Town Car, Ben Endicott’s private campaign to keep their lively friend off the road at night had met with some success. That and several speeding tickets had convinced Birdie that sometimes having someone cater to your every whim was lovely. So she graciously took over the passenger seat, issuing directives on the most pleasant way to get from here to there.

All along Harbor Road, people walked beneath tall black gaslights, in and out of restaurants, the ice cream shop. In the distance, music blared from the open door of Jake Risso’s Gull Tavern.

Next door to Izzy’s knitting studio, Archie Brandley waved at them as he turned his sign around to CLOSED, pulled down the blinds, and locked the bookstore’s door. Other shops along the block had closed earlier, but Archie never kept to the hours printed on his sign. “Who am I to stop someone in the middle of some fine line of text,” he’d say.

“Look, Nell.” Birdie pointed across the street. “Isn’t that Claire Russell?”

Nell looked over and saw Auggie McClucken first. He was pulling down the blinds on the hardware store’s front window.

And then she spotted Claire, directly beneath a gaslight. Her shadow fell out into the street, long and wavy. She wore a pair of jeans and the same green T-shirt she had worn that morning. Her brown hair was pulled back from her face and fastened at her neck. She walked slowly, looking at the doors of the shops along the way.

Auggie nodded at her as she passed, his thick white beard moving up and down against his chins.

Claire didn’t seem to notice him, and Auggie lifted his beefy shoulders in a shrug and walked back inside.

Nell waved, then called out to her, but Claire didn’t look over. Instead, her footsteps quickened.

A group of teenagers piled out of the ice cream store, nearly knocking Claire over, then gathering like a gaggle of birds beneath the lamplight. When they moved again, Claire was a shadow floating down the road.

“I guess she didn’t hear you,” Birdie said.

“I guess not.” Nell continued to look down the street, straining to see beyond the young teen bodies now filling the sidewalk. Claire hadn’t looked back, but Nell glimpsed her green shirt, and then she disappeared from sight.

Maybe Birdie was right. Maybe she hadn’t heard her. Or maybe she didn’t want to hear her.

Late that night, she and Ben sat together in the darkness of their deck, looking out over the world and sharing their day. It was a ritual as old as their marriage. “Settling the night,” Ben called it.

Claire had installed tiny solar lights in the backyard that shined now in the blackness, casting narrow beams of light up into the pine trees and lighting the leaves of the hostas.

Ben handed her a cup of tea, then sat down beside her on the double chaise and stretched his legs out. “You like her, don’t you?” he said, looking out over the yard.

“I do.” And then she told him about seeing her alone, walking along Harbor Road.

“Lots of people do that. Me included.” Ben chuckled softly, his way of easing away the worried tone that crept into Nell’s voice. He rubbed the back of her hand.

“I know. It’s silly. But I swear when I called out her name, she heard me. I could tell by the movement of her head. And then she hurried on, as if I were going to stop her.”

Ben leaned his head against the back of the chair. “Sometimes, you find the damndest things to worry about.”

“I’m not worried.”

“You’re
something
. I can hear it in your voice.”

Nell sipped her tea and closed her eyes.
Something.
Yes. And then she told Ben about the day. About the look that twisted Claire’s attractive face when Izzy walked out onto the deck. She’d been sitting off to the side, behind that huge hibiscus, so Izzy didn’t even know she was there, Nell said.

“Do you think she was looking at Izzy?”

“No,” Nell said, surprising herself with her sudden certainty. Claire had been hearing about Izzy for weeks as they worked on the yard and had met her just a couple of days earlier. There would be no way that seeing Izzy would cause such emotion on the gardener’s face.

“So who?”

Nell grew silent then.
Who?

There was only one other person within sight.

Tiffany Ciccolo, the shy hairstylist.

Chapter 8

If Birdie Favazza’s hair hadn’t turned pink that June morning, it might have been days before they found the body—the storage cellar wasn’t an everyday trip. At least that was the thought of those who worked at the salon. But as sometimes happens, certain things fall into place so perfectly that one small move—like taking the wrong conditioning agent from a shelf—can transform an ordinary day into another kind altogether.

N
ormally Birdie left her gleaming cap of white hair alone. A shake of her head and a quick brush and she was set for the day. And that was just the way she liked it.

But this Friday, Lynn Holmes, M.J.’s energetic assistant, suggested a new conditioner. “Perfect for your hair, Mrs. Favazza,” the young woman said.

She spoke with such enthusiasm that Birdie smiled into the muted light of the shampoo room. She was stretched out in the reclining chair, her sneakers barely touching the end. A towel cushioned her neck, and she was utterly comfortable. “Cushioned and coddled,” she told Lynn. A lovely way to begin the weekend. New Age music and Lynn’s hands caused her body to relax into weightlessness.

“Your hair will shine,” Lynn whispered into her ear.

Birdie had no desire to shine, but she didn’t want to hurt Lynn’s feelings, and if a conditioner would prolong the amazing neck massage another few minutes, that would be fine.

It wasn’t until she was seated back in the light of M.J.’s station that she looked into the mirror.

Nell was sitting in the chair next to her, waiting her turn. She looked over.

“Good lord, Birdie,” she said, one hand flying to her own head as if whatever Birdie had might be catching.

Birdie’s hands flew to her face. She leaned forward.

“A flamingo,” she whispered into the mirror. “I look like a flamingo.”

“You’re not tall enough, dearie,” Esther Gibson said, getting up in the middle of her own cut and ambling over to Birdie’s chair. Her black smock flapped around her hips.

A shocked M.J. raced into the shampoo room to find Lynn. She was back in a minute, with the assistant trailing behind her looking like she’d lost her best friend.

M.J. held up the offending bottle in one hand and the new conditioner in the other. “The numbers are nearly the same,” she said. “Oh, Birdie, I’m so sorry.”

Behind her, Lynn stood in silence, tears welling up in her huge brown eyes.

Birdie turned toward the young girl. “Now, stop that, Lynn. It could be aubergine—not a good color for me at all. Or worse, kelly green. My Sonny would haunt me for the rest of my life if I turned up with Irish hair.” She coaxed a smile out of Lynn.

“I’ve had blue hair once or twice,” Esther offered.

“And M.J. often has red,” Nell said.

“Colors are in,” Birdie agreed.

“Well, this one is coming out,” M.J. declared, stifling their optimistic overtures. “We have a solution that will clean this up in no time. Don’t go anywhere.”

Birdie smiled into the mirror. “I don’t believe I will, dear.” She patted the soft pink cap of hair framing her lined face.

Nell followed M.J. out of the room, offering to help.

“We keep all our extra solutions in the basement. It’s out back.” M.J. rummaged around on the front desk, mumbling about finding a key.

Tanya handed her one and called out as M.J. disappeared down the hallway to the back door, “Just FYI, your golden girl is MIA again. Third time this week.”

The expression on M.J.’s face as she opened the back door told Nell exactly what she thought of Tanya’s keeping a tally of other staff members’ time—it didn’t sit nicely with the salon owner.

They stepped out into the gravel alley that ran behind the shops, and M.J. turned toward the heavy storm cellar door beside the back steps.

“I know what you’re thinking, Nell. Don’t say it. It’s foolish to have to go outside to get down here. But the cellar is always cool. It’s a perfect place for the hair chemicals. Or wine,” she added with a laugh. She leaned over and started to unlock the heavy metal lock, then frowned.

“Something wrong?” Nell stood just behind her.

“It’s not locked. It’s Tanya’s job to lock things up.” M.J.’s voice was clipped, disapproving. Two strikes against Tanya.

M.J. lifted the heavy lid and braced it back against the building. She walked down the stone steps, flipping on a light at the bottom. “You don’t need to come down, Nell. I’m doing great things to the front of the basement, but, unfortunately, this part is still a dungeon.”

But Nell was already on the bottom step. “Ben’s family had one of those bulkhead doors on their house that led to the basement. We kept it, but during the remodeling we built an inside staircase.”

M.J. laughed. “Yes. Yes. I get your message. It’s on my list of redos. I’ve actually finished off one room down here in the back for Tiff to use as an office. It’s pretty nice. She loves it. I just haven’t gotten around to giving her an inside entrance. I think I might eventually make this whole area a spa. So much to do, so little time. Soon, soon.” One hand fluttered in the air. “Now, where’s that toner? Tiffany keeps things in order down here, but sometimes Tanya likes to change things around. I think just on principle.”

She pushed a short step stool over to a tall metal shelf and climbed up, peering down a row of numbered bottles on a shadowy shelf. “Would you grab that flashlight on the counter over there, Nell? I may need the tall ladder, too. I need to get these lights fixed so a person can see farther than two feet in front of her. Tiffany keeps reminding me of that.”

Nell stepped over a ladder lying on the floor, then found the flashlight on a counter that ran along the wall. She pressed the button to be sure it worked. Instantly a beam of light sliced across the stone floor and the fallen ladder. Then it seemed to stop—at least in Nell’s mind’s eye—blocked by something on the floor.

It was the shoe that she saw first. A bright candy red shoe with a chunky heel.

A familiar shoe.

She moved the flashlight over the shoe, across the concrete floor to a bare foot. Then up the leg to a wrinkled cotton dress.

Nell’s cry bounced off the damp cellar wall and brought M.J. to her side in seconds.

They fell to the floor beside Tiffany Ciccolo, her black-rimmed glasses smashed at her side, her long, curved body as still as the air in the damp cellar room.

Chapter 9

H
ours later, Nell stood at the kitchen sink, looking out into the fading sunlight. Through the open windows, she could hear Ben and Sam talking on the deck. The talk was quieter than the usual Friday night chatter when friends gathered on the Endicott deck to end their week, to let go of tension, or to share triumphs and good news.

The gravelly sound of ice being shaken in Ben’s martini shaker was there, as always. A perfect martini was Ben’s prescription to separate them from the stress of the week—or simply a mellow way of welcoming the weekend.

And she could hear Izzy shuffling through the stack of CDs over near the fireplace, picking her favorites. Cass and Danny had just driven up in Cass’ noisy pickup, and she heard Willow’s voice in the distance, talking about Canary Cove’s next art showing. Through the kitchen window she watched Ham and Jane Brewster walking slowly along the far edge of the yard, exploring Claire’s handiwork. They paused beneath the pines, their bodies gently leaning into each other with the familiarity forty years can nurture. Somewhere in the distance Pete strummed an old guitar of Ben’s, humming softly.