I stopped reading there, looked at the men and women on the dais, the people with the power to save or condemn Benoit House, the power to finally validate the hidden work of Iola’s life.
On the podium, the yellow light blinked on. “A week after this letter was written, an original Remington bronze worth $900,000 was donated to a relief fund created to help rebuild the island and to close or bridge the new inlet. At the time, residents were so desperate to reunite the north and south ends of the island that they were dumping junk cars in the inlet, hoping to close it. The donation of the statue was made anonymously —you can see a newspaper article about it on the poster boards that are being held up in the back of the room.
“In fact, you can see a number of articles and photos and letters there. They tell the story of this island, but they also tell the story of a woman few people really knew. She devoted herself —her resources, her energy, her efforts, her prayers —to the Outer Banks and the people who live here, many of whom were strangers to her. She gave almost everything she had, and when this last storm came, when water began trickling through the roof of the home she had loved most of her life, instead of asking her neighbors to pick up their mending threads and help her save her house . . . instead, at ninety-one years old, frail in her body and alone in her home, she put buckets and pots and pans under the drops, and she served her neighbors. The Tiffany Magnolia lamp that caused such a stir, that created the fund to aid families displaced by the recent storms, came from the upstairs bedroom in Benoit House —the last untouched place in the house. The room where Iola Anne Poole died.”
The red light came on. No one in the chamber moved. On the dais, the commissioners were gazing past me, looking at the posters, finally meeting the small, quiet woman so few people understood.
I finished with the last paragraph of what Paul and I had written. “By the world’s standards, she might not have been a person who really mattered, who was noteworthy. But by all the standards that matter most, she was an incredible human being. She touched the lives of people who never knew her. She asked for nothing in return —no press coverage, no name on a plaque, no TV interviews, no thank-you notes. We have the chance to honor her with this one final act of gratitude. We can save her house —the house she intended to leave in the hands of the church so that it would be cared for and used for something good. I hope . . . I pray that you who sit on this court, and all of you who are in this room today, will feel, as I do, that this is a cause worth fighting for.”
Gathering my papers, I turned to leave. Behind me, members of the gallery were slowly rising to their feet. Near the back door, Gina threaded her way through the crowd, making a hasty exit with Ross in tow.
A man, a stranger with the ruddy look of a seaman, began to clap, the noise shattering the silence. Another set of hands joined, and another and another, the applause slowly growing as Iola’s neighbors came out to meet her for the very first time.
CHAPTER 26
OUTSIDE, THE TIPS OF TREE branches squealed as they scratched across the moving van. I walked to the window and looked, then noticed the suncatcher still hanging there on its green ribbon. The knot was just beyond my reach.
“Guess it’s time.” Paul walked out of the closet, glancing down at the moving van. “Here, I’ve got it.” He stretched toward the ribbon, his body molding against mine, the sleeve of a shirt printed with turkeys in flip-flops and swim trunks tickling my ear.
“Where in the world do you find these things?” I grabbed the fabric, giving it a playful tug.
“What?” He coughed softly in his throat. “It’s my Thanksgiving shirt.”
“Thanksgiving’s not until tomorrow.”
His lips spread into a playful smile, his brown eyes catching the window light and turning the warm color of polished wood. “I have something better in store for tomorrow.”
“Your mom will love that.” Paul’s mother had already assured me, long-distance, that she was not in any way responsible for his fashion sense.
“My mom’s going to love you,” he said, and I felt myself melting. Never, ever in my life had I imagined that there could be someone like Paul Chastain. The way I felt about him was the stuff of fairy tales. Yet each day it grew and became more real.
The suncatcher came loose unexpectedly, and I caught it as it tumbled toward the Tiffany Magnolia lamp.
“Watch the lamp!” Paul squeaked, sucking a breath through his teeth.
“Me?” I giggled, setting the suncatcher on the bare mattress. Isabelle’s wedding quilt had already been carefully packed in a box, as had almost everything else in the house. The Tiffany Magnolia was waiting for a local antique dealer to come and expertly prepare it for transport.
Below on the lawn, a car pulled in and then another, followed by a Suburban with an antique store logo painted on the side. “Right on time, I guess.” I touched the suncatcher, thinking of the first day I’d seen it, its colored light drawing me toward Iola’s boxes.
“Right on time,” Paul echoed. His eyes met mine for a moment. I thought of the night we’d spent traveling together through the prayer boxes, trying to save this house. “Guess we’d better go let them in.”
“The door’s not locked. Besides, the kids are downstairs.” I sat on the edge of the bed, took the little hummingbird in my lap, fingered its glass wings.
Paul slipped in beside me, stretching an arm around my waist and hugging me close. I rested my head on his shoulder. “It’s what has to happen, you know,” he reminded.
“I know.”
“You wanted to save this house.”
“Yeah, I did.”
The trail of his fingers was featherlight on my skin. “You know, some things are pretty much impossible.”
I nodded, watched the hummingbird’s wings cast color over my fingers, thought of Iola’s belongings, now packed in cardboard cartons all through the house. “I just wonder how she would feel about it if she were here —all these people handling her stuff, moving her out.”
Paul ruffled my hair, then kissed it. “Well, you’ve pretty much done the impossible here, but the fact is, now that the roof has been redone, the place has to be gutted if it’s going to be saved.”
“I know, I know.” Despite all that had happened, despite the fact that this house really belonged to the island, there was still a part of me that didn’t want to share it.
“And considering that everyone from the mayor to the kids in school have their pennies invested in the renovation fund, it’s good that there’s a competent handywoman right next door, making sure it’s all done the way it should be. This house has another hundred good years in it. Who knows what it’ll see.”
“Well, quite a few weddings and lots of museum traffic.” I turned to Paul, wondering again how Iola would feel about so many people tromping through her home. She’d been a private woman, but she and Benoit House had an extraordinary past, a story that should be shared. The attic had been filled with trunks containing photos, ledgers, and other bits of Outer Banks history from the Benoit shipping empire, dating all the way back to the mid–eighteen hundreds. Some had been ruined by the water leaks, but many had survived, and there was much to be sorted through yet.
“Relax.” Paul slipped a finger under my chin and kissed me, then whispered against my lips, “If anyone can make it all happen the way it’s supposed to, you can.”
There were footsteps downstairs now and voices.
“I can’t believe all these people came to volunteer, especially right before Thanksgiving.”
“They love this house and they love the island.” Standing, he took one last look around the blue room. “Guess we’d better head down there before they start loading things without us.” He crossed the room and grabbed a clipboard from the dresser. “Here’s the list of which stuff goes to storage and which stuff goes to Norfolk for renovations and cleaning.”
Nodding, I reached for the poster boards that had helped to save Benoit House. “I’m going to put these in the cottage for now, I think . . . and the suncatcher, too. I don’t want them to be in the storage unit.”
“We did work hard on these posters.” Paul hooked a finger over the edge of one of the boards and opened it. “A masterful job, if I do say so myself. A little more island flair would have jazzed them up a bit, though —something in a Hawaiian print.”
I laughed. Paul could always make me laugh. Even today. “With you, everything needs a little more island flair.”
I laid the posters on the bed, and we stood a moment, looking at the photos of the house in its glory days, taking in the bits of copied prayer letters bearing Iola’s words and her sketches. A whelk shell here, a lighthouse there. I hadn’t looked at them since they’d been displayed at the public hearing.