The Fourth Envelope

The sign over the bakery window was painted on a pine board, dark blue on white, and Emmett had hung it in August with four brass screws. It said BOUCHARD AT THE LARKSPUR. Camille still looked up at it every morning when she pushed the sash open, and on the ninth of October she looked at it again.

It was the last full weekend of the season. The maples along the drive had gone red, and there was frost on the porch rail where the sun had not reached. The line stood in coats and scarves all the way to the lilacs.

“Six hundred pieces,” Nadia said behind her, sliding a tray onto the rack. “If they clean us out before ten I’m going home to sleep until Wednesday.”

“They’ll clean us out by half past nine.”

Two new deck ovens stood side by side in the pastry kitchen, where the old one had been. They had taken every dollar of her thirty-eight thousand five hundred, and they were hers. So was the sheeter’s lease, and the flour account in Quebec, and the name on the board. Odette Marchand, who had a one-room law office over the hardware store in Middlebury, had written the bakery’s lease herself in July and made Hallett Hotels’ people change four clauses. The bakery paid rent for the kitchen in the mornings and for the yellow cottage by the year. The inn bought its breakfast baskets from her at two seventy-five a croissant, the same as the cafés. She was still head of the kitchen, on a salary, and she still wrote the dinner menu. Five mornings a week, the window was her own business.

Odette had drawn the other papers too. On a Thursday in August, Camille and Gideon had sat in the office over the hardware store and signed an acknowledgment of parentage, with Odette’s fan turning overhead. There was a line about money in those papers, and Camille had named the figure. The birth certificate in Burlington had a name on both lines now. Tilly had been consulted about her own name and had kept it, on the grounds that it was already written inside her boots.

Winnie came along the porch at ten to eight in the raspberry cardigan, with a slip of paper.

“Twenty-two again,” she said. “That’s every weekend since the Fourth of July. I’ve stopped counting the hooks.” She looked at the line. “Shelley wants to know if you’ll need her boy on the till next summer. He’ll be sixteen.”

“Tell her yes. Josie’s off to college.”

All nineteen were still on the payroll. Curtis Ladue had been made night manager in September, with a raise, and had stopped mentioning cheese.

“Go on down,” Winnie said. “It’s nearly eight, and she’s got him in the boat. I wouldn’t miss that for a full house, and I’ve got one.”

Camille gave Nadia the ovens and went down the lawn in her whites.

Lucille was on the folding stool with the thermos. The thermometer lay on the grass. It had said sixty at half past seven, and Tilly had read it twice and declared that sixty was allowed and that it was the last day it would be.

Tilly was on the dock. She was at the far end of it, on the new timber, with her feet apart and the yellow jacket buckled over a wool sweater. She had walked there by herself on the eleventh of September, one board past where she had ever been, and then all the rest. She had not announced it beforehand. She had stood at the end for a full minute, and had come back and said, “It’s just a dock,” and gone in for her milk. She was in kindergarten now, and rode the bus in the second seat, because the first was for the little ones.

Out on the water, twenty yards off, was Biscuit. Gideon was in her.

Camille put her hand over her mouth. He was sitting in the bottom of an eight-foot boat built for one child, with the navy jacket on and his knees up level with his shoulders. He had the tiller under one arm, because there was nowhere else for it to go. The boom cleared his head by about an inch.

“She made him,” Lucille said. “She told him an instructor has to pass the test as well. He said he’d been sailing since he was six. She said, ‘Not in that one.’”

“How long has he been out?”

“Ten minutes. He’s been round the raft. He hit his head on the far side, and she heard it from there.”

Camille took the orange jacket off the rack in the boat bay, tied it on and walked out along the planks. It was eighty feet. Her daughter did not turn round. She was watching the boat with her arms folded.

He was coming back against the wind. He had to tack, and in that boat he could hardly move to do it. He put the tiller over and ducked, and the boom scraped across his hair. Biscuit came about heavily. He was pointed too high. The sail went slack along its front edge and began to flap.

Tilly cupped both hands round her mouth.

“Papa, you’re luffing!”

It carried over the whole lawn. It carried to the porch, where Winnie was, and to the line at the window.

Out on the water the man in the little boat went completely still. The sail went on flapping. His head had come round toward the dock, and even at twenty yards Camille could see his face. She had seen it when he read the front of an envelope, and when he heard a jar ring. She had not seen it like this.

“You’re still luffing!” Tilly shouted, exasperated. “Pull it in! Look where you want to go!”

He pulled it in. The sail filled. He bore away, clumsily, and the boat began to move again. He wiped his face on his shoulder, twice, which was all the room he had.

Tilly became aware of her mother beside her. She looked up. Her cheeks were pink from the cold and her eyes were perfectly calm.

“He was luffing,” she said.

“I heard.”

“I decided,” said Tilly. “On Wednesday, on the bus. I was saving it.” She turned back to the water. “He’s doing it right now. He’s just too big.”

Camille put her hand on the warm curly head and left it there. She did not say anything. Her daughter did not like a fuss made, and besides, she could not have spoken.

He landed at the second post without hitting it. It took him some time to get out. When he had both feet on the planks Tilly came down the dock and inspected his knot, and told him his tack had been late. He said, “Yes, Skipper.” His voice was not steady, and she allowed that to pass.
***
Rosalind Hallett had come up on Friday, as she did one weekend in every month, and had the Champlain Room. At four that afternoon she sat at the pine table in the cottage with her back not touching the chair. She held seven playing cards in a fan.

“Have you any queens?” she asked.

“Go fish,” said Tilly, from the chair with the cushion.

Rosalind drew a card and looked at it without pleasure.

Camille was at the counter, trimming beans for the staff supper. Bea sat on the floor by the back door with paint cards, because the lobby was to be done over the winter. Gideon was up at the inn with the roofer, about gutters. He was at the Larkspur four days in every seven now, with a desk in the old linen room behind the office. He drove to Madison Avenue on Monday nights and was back by Thursday supper. The company had not suffered. Bea said it had improved, because he had stopped hovering.

“Grandmother, do you have any fours?” Tilly asked.

It was the name she had settled on in July, after a week’s thought. Rosalind had said that it was what she was, and Tilly had said that in that case it was correct.

Rosalind handed over two fours. Tilly laid down a set and squared it.

“That’s six books for me and one for you. You keep asking for queens. You asked two turns ago, and I didn’t have any then either.”

“You might have drawn one.”

“I’d have put it down. I had three already, and Bea has the other. I saw when she dropped her hand.”

“That’s slander,” said Bea. “It’s accurate, but it’s slander.”

“I have lost at this game every month since July,” Rosalind said. “I was thought rather good at bridge.” She laid her cards face down. “Chef Bouchard, I heard something across the lawn this morning, from my window.”

“So did sixty people buying croissants.”

“I didn’t go down. I thought it was his.” She smoothed the cloth with one finger. “Desmond has taken a house in Maine, I’m told. The company bought his shares in September, and he went quietly. He sent me a letter. I returned it.”

“Did you write on it?” Tilly asked.

“I did not. One has to stop somewhere.” Rosalind picked her cards up again. “Have you any queens?”

“Go fish,” said Tilly.
***
Dinner was eighty-eight covers, the last big Saturday of the year. Camille sent out the final plate at ten past nine. At half past she sat in the office with Winnie and the binder, and Gideon came in with his legal pad and took his chair on the other side of the rolltop.

“Year to date,” Winnie said, and turned the page toward them. “Through tonight, with the last three weeks pencilled in at what’s booked.”

Camille ran her finger down it. Gideon ran his pen down the other side. They met at the bottom.

“Ninety thousand,” he said. “Loss.”

“Ninety thousand,” she agreed. “It’s what the page said in June, with fifteen percent off.”

“Last year it was four hundred and ten. If the winter holds to plan, we break even in 2028.” He looked up. “The lenders will get that on Monday. I’d like them to know who forecast it.”

“Tell them it was the innkeeper,” Winnie said. “I’m seventy-one, and I’ve never been right in front of a bank before.” She shut the reservations book and got her arm into the cardigan. At the door she stopped and looked at Gideon. She seemed to know something. “I’ve handed enough envelopes across that desk,” she said. “Good night.”

Camille frowned after her. “What was that?”

“Come out on the porch,” Gideon said.

The kitchen was dark and clean. They went through it and out to the top step, where they had once sat with an adding-machine tape. It was cold enough to see their breath. There was a half moon over the lake, and one lamp lit in the cottage.

He did not sit down. He took an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it out.

It was an ordinary white one. It was addressed in black ink, in his quick upright hand.

N. Bouchard
The Cook’s Cottage
Larkspur Inn, Saxby Point, Vt.

In the top corner he had written G. J. Hallett, Larkspur Inn. There was a stamp on it, and no postmark. Nobody had printed anything across the front.

“Who’s N.?” she said.

“Noémie. It’s on the papers we signed in August. Camille Noémie Bouchard. Odette read it out.” He had his hands in his pockets. “You wrote three times to my middle name. I thought you were owed one to yours.”

“You put a stamp on it.”

“I meant to mail it. I walked it down to the box at the end of the drive on Thursday and stood there. Then I found I didn’t trust the post with it. I’d sooner hand it to you.”

She turned it over. On the flap, small, he had written a second address. The room over the boathouse, 200 yards down the lawn. In case you would sooner answer in person.

Her fingers were not quite steady. She sat down on the step under the porch light. The envelope was thicker at one corner. She slit it along the top edge with her thumbnail, carefully, so that the flap stayed whole.

There were two sheets inside, torn from a kitchen order pad. He had written straight across the printed columns.

October 9, 2027

Camille,

You wrote to me three times, and I am six years late with an answer. I have read your letters often enough to know them. I am going to answer them in order.

On the thirtieth of August you asked whether I was all right. I wasn’t. My father had died ten days before, and I had left you nine words. You told me your hours and said Winnie would come and get you. I held a telephone every day and never finished dialling. You wrote that you baked one extra of whatever came out last and stood there holding it. I think about that most mornings. I’m sorry.

On the thirteenth of September you wrote that you were frightened and had nobody to say it to. I can’t go back and be there. I can be the person you say it to from now on. That goes for anything, at any hour, including half past four in the morning.

On the first of November you wrote, twice, that you were asking me for nothing. I believed you when I read it. You have never asked me for anything except Saturdays, the truth and a fair count. So I am the one who is asking.

Will you marry me? I would like it to be on the lawn, in June, in front of the nineteen and both grandmothers, with our daughter in charge of the rings. I will be on time.

You wrote that a person should know. I agree. You should know that I love you, and that I have since I was twenty-seven. I would like to spend the rest of my life where you are.

The ring is in the corner of the envelope. The stone is set flush with the band. I asked Nadia what would catch in dough, and she drew me a picture.

Gideon

She read it once, slowly. Then she tipped the envelope, and the ring slid out into her palm.

It was a plain gold band, a little wider than a wedding ring, with one small diamond sunk level with the metal. She ran her thumb over it. There was nothing to catch.

She looked up. He was standing on the step below her, so that their eyes were level. He had not said a word since she opened it. His face was as it had been in the boat that morning.

“You asked Nadia,” she said.

“On Monday. She told me a claw setting would last a week, and that you’d take it off and leave it on a shelf.”

“She’s right.” Camille’s eyes had filled and she let them. “You wrote it on an order pad.”

“It’s what your letters were on. And I’ve learned that things on an order pad get kept.”

She laughed. It came out wet. She held the ring up between finger and thumb, under the light.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll marry you. That’s a real answer.”

He let out a breath and sat down hard on the step beside her, as though his knees had given. He took the ring from her fingers and put it on her left hand. It fitted. She did not ask how he had known the size. She supposed Nadia had seen to that as well.

She took his face in both hands and kissed him. He held on to her, and his face was cold and his mouth was warm, and she could feel him shaking a little.

“June,” she said against his cheek. “On the lawn. But not the last weekend. Paige and Luc have booked the Champlain Room for their anniversary.”

“Whichever Saturday you say.”

“And I’m making the cake. Four tiers, with Emmett’s strawberries. I won’t have anyone else’s buttercream at my own wedding.”

“I wouldn’t dare suggest it.”

“Tilly will want to know why she wasn’t asked first.”

“I asked her on Thursday,” he said. “I told her what I meant to do, and asked whether she had any objection. She said it was sensible. Then she said that if you said no, I was still to come on Saturdays.”

Camille laughed again and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, the one with the ring on it. She folded the two sheets along their creases and put them back in the envelope.

“Walk me across,” she said.

They crossed the sixty yards of flagstones with her arm through his. The cottage kitchen was lit. Lucille was at the pine table in her dressing gown with a cup of tea. She looked at their faces and at her daughter’s left hand. She said one word in French. It was not the one she had said about the letters.

“In June, Maman.”

“Good. I’ll need a dress. I’m not wearing the fleece.” Lucille rose and kissed Camille on both cheeks. She looked up at Gideon for a moment, and then reached up and patted his face once, briskly, like a woman testing a loaf. “Take your boots off,” she said. “There’s a mat.” She carried her tea to the pull-out and shut the door.

He took his boots off and set them on the mat.

Camille stood on her toes at the refrigerator and reached past the fire extinguisher. She brought down the tin with the Breton woman on the lid, and put it on the table she had paid for. The lid stuck, as it always did, and then gave.

Three envelopes lay inside, soft at the corners, in blue ballpoint and green. She laid the fourth on top of them. It was whiter than the others. His black handwriting sat over her blue.

“It goes with the rest,” she said. “They were only ever half of a correspondence.”

She pressed the lid down until it clicked, and slid the tin to the back.

Through the open door of the small bedroom she could see the windowsill in the light from the kitchen. The mayonnaise jar stood there with its blue lid on and seven greens in the bottom. Beside it four more lay in their dusted line. Tilly was asleep on her back with both arms flung over her head.

Gideon was looking too. He had his hand flat against his back pocket.

“I start at five,” Camille said quietly. “Nadia’s off, and it’s the last Sunday of the window.”

“I know when you get up.”

“Then come to bed.” She reached past him and pushed the back door until the latch caught. Then she turned off the light over the stove.