Judith Bowen - The Wild Child

Eva ran in shorts, a tank top and sneakers. The pebbly beach, interspersed with grassy areas and patches of sand, was too rough to run in bare feet, even if she hadn’t had a sore heel. The breeze was welcome, light against her overheated face, and as she approached the house on her way back, she slowed to a brisk walk, reaching up to whip off the scarf that held back her hair.

Whew! Looked like another summer scorcher of a day. A shower, a sandwich and then—

What was that? A square of colored paper lay just inside the door of the house. The door was always unlocked; Eva wasn’t even sure there was a lock. What was there to keep out? Just Andy and the rabbits that nibbled Doris’s garden…

Eva stooped to pick up the envelope, and smiled as she turned it over. It was clearly handmade, a little crooked and dripping with glue. From Fanny. Eva opened it and a small loop of yellow wool fell out.

She bent to retrieve it. Inside the envelope was a much creased piece of paper, which Eva unfolded, her smile widening.

There were no words. Just a drawing of a playhouse of some sort, with a table and chairs outside and various kinds of food on the table—a huge cake, drinks with straws. Nothing was in proportion; it was a typical four- or five-year-old’s drawing. A clock face, drawn in orange, showed two o’clock. It was just past one now. There was a patch of glue with telltale yellow wisps caught up in it next to the rendition of a clock face. Eva glanced at the yellow loop on her wrist, the yarn that had fallen out of the envelope. Aha!

Then she turned to gaze toward the creek that separated the Bonhommes’ from the Lords’. A yellow loop waved gently in the breeze, suspended from a bush on the far side of the creek.

While she’d been gone, someone had been very busy….

SILAS HAD A STUDIO set in the trees well away from the house in a building that had once been reserved for staff. The Klassens lived with him and Fanny in the main house, a large shingle-sided two-and-a-half-story dwelling, built in a rather grand post-Victorian style nearly one hundred years before by his great-grandfather. The Lords and the Bonhommes, who’d settled at the other end of the island, had been business partners once, lumber barons cutting virgin timber on Vancouver Island at the turn of the century, a time when many family fortunes had been made in British Columbia.

Because there was no electricity on the island and because the studio was some distance from the house, which had a generator for essential electrical needs, Silas created jewelry as it had been created for thousands of years, using hand tools to work the precious metals and a propane-fired forge. At present, he was working on a commission from a Toronto auto parts mogul, a gift for his wife’s fortieth birthday. Six months earlier, Silas had delivered a magnificent diamond-and-opal bracelet to the same man—for his mistress’s birthday.

The current project incorporated tanzanite, a gemstone Silas particularly liked, set into the silver-and-gold neckpiece, bracelet and earrings. Without artificial light, daytime hours were precious and Fanny knew she could only interrupt him in his studio if it was important. This morning when he’d come back from The Baths—no sign of the visitor today—he’d found one of Fanny’s handmade envelopes in the willow basket outside his open studio door.

Silas shook his head. Parties! Was his daughter turning into a social animal like her mother? Fanny seemed to generate an excuse to have a party every couple of days.

Not that he minded. And he always humored her. Silas never forgot that he was the one who’d brought his daughter into these isolated circumstances on Liberty Island nearly three years ago and he’d do anything in his power to make sure she was happy here. Summer was a fine time, when Fanny could be a free spirit, safely wandering the forest and the shore with her dog. Winters were much harder.

Today’s event was most likely because of what had happened yesterday. Fanny hadn’t mentioned the incident at dinner—and neither had he—but he suspected the party was by way of an apology. She knew the old woman’s house was forbidden, whether vacant or occupied. Indeed, that entire end of the island was off-limits; she wasn’t even to cross the creek.

But he could understand that she’d been tempted. The newcomer must have been too much to resist. He didn’t blame Fanny. No other children around. No guests. Silas had no appetite for society, and it had been many months since he’d invited anyone to Liberty Island, other than the Klassens’ son, Ivor. His occasional trips to his studio in Vancouver fulfilled any needs he might’ve had for company, male or female. Nor had he intended to meet the island’s visitor, never mind under such odd circumstances. Busting into her kitchen and tearing through her house, no less! He was a little embarrassed about that.

Hell, he’d been scared. He’d looked everywhere for Fanny, in all her usual places, but she hadn’t been in any of them. Not in her tree house at the bottom of the garden. Not in her playhouse he’d built for her in the old orchard. Or in her room, playing with dolls, or up in the attic, where she’d found trunks of old clothes that had belonged to Silas’s grandmother and often played dress-up, sometimes draping even Bruno with a hat or scarf.

Silas had hoped the visitor would simply leave and that would be that. He admitted to some curiosity—why hadn’t she come wandering to the eastern side of the island before this? Why had she kept—as far as he could tell—so carefully to the Bonhomme property, except for that excursion to The Baths? He’d only seen her there once and the bathing pools, admittedly, had always been a sort of neutral territory. Still, how could she know that?

Silas glanced at the old-fashioned Rolex he wore. He’d freed himself from many of his big-city habits, including locking doors, which made no sense on Liberty Island, but he’d never been comfortable without the Rolex, which he’d worn ever since his grandfather, Hector Lord, had given it to him a few months before the old man had died.

Silas didn’t miss much of his previous life. The days of catching an afternoon flight to Paris for the weekend, or disappearing to Mexico at a moment’s notice to share a workbench with the silver masters in Taxco for a few months, or flying to Amsterdam twice a year to buy the rough diamonds he used in his work, then whisking off to Singapore to have them faceted and ground. Now that he’d begun living on Liberty Island again, he didn’t miss the once essential Palm Pilot, but the Rolex, one of the few personal mementos he had of a scattered family, stayed on his wrist.

Silas remembered clearly the day the old man had given it to him. He’d arrived home from university to announce he’d dropped out of business school and was going to Milan to study art. His parents had been furious—as Silas had expected—but the old man had beckoned him into a back room, where he’d taken off the watch and handed it to him with a chuckle. “Here, my boy. It belongs to you.” No further explanations.

Hector Lord had been dead for nearly fourteen years.

Almost two o’clock…

Idly, Silas wound the watch as he strode toward the orchard. When Fanny had begun staging her little events earlier that summer, he’d sometimes offered to help carry her supplies to wherever she was holding the party. Her playhouse. The promontory where they had picnics. Or, most difficult for him, her tree house behind his studio. He couldn’t climb up there as easily as he’d done when the tree house had belonged to him and Ivor. Fanny was always deeply offended at his suggestion, as only Fanny could be, insisting she could—and would—do everything herself. She was independent, all right. Sociable and sassy. Loving.