The Secret of Sentinel Rock Read online

  She shuffled near the window at the ­low-­ceilinged end of the room as the two older women continued to work. She was surprised to see the yard lit by an unusually bright sun. Dark banks of clouds were forming over the barn, and the leaves of the poplar trees twirled in sudden gusts of wind. A storm was about to ­break.

  “There’s more to life than gadding about, young lady.”

  Emily gazed at her mother’s back, realizing she had used the same term – “gadding about” – as Emma’s sister had ­done.

  Kate flipped open a box with a bang, making Emily jump. Aunt Liz, with exaggerated calm, handed Emily’s mother a stack of old hats from the trunk to place inside ­it.

  “More to life?” Emily placed her hands on her hips, responding to her mother’s remark. “Like what, Mom? More work? You’re always working. Why don’t you take a break and go for a walk sometime?” Emily snapped, just as a low rumble of thunder sounded in the ­distance.

  “There’s so much to do. You know that.” Kate looked at Emily in ­exasperation.

  “You always say that. Even at home. It doesn’t matter how much I help you. There’s always more to do.”

  “That’s enough, Emily. Don’t talk to me like that.” Her mother shook an old handbag at her. “Go down and make some sandwiches, young lady. Liz and I have been working hard all morning, and we’re hungry.”

  Emily ducked her head and stamped down the stairs in silence. She’d had such a lovely morning. Why did her mother have to ruin it? Just then a flash of lightning lit up the stairwell. Emily looked out the landing window as she passed. Droplets of rain struck the panes. Storm clouds were quickly obscuring the ­sun.

  What about soup? Maybe if she put a little extra effort into lunch and made some hot vegetable soup to go with the sandwiches, her mom would thaw a little. Emily sighed, opening the cupboard door. This might be a long ­day.

  •••

  They were finishing lunch when the phone rang. Emily reached it ­first.

  “Hi, Dad. Yeah, it’s raining here too.” Emily listened for awhile. “Oh. All right. I’ll get Mom.” She handed the receiver to Kate, whispering loudly to Aunt Liz as she regained her chair at the table, “It’s Dad. He can’t come and pick us up this weekend.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” said Aunt Liz. “I have to leave in the morning too. I won’t be able to get down for another couple of weeks. There’s so much to do before the auction.”

  Emily grimaced at the word auction. She still hadn’t figured out how to persuade her mom and aunt not to sell the ­farm.

  Kate tugged at the sweatband holding her hair back from her face as she walked back to the table. She had a scowl on her face. “Great – David has some big unexpected meeting in Victoria with some geologists from Mexico. And I have to get back in to work. Lindsay is having a fit trying to manage the business without me. We have too many deadlines. I don’t know what to do.”

  Liz crunched on a carrot stick, a concentrated look on her face. “There’s nothing we can do. We’ll just have to hold the auction later in the summer.”

  “That goes without saying,” Kate looked with disgust at her sister. “I mean, how will we get back to Regina?”

  “Don’t look at me.” Liz held up her hands as if warding off the inevitable. “You know I’m heading to Winnipeg. And no, I won’t make a detour. You know how I hate driving on the highway any more than I have to.”

  “Darn that old car of ours. Why did it have to break down last week? I don’t want to take the bus. We’ve too much to take back with us.”

  Emily was hardly aware of Kate stacking plates and carrying them to the dishwasher. Her mind was reeling. The auction might be delayed. She still might have time to think of something to stop it altogether. This old house and the farm where she’d spent so many happy hours meant so much to her. Why couldn’t she make her mother see how important it was to keep it? This place was all she had left of her Grandmother ­Renfrew.

  Emily, watching her mother scrape off the plates before placing them in the dishwasher, suddenly pictured her grandmother bustling about the kitchen. She recalled how the elderly lady had insisted on modernizing everything in it. “All these gadgets speed up the work so I have more time to enjoy the outdoors,” she’d said, winking at Emily. Emily smiled, remembering their private ­understanding.

  “What are you grinning at?” Kate’s irritated voice broke into her ­thoughts.

  “Just something I saw on tv.” Emily rose from the table and quickly began putting food in the refrigerator. And then the rain began pelting the kitchen window, and Emily could hardly see the barn across the ­yard.

  “By the way, Emily, what were you doing all morning?”

  “I – I visited with that girl I told you about the other day. Remember?” Emily’s mind raced over possible explanations. She didn’t want to risk getting into another argument with her ­mother.

  “You mean there really was someone up on those rocks?”

  “Yes. The same girl.” Emily ducked her head back into the fridge, hoping to avoid more ­questions.

  “I thought you were just telling me another one of your stories. So what was she doing there? And don’t try to embellish like you did last time.” Kate shook a finger in ­warning.

  “Uh, well, uh….” Emily didn’t know how to answer the question. If she told her mother the truth, she’d never believe her. In fact, she’d probably think Emily was ready for the loony bin. Then again maybe the truth would work. At least part of ­it.

  “Well? What did you learn about her? Where’s she really from?”

  “Emma. That’s her name. She came with her family from Scotland.” So far so ­good.

  “Really? And whose place did they buy?” Kate thought for a moment. “Maybe they bought the old McGuillivray place. I think I heard something about it changing hands.”

  “I’m not sure who owned it before.” True enough, Emily didn’t know whose land it was. She wasn’t sure where the boundary of her grandparents’ half section fell. “They’re building a new house. They’re camped out right now – until it’s finished.”

  Emily decided she’d better not elaborate any more, and headed for the bathroom to hide out for ­awhile.

  “What did you say her last name was?” Her mother called after ­her.

  “I don’t know. I forgot to ask.” Emily took the stairs two at a time, smiling wryly to herself. She really had forgotten to ask Emma her last name. She’d have to remember to question her tomorrow. Right now she wanted to scribble down the few things she did know about ­Emma.

  Emily was still writing when Kate and Liz came back upstairs. They knocked on the opposite side of the adjoining wall, inviting Emily to come and ­help.

  “All right,” she called. With a sigh she snapped her notebook closed and stashed it under the window ledge. There was just enough room to place something between the wall and the ledge. Emily had used the hiding place for as long as she could remember. No one else knew about it. Then she heard more knocks on the ­wall.

  “Coming.”

  Opening her door, Emily stepped down two steps and around the wall and back up again to where her aunt and mother were already sorting through the trunk. She noticed the pattering of the rain was louder over here, and the room seemed dark and gloomy. Even though several lights and lamps were turned on, they didn’t illuminate the ­far-­reaching corners of the attic. The place was damp and cool. Emily was glad she had worn a ­sweater.

  She sauntered over to one of the boxes and pulled open the lid. More boxes inside. Shoeboxes, card boxes. She pulled one out and sat on the edge of the windowsill. Stacks of yellowed newspaper clippings taken from the Family Herald filled the box; recipes her grandmother had saved, intending to paste into a scrapbook. Emily conjured up the smell of the flour and water glue her grandmother mixed to do that sort of ­job.

  In fact, somewhere around this house, Emily had a couple of scrapbooks that she’d pasted her own clippings into whe
n she was much younger. She’d trimmed nice pictures of flowers, horses, and cuddly baby animals from the Western Producer and Country Guide. That was a pastime her grandmother had suggested on rainy days. Days like ­today.

  “Look at these old clothes,” Aunt Liz exclaimed from the other side of the attic. She held up a ­floor-­length blue taffeta gown that she’d extracted from another ­trunk.

  Emily and Kate joined her in sorting through the garments. Emily spied a white hat covered with blue ribbons and lace. She perched it on her head. “Hey, it matches that dress you pulled out, Aunt Liz.”

  Holding the ­wide-­brimmed hat on her head with one hand, she sifted through the clothing and pulled out the gown with the other. A few minutes later Emily stood in the entire outfit, sneezing. The dress fit as if it had been made for ­her.

  “Whew, this smells musty. It must have been packed away for ages.” The gown, which reached Emily’s ankles, rustled as she moved about, making her feel like she’d stepped into Emma’s time again. Emily removed it with care and laid it back into the ­trunk.

  Her mother and aunt watched her try on several other outfits, each more intriguing than the previous one. The bathing suit that almost covered the whole body set all three to laughing. Then Aunt Liz found an old umbrella. She opened it over Emily’s head with a flaring gesture that sent them into gales of laughter when they discovered it was so full of holes that it was useless. The sound of the wind increasing and the rain pushing down harder, made them laugh all the more, as Aunt Liz waved the umbrella about in a pantomime of trying to keep ­dry.

  Kate tucked the garments back into the trunk to the accompaniment of their fading laughter. Emily yawned. The monotonous sound of the rain thrumming on the roof just above their heads made her sleepy. She peered out through the window at the pelting rain washing down the glass. The wind rattled the ­panes.

  What was Emma doing right now? Was it raining there? How did they manage if it was? Maybe they’d finished their house and were already living in it. She set the box of recipes on the floor and reached for another, finding more of the same. Box after box, Emily opened and peeked inside. Why on earth had her grandmother even saved these recipes? She had always cooked from memory. Emily had never seen her grandmother follow directions for making ­anything.

  Only one big box remained at the bottom. Emily reached in and lifted it out. It seemed heavier than the others. She pried off the lid. Photographs, and something underneath. She shuffled through the pictures. Nameless people stared back at her from the backs of binders and threshers and from inside buckboards. Some stood beside old Model t’s or held reins of oxen ploughing a field. Emily found a huge wedding group photograph with twenty or thirty people posed in ­it.

  “Wow. Everyone really got into the wedding pictures years ago. Look at this, Mom.” She handed Kate the photo. “Do you know who the bride and groom are?”

  “No, just some relatives.” She handed it back to Emily, then grabbed it back again. “Wait now. That could be your ­great-­uncle Alex’s wedding to Aunt Sue. He was your grandma’s oldest brother. Or was it one of the others we never knew? I forget.” She flipped the photo over. “Yes, it says right here – Alexander and Susannah Elliott, 1900.”

  “That’s a long time ago.”

  “Sure is. Didn’t they take wonderful photos back then?” The picture Kate held was on stiff card, torn at one corner and faded yellow with time, but the images were sharp and ­clear.

  “What are these?” asked Emily, staring down at a stack of dark squares of glass on the bottom of the ­box.

  Kate looked inside. “Oh, the glass negatives!” Delight spread across her face. “So, that’s where they got to. I always wondered.”

  “Glass negatives?” Emily looked puzzled. That explained why the box was so heavy, but she didn’t understand what they ­were.

  “Yes. People used to develop their own pictures even in the ‘olden days,’” Liz explained, ruffling Emily’s ­hair.

  “How did it work?” asked Emily, turning over one of the square plates in her ­hands.

  “Well, you see how one side is just plain glass and the other side has a thin layer of something that’s kind of chipping off there on that corner? Well, that’s the emulsion,” explained Aunt Liz, getting excited about the subject. “They painted this chemical on the pieces of glass in the dark. Then exposed them in the camera and developed them.”

  “Their darkrooms weren’t fancy. They were really just a few trays of developing chemicals on a dresser in the bedroom,” Kate interjected. “They just used a flashlight with a red cloth over it as a light to work by.”

  “Your grandmother had her own darkroom too, you know,” Aunt Liz ­added.

  “She did?” asked ­Emily.

  “Sure, her old camera and developing equipment must still be around here some place.”

  “Neat,” said Emily. “I want to see them when you find them. Can we look at these? They look kind of fragile.”

  “Sure,” said Kate, moving closer to Emily. “We just have to be careful with the edges. They’re a little rough.”

  “I bet some of these are ones your grandmother took,” said Aunt ­Liz.

  Emily handed her mother the box and Liz joined them as they sat down on the floor. Sitting together in the tight circle made Emily feel safe and warm, and she was able to ignore the darkness of the thunderstorm ­outside.

  “Let’s see if they match up with the photos,” Liz suggested. They cheered each time they found a photograph and negative that corresponded. Only two negatives weren’t ­reproduced.

  “This one is your grandma and grandpa’s wedding photo. I know there’s a copy of it in one of the photo albums downstairs somewhere,” said Liz, handing the negative to ­Emily.

  “Can I see the photo?” asked ­Emily.

  “Sure, whenever I come across the albums, I’ll dig it out for you.”

  “I’ve never seen this one before.” Kate held the piece of dark glass towards the light bulb, squinting at it. “It looks like a family group, an older couple with eight kids, maybe.”

  “Let me see.” Emily peered over her mother’s shoulder. Just then the light flickered, and an instant later a crash of thunder boomed overhead. Kate put her arm around Emily, drawing her closer as they examined the negative ­together.

  “I think that’s maybe your ­greatgrand­parents when they first came out west,” said Liz. “Could be some other family though. I don’t really recognize anyone, but it’s hard to tell from a negative.”

  “Wow, what a big family,” said Emily. “When would they have come?”

  “Sometime in the 1890s, I think,” replied ­Liz.

  “Wow, just like Em –” Emily stopped short. She’d almost said “just like Emma and her family.” Her mother and aunt didn’t seem to notice the slip. Emily wondered if Emma would have known their ancestors. She’d go and ask her. Or maybe she could show her the picture. She could hear the steady drumming of the rain on the roof, and knew she wouldn’t be going anywhere for ­awhile.

  “Could we get a print made of it?” Emily blurted ­out.

  “I suppose so,” said Kate. She noted the pleading look on Emily’s face. “I could probably get Dwayne to print one for us in the darkroom over at the newspaper office.”

  “I wouldn’t mind one of Grandma and Grandpa’s wedding either. Could you get one made for me too, Mom?”

  “Me too,” said Liz, ­laughing.

  “I might as well make one for the rest of the family while I’m at it,” said Kate, chuckling. She patted Emily’s shoulder. “I’ll see if I can get Gerald Ferguson to take us tomorrow.”

  “Great,” said Emily. She stood up and started across the attic. She could hardly wait to ask Emma if she’d known her ­family.

  “Wait a minute, young lady. You’re not going to leave a mess like this, are you?” Kate swept her arm over the photos spread on the ­floor.

  “Uh, no, I guess not. Maybe I should put these negati
ves in a safe place.”

  “Good idea.”

  Emily found a small box and tucked the negatives in, separating them with tissue paper she found. “I’ll just put these in my room.”

  “Okay, but come right back.”

  Emily hurried to her bedroom and slid the box under the ledge of the window seat as thunder rumbled farther in the distance. The rain was gushing down in torrents, the wind whipping the trees outside. The dark leaden sky did not show any signs of clearing. She knew there was no chance of going out again today. But first thing tomorrow she’d look for Emma once ­more.

  Chapter Six

  The next morning Emily awoke to the squawk of sparrows when Aunt Liz opened her bedroom window. The air smelled fresh and clean in the aftermath of yesterday’s ­rain.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead.” Aunt Liz laughed and jostled Emily’s arm as she sat down on the edge of the bed. “I have to leave, Em. Gotta get back to Winnipeg.”

  “Bye, Aunt Liz. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.” Emily sat up sleepily and gave her aunt a hug. “Have a safe trip back.”

  “Thanks, kiddo. Take care of yourself.” Her aunt got up and went across the room towards the door, then paused at the head of the stairs. “By the way, Emily. I had a talk with your mother last night about taking it easier, not working so hard. She said she’d try, but you know how she is.”

  “Yeah, I know. She’s a workaholic.” Emily fiddled with her hair, and lay back on the pillow. “I just wish she’d take time to go out for a walk or a bike ride or something. She never relaxes.”

  “She’s under a lot of pressure, you know. Trying to meet demands and pay the bills. It’s not easy running your own business. But it’s important that she take time for herself too.” Liz walked over to the mirror and straightened her blazer. Emily liked the way her aunt dressed – a professional, yet casual look, not too ­old-­ladyish. Her ­grey-­blonde hair was neatly in place, yet it looked natural. Aunt Liz smoothed her skirt and headed for the stairs again. “I’ll work on her when I get back. In the meantime, just keep inviting her for walks and maybe she’ll take you up on it sometime.”