She was right. It was made of glass beads strung by hand on a stretchy band, not meant to handle continual stress. I had made it at a sleepover in high school, with a friend who’d had a jewellery-making kit. I still remembered just how hard it was to keep those beads together in their pattern, neat and smooth, without them sliding off the other end and spilling out onto the carpet, but after hours of trying, I had conquered them, and more than ten years later those same beads were still in order.
Usually the bracelet lay buried under more expensive items in my jewellery box, and probably only Freud knew why I’d chosen to wear it today.
Maybe I’d needed some reassurance that one thing in my life was holding together the way that it should, because so far my Monday was not going well.
“So,” I summarized, “we won’t have windows?”
Sam Abrams raised one shoulder in a shrug that managed to be both accepting and apologetic. “Not the ones we planned for. Sorry.”
Great, I thought. The first hour of the first day of our restoration work and I hadn’t even made it to the door before discovering we had a problem.
I’d actually been happy for a moment when I’d pulled into the parking lot and seen the men at work already, with the little backhoe digging purposefully into the earth as it began to excavate a trench around the old foundation. Then I’d seen Malaika standing to the side, arms folded, talking to a dark-haired man I’d recognized as Sam from his broad shoulders and the deep tan of his muscled arms against his plain white T-shirt. If Malaika’s frown of concentration hadn’t warned me, I’d have known from Sam’s expression as he turned to say “Good morning” that my morning wouldn’t be remotely good.
Not that it was anybody’s fault. The expert sub-contractor whose job it was to deal with all the windows couldn’t have foreseen he’d fall and dislocate his shoulder with such force that he’d need therapy and time before returning to his job. And I felt sorry for him.
But the delay Sam was talking about would mean our windows would not be in place by the time we had set in our schedule. And finding someone with the same credentials and experience who could step in to take over on short notice wouldn’t be an easy task. Working on heritage buildings was a specialized skill.
Malaika’s frown was fading. She was not so much an optimist as she was simply stubborn, and I’d noticed that she didn’t get held back too long by obstacles. “Well,” she said, “there must be an alternative. Let’s think, now.”
Sam was doing that already, thoughtfully taking stock of the windows on the second floor, eyes narrowing against the morning sun.
Now that I’d been told Sam was a Mohawk, I could see it for myself a little. Not that there was any one way for a Mohawk man to look—I knew that much from my time at the Hall-McPhail Museum planning re-enactments and exhibits, when I’d worked in consultation with a few Mohawk historians, one of whom had been a blue-eyed blond.
They’d taught me, among other things, respectful terminology.
The oldest of the men had called himself Native American, the second had preferred the term Indigenous, and their younger colleague had assured me there was no collective term that everyone agreed upon, advising me the best thing was to learn which nation somebody belonged to, and refer to that instead. Which had made sense.
I knew that “Mohawk” wasn’t what they called themselves in their own language, but I couldn’t call the proper word to mind just at the moment. I was trying to remember it when suddenly Malaika’s voice broke in.
“Sam, you could do this,” she said, “couldn’t you?”
Still looking up, he paused before he answered. “I was thinking about that.” Another pause, and then, “Not all at once, like Jake would do, but if I took a couple every week and did them in the evenings, yeah, I think I could.”
“And match the price?”
The corners of his mouth quirked upward briefly. “Tell you what. You buy me lunch, I’ll match the price.”
“Okay, then.”
They shook hands, and that was that. Sam put his hardhat on again and gave us both a friendly nod before he walked across to check the progress of the backhoe and the workmen who were following behind it in the trench, doing more careful digging up against the stone foundation wall, with shovels.
Since Malaika was my boss, I didn’t question her decision. But once Sam was out of hearing, I said very casually, “He’s qualified to do that, is he? Carpentry?”
“You’ve seen the fireplace mantel in my dining room? He made that. And the dining table, too. If anything,” she said, “he’s overqualified. He’s got a degree in architecture, too. Will you just stop with that poor bracelet? Have you had coffee yet? No? That’s your problem, then. Let’s get you some.” She led me the few steps along the side walkway to where our staff entrance led into the kitchen of the already renovated Victorian side of the Wilde House.
This kitchen, half the size of the older Colonial one, had been “updated” back in the mid-1980s. The cabinets were white with wood trim and the counters were gold-flecked white Formica and the walls seemed to have trouble deciding if they were supposed to be beige or pale pink, so adjusted themselves to the lighting. This morning, with sun coming in through the two windows—one at the back of the house and one over the sink—the walls had apparently opted for beige. A safe choice.
I privately suspected that the coffee-maker was a relic of the 1980s, too. It made a lot of noise and steam but in the end what it produced was only faintly recognizable as coffee.
Still, this morning I was ready to accept caffeine in any form. I leaned against the counter while Malaika brewed a pot. While she was filling cups for each of us I ventured, “So, Frank told me all about the ghost.”
“He likes that story.”
“I did, too. In fact,” I added, “I’ve been thinking.” And I told her my ideas for the ways that we could use the story here at the museum for exhibits and events.
Malaika handed me my coffee with a thoughtful look. “I like it.”
“Could I slip that into the agenda for the board meeting tonight, under ‘new business’?”
“Sure. Just brace yourself,” she warned me. “Sharon and her friends will fight it.”
“Sharon would fight anything I suggested.”
“True enough.” She sugared her own coffee with a smile. “At least it livens up the meetings. I might even stay awake through this one.”
? ? ?
“I don’t like it.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear Eve Downey echoing Sharon’s objection. Eve was one of the two trustees who always followed Sharon’s lead, although the second of them—Harvey—had probably turned things around in his mind and believed he was actually leading. Harvey was head of the Kiersted Group, named for himself, a commercial development firm that appeared to be somehow connected to everyone and everything in the area. Word was he had politicians as well in his pocket. The mayor and a congressman’s aide both went golfing with Harvey on weekends. He must have learned his smile from them. It was practiced and a shade too broad and lacking any real conviction. He smiled at Eve now, flirting with her as he often did. In jeans, his cotton oxford shirt rolled to his elbows, with his hair too uniformly dark for someone on the other side of fifty, Harvey looked like what he was—a middle-aged man stubbornly refusing to let go of youth.