A Walk Through a Window (12 page)

“Not at all, Mrs. Chris,” said Fiona, and the moths buzzed around her head as she stepped out of the shelter of the screened porch into the evening air. “If I’d known there would be cookies involved, I would have been over much sooner!”

Darby waved goodbye and bid her grandparents an early goodnight. She’d spied the package for a skateboarding game that looked wicked, so she bolted up the back stairs and spent a happy three hours making virtual ollies and kick-flips off superhuman-sized ramps.

Later, when she stopped to think about it, those were three hours well spent. Because in the end, it was the only time Darby used Fiona’s gift for the rest of the summer.

The next morning Darby awoke with sore wrists from playing with a game controller for the first time in so long. Now that things seemed a bit calmer with Gran and Gramps, she decided it was high time to find Gabe and sort through what had really happened after they had walked through that window.

To be safe, Darby washed
and
dried the breakfast dishes for Nan, and said she’d be back to help some more before lunch.

But Nan had other plans.

“I have a little surprise for you, dear,” she said, rummaging in her purse.

Darby hated hearing those words from parental-type units. Their idea of a little surprise didn’t usually translate into her idea of fun.

Nan waved a pair of tickets that she had dug out of the deep recesses of her purse. “Shawnie Stevens popped over yesterday while you were out and brought me these,” she said cheerily. “She has a special opening of her art show with her husband, Michael, today. When she was so generous to bring over the tickets, I offered to take her to coffee, and she agreed.”

Looked like finding Gabe was going to have to wait. Darby started to worry a little when Nan asked her to wear a dress to the art show, but luckily since she hadn’t actually brought a dress with her, they settled on a nice pair of shorts and the hideous sweater Nan had knit Darby last Christmas.

It was a beautiful morning, clear and hot without even a hint of breeze. As soon as they stepped outdoors, Darby’s hair stuck to her forehead, but she kept the sweater on anyway. Gold star for the good granddaughter.

Shawnie’s art show was on display in a little gallery on Grafton Street near the downtown mall. Darby and Nan arrived just after the doors opened, and only a few people were milling around. Shawnie was at the back of the gallery, but when she saw them she waved and came up.

“Mrs. Christopher! Thank you so much for coming.”

“Darby was thrilled to get the tickets this morning, Shawnie,” Nan said, staring at her granddaughter pointedly. “I couldn’t keep her away!”

“Yes, thank you for inviting us,” Darby said, in her gold star voice. She knew a cue when she heard one. Especially when delivered by Nan.

“Let me show you around a little,” said Shawnie.

“Oh, we wouldn’t dream of tying you up on your first day,” said Nan. “We’ll just have a quick peek around ourselves.”

Darby had to give a few mental gold stars back to Nan for that one, saving them the pain of the guided tour. And anyway, she wanted a closer look at the little piece she had seen in the display case at the library.

Almost right away, Darby got lucky. Nan made a beeline over to chat with a friend she spotted, so Darby was free to wander around and try to find the little stone object.

Looking at the artwork, Darby decided the poster Shawnie had put together didn’t really do her own work justice. For one thing, the pictures were all of her husband Michael’s work. Half of the room was taken up with the artwork he’d done. There was a picture and biography of him on the wall, and she recognized him a few minutes later talking to Shawnie. He worked with porcupine quills and sweetgrass, weaving detailed designs on baskets of different sizes and shapes.

When Darby looked at the table set up next to the baskets, she caught her breath. Shawnie’s stonework. The stone had etchings of old symbols, and the little text description said they were called petroglyphs. But mixed in with the petroglyphs were a number of figures carved out of stone. The one that caught Darby’s attention was
carved in the shape of a walrus. She picked it up. It was very heavy in her hand but the stone was soft.

Soft and green.

She had a piece of stone that looked just like it sitting on the desk in her room. And her mind flashed to the soft stone lamp in the people’s dark snow house. Shawnie’s initials were carved in the bottom of this walrus, and Darby glanced in her direction. Her mind swirled with questions.

Just then, someone put a hand on Darby’s arm. Nan looked a little startled when Darby screeched, then tried to cover it with a cough.

“My goodness, dear, I’m sorry to startle you. Shawnie has agreed to a five-minute tea break,” whispered Nan. “Perhaps a little warm tea will help that cough of yours, as well.”

Good idea. Darby grinned and followed the two women to a little tea shop farther down Grafton Street, turning over the carved walrus in her mind.

At their small table, Nan set down two cups of tea and Darby chose a glass of chocolate milk. Nan put milk and sugar in her tea and Darby offered Shawnie the small pitcher.

“I didn’t grow up drinking milk,” she said with a laugh. “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t get a taste for it. I’m lactose intolerant, so that makes it even harder.”

Darby hardly gave Shawnie a chance to stir her tea before she started firing questions. “How come you carve things like seals and walruses out of rock? I didn’t know there were walruses in PEI.”

She laughed. “No—you’re quite right. I haven’t seen any walruses around lately. I’m not from here, though; I was born in Rankin Inlet, so I carve the animals I grew up with.”

“Oh, I thought you were a Mi’kmaq,” Darby said. “I didn’t know you were from the Arctic.”

“My husband, Michael, is Mi’kmaq. He is a member of the Abegweit First Nation and he grew up just outside of Charlottetown in a little place called Scotchfort. But I didn’t grow up here. We met when we were going to art school in Toronto, and after we got married we moved here to be close to his family.”

“So is your family still in the North?” Darby asked, trying her best not to let Shawnie see she was holding her breath.

“Yes, they are mostly still in Rankin Inlet. My family are Inuit.”

Ha. I knew it
. Darby felt strangely as though a puzzle piece had just snapped into place.

“Um, so, I’m kind of interested in the stone you carve,” she said. “It’s not much like the stone around here or even the rocks we have where I live in Toronto.”

Shawnie looked over at Nan. “You have a very clever granddaughter here, Etta.” Nan beamed, and Darby briefly had visions of getting out of doing dishes for at least a week.

But Shawnie was still talking. “The rock I use for carving is called soapstone. It’s found mostly in the North. When I work with it, it reminds me of home. I also like to carve on bone, and sometimes I use clay to make sculpture, as well.”

“Michael carves his images into rock too, doesn’t he?” asked Nan. So she had been doing more than chatting with her friend at the show, after all.

Shawnie nodded. “Yes. We both like to produce artwork that reflects our cultural heritage. It was fun going to school in the south, though, and not just because I met Michael there. It was fantastic to see the work of other Canadian artists, and I think they have had an influence on my work as well.”

She told them she had gone to the Ontario College of Art, and Darby spent a few minutes filling her in about some of her favourite places in downtown Toronto. Turns out they both missed being there.

Funny.

After Shawnie went back to her show, Nan and Darby wandered along University Avenue before heading home. As they walked in the front door, Nan handed Darby the plastic bag she had been carrying.

“Here’s a little something for you, my dear, just as a remembrance of your stay with us.”

Darby opened the bag and inside was one of Michael’s baskets with the image of a starfish woven into the lid.

“Thank you, Nan. It’s beautiful,” Darby said. And it was.

“Oh, it’s not very practical, I know, but I’m glad you like it all the same.”

“I do like it, very much,” Darby said.

She was surprised to see Nan’s eyes fill with tears. She leaned across and gave Darby a short, sharp little hug and then shook her head.

“Enough of this foolishness,” she said. “Darby, I brought up three lovely boys into grown men, but I have no experience with having a teenage girl around. Thank you for coming with me today. You have no idea what a difference you have made to our lives this summer.”

And then, because she was Nan, she went straight into the kitchen and cleaned it within an inch of its life.

Darby walked upstairs slowly, and put the pieces of red sandstone and green soapstone into her new basket. She suddenly had a lot to think about.

After lunch, Darby grabbed her board and set off down the street. Forsyth Street wasn’t a long one, but as she cruised along, she had to admit it was more interesting than she had first thought. Some of the houses did look like cracker boxes, it was true, but at least they were different from one another. At home, Darby’s friend Caitlyn Morris lived quite far up Yonge Street, two towns away from Darby’s place, in Richmond Hill. Where Caitlyn lived, the builder decided that originality was an old-fashioned idea. Her house looked exactly the same as the houses on either side, right down to the same tree planted in the same spot out front.

None of that could be seen where Darby stood on Forsyth Street. On one corner was the little store where she ran to get milk for Nan and red licorice for herself, if Gramps was in the mood to spot her the cash. Across from it was an empty house with a For Sale sign in the
window. Beside that house was Nan and Gramps’s place, with its big tree in the front and its crisp white front porch. And Shawnie’s bright yellow house was next door. On the other side of Shawnie was Fiona’s cranberry-coloured house.

They definitely went for bright house colours in Charlottetown. But somehow they hadn’t seemed so colourful when Darby first arrived. The street itself was tucked in beside Prince Street, and was so small it didn’t even appear on any of the maps of Charlottetown she had seen.

Darby pumped her foot again. Across from Fiona’s house was the old park, and now that she was looking for it, she could see the tiny little graveyard that Nan and Gramps had been talking about the other day. She pulled up on her skateboard for a minute, propped it against a tree in the park and checked her watch. Only 2:30. Plenty of time for a quick look.

The graveyard was behind a church that faced the next street over. Darby’s first thought as she walked through the grass was that it had to be the least scary graveyard she’d ever been in. The grass had grown tall and lush and there were flowers everywhere.

Walking through the grass, her toe caught on something and she went sprawling. It was a gravestone, sunk to just above ground level. After Darby recovered from bashing her knee in the fall, she brushed a few branches and leaves away from the top of the stone.

The inscription was almost worn off, but she could see a name. It said:

Annie
(or could it be
Hanna?) Rourke Grady, b. 1828, and her infant daughter, Mary. Died 1849
. Underneath, it said
Dreaming of Home
.

Dreaming of home? What did that mean? Darby had never seen an inscription like that. Not that she made a habit of wandering through graveyards. She thought headstones usually said
Rest in Peace
or
A Loving Mother
or something like that.

Strange.

She was on her hands and knees, trying to read the inscription on another headstone in the shape of a cross, when someone cleared his throat behind her.

She turned to see Gabe leaning against one of the few large stones that hadn’t actually fallen over yet.

“I did not want to startle you,” he said.

As if.

“Why? Do I look like the nervous type?”

He crinkled his eyes at Darby and pointed. “See that Celtic cross? This is an old Catholic cemetery. I do not think anyone has been buried here for more than one hundred years.”