Turning around, I grabbed at my stomach when I saw the time. Crap.
I clutched the bag close to my chest and started to head out, but then I had second thoughts. “Ellis, can you at least tell me what it is and where it came from? I’m dying to know.” I had my body aimed at the exit, ready to race to the car the moment he finished telling me.
“Why, daughter, it’s a shaman’s medicine bag. I thought your mother would have shown you one of these. This one belonged to your grandmother, your Mamago.”
“Huh?” I said, then took another look at the clock. “Whatever, we’ll talk about it when I get back. I better bolt, or Jeanette will never let me hear the end of it.”
Ellis’s face split into a huge grin and he nodded agreement. I ran over to him and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you, Daddy,” I said.
Then I hurried outside. So that I wouldn’t be tempted to try and look inside before I’d made it to my appointment, I placed the shaman bag carefully into the side of the trunk out of harm’s reach from dusty, dirty bags of grout and cement that I used to create my mosaics. I drove like a crazy woman to make up lost time, while at the same time keeping my eye peeled for kids playing in the street.
Chapter 2
The moment Harcourt caught a glimpse of Sharon’s cottage, the constant pain in his gut sharpened. He stood there for a moment, staring up at it, while gulping back an urge to cry out. He’d done enough fist-shaking and cursing at God, and it hadn’t changed anything. It hadn’t brought them back. The crippling guilt and sorrow passed as he moved closer and more pleasant memories entered his thoughts. His mind flashed back to the construction of the cottage, and he could picture it with just framework. He almost smiled as he recalled how the cottage had come to be. He’d built it for his wife, Sharon.
Sharon adored the big ten-bedroom mansion that he’d bought and restored for them. The building had historical significance, having originally been built in the Seventies by a famous Canadian rock star as a retreat for other celebrities of the time. It had been the site of many parties, but it had eventually become vacant and fell into disrepair.
She loved everything he’d had done to it, but since he was rarely home she complained that it sometimes felt too big. He offered to build her another house, whatever she wanted, in any town or country in the world. She laughed and said that she didn’t want a new house anywhere else—she just wanted a cottage right there in Diversion.
He said that her wish was his command, and it was.
The next month when he’d had his next opportunity to come home for a visit, Sharon had a picture for him. She’d drawn it herself, admitting that it was something she’d envisioned from a fairy tale. Harcourt took it to Vancouver to the best architectural firm in town, and soon he had plans drawn up, ready for Sharon’s approval.
He was back in New York and flying around the world making his company as big as he could for his baby boy when the cottage was built. Cedric and Sharon continued to live in the big house mostly without his presence.
Whenever Harcourt came home—which was less frequently as Cedric grew older—he’d always find his wife and son at the cottage instead of in the big house. Sharon confessed that they’d moved into it, citing its size and their loneliness without him there. Harcourt felt bad, but his company needed him now. Soon, he promised. In the meantime, he pressed her to hire servants and a nanny, anyone so there would be other people around. But Sharon refused.
“No butlers, no boarding schools.” Those were her rules.
Sharon and Cedric loved to garden. In her letters, she’d send pictures of her and Cedric planting beds of flowers and working in a vegetable garden ripe with sweet peas and tomatoes and watermelon. And when he visited home, Cedric couldn’t wait to show him his little garden and the flowers and vegetables his mother had helped him plant. He’d even created a little miniature village in the garden, complete with tiny little people and thatched homes with bridges and carts.
In the two months before Cedric and Sharon died, Harcourt hadn’t been able to get away once. But he missed his wife and child, and so he insisted they fly to meet him while he was conducting business in Seattle.
If he’d have just told them to stay, to wait until he could get back home, they’d still be in his life.
This time when the flood of anger came he directed it not at the heavens, but at his own selfish, stupid heart. How could he have been so blind? He had paradise already and he wasted it, trying to get more money, when he already had more than enough.
Harcourt had to brace himself again before stepping up to the cottage he’d become obsessed with. Every day after his morning six-mile run, he’d shower, then visit the site. He was obsessed with his plans for it.
He let the garden and the flowers go to seed. Even Cedric’s little garden had turned back into the land.
He pulled the key out of his pocket and unlocked the front door.
The cottage had bleached pine floors and white walls. After they died, he had all the furniture, household goods, and all personal items removed. No one would ever live in the house again. And he never stayed overnight inside. That would be far too painful to consider.
He intended to make it into a shrine. The only furniture was the window seat and a folding chair and table.
His plan was to take every rare picture he found of his wife and son and have them recreated as mosaic art and plastered over every wall and useable surface in the cabin. Then he would spend hours in the cottage every day and he’d never forget them. Ever. But despite multiple attempts to hire an artist, none of them would accept the job, or if they wanted it, none had the talent to capture the essence of Sharon or Cedric. It frustrated the hell out of him because he was running out of time before he had to go back to work. He’d managed to get a year off to deal with the tragedy, but he’d already begun his final month.
Italian Smalti and other expensive mosaic tiles, which he’d ordered from around the world, lay in pallets and boxes about the main room. When the last mosaic artist totally embarrassed himself when he submitted his sample of the picture he gave them all to try and recreate, Harcourt considered flying to Italy. He wanted to find a master craftsman, or hire a firm to conduct a contest in which they would offer the winning artist some huge cash prize just for getting the gig.
But he hadn’t left his home in Canada since returning there after the funeral, so the idea of going to Italy was hard to stomach. Risking publicity about something so important, so private, so tragic… That wasn’t an option, either.
As he did every day, Harcourt moved to the window seat, which was Sharon and Cedric’s favorite place in the house. It was a bench with a cushioned seat, and inside he kept his most prized possessions. On top of a soft, neatly folded blanket lay Sharon’s hand-crocheted wool scarf and Cedric’s favorite toy, and underneath it all, the heavy wooden box which contained the only photographic evidence that he’d ever been happy, the pictures of his wife and son.
He lifted the blanket first, smelling it, then put Sharon’s scarf to his face as he tried to inhale her scent. Almost a year had passed since the accident, but he imagined that he could still sense the whisper of his son’s young boy smell in the blanket and his wife’s flowery sent in the scarf.