Anita Sheve - Wedding in December

Copyright 2005 by Anita Shreve

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group, USA

237 Park Avenue , New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.hachettebookgroupusa.com

First eBook Edition: October 2005

ISBN: 978-0-316-02425-9

ALSO BY ANITA SHREVE

Light on Snow

All He Ever Wanted

Sea Glass

The Last Time They Met

Fortunes Rocks

The Pilots Wife

The Weight of Water

Resistance

Where or When

Strange Fits of Passion

Eden Close

for my father

T he glaciers are receding, she said. Nora peered through the window as if she could see the progress of said glaciers some ten thousand miles north. I read it in the paper. This morning.

The view, Harrison had noted before hed sat down, was of still-green lawns and dormant rosebushes, of a wrought iron fence and a garden bench, of ornamental grasses and white pines. Beyond the considerable acreage was a steel ribbon of river and beyond that a range of mountains, blue-gray in the morning light.

The birds must be confused, he said.

They are. I... I see them flying north all the time.

Is it bad for business?

No. Not really. No ones canceled. Though the ski areas are suffering.

Nora left the window and moved to the chair opposite. He watched her cross her legs, a cuff riding just above the edge of a black leather boot and making a slim bracelet of smooth white skin. Harrison superimposed the woman he saw now over the memory of the seventeen-year-old girl hed once known, a girl with a soft face and large almond-shaped eyes, a girl who had been graceful in her movements. The woman before him was forty-four, and some of the softness had left her face. Her hair was different, too. She wore it short, swept behind her ears, a cut that looked more European than American.

When theyd met just moments earlier at the foot of the stairs in the front hallway, Nora had been standing at a small reception desk. Shed glanced up and seen Harrison, and for a moment shed examined him as an innkeeper might a guest one had not yet attended to. Harrison, shed said then, advancing, and his own smile had begun. As Nora had embraced him, Harrison had felt both unnerved and buoyanta cork floating in uncharted waters.

Your... your room is comfortable? she asked.

He remembered this about her. The slight stutter, as if hesitant to speak. No, not a stutter; more a stutter step.

Very, he said. Great views.

Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee?

Coffee would be fine. Thats quite a machine there.

It makes espresso with a lot of crema, she said, standing. Its a draw, actually. Some of the guests have said theyve come back for the coffee in the library. Well, for that and for the dumbwaiter. I put the dining room upstairs. To take advantage of the views.

On either side of the bookshelves were half columns, and below those shelves were cabinets. On one wall, there was a built-in bench upholstered in lichen stripes. The windowsa set of three facing westhad panes in the tops only, so that from the leather couch on which Harrison was seated he had an unobstructed view of the mountains.

How long has this been an inn? he asked.

Two years.

I was sorry to hear about your husband.

You sent a card.

He nodded, surprised that Nora remembered. There must have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cards for such a distinguished man.

Renovations, she said, making a gesture so as to take in the entire building. Renovations had to be made.

Youve done a terrific job, he replied, slightly jarred by the non sequitur.

Harrison had followed signs from the center of town to the inn and then had taken the long drive up the hill to the top. When hed reached the parking lot, the view of the Berkshire Mountains had opened up and stopped his heart in the same way that, as a boy at Cinerama, his heart had always paused as the camera had soared up and over a cliff edge to reveal the Grand Canyon or the Rift Valley or the ice fields of Antarctica.

Hed walked with his suitcase to the front steps, noting along the way the pruned bushes, the raked lawns, and, in a maze that had perhaps lost its challenge, the expertly trimmed hedges. The inn was sheathed in white clapboards and shingles and sported a chimney that tilted slightly forward. The windows, unadorned, shone in the morning light. Like many houses built at the turn of the century, it had gables of differing widths and porches sprouting unconventionally at odd angles. The outline of the roof, Harrison thought, would be almost impossible to draw from memory.

Inside, the inn had a crisp edge that had been accomplished in part, Harrison thought, with a great deal of white paint and chrome. Much as he admired the inn, however, he wondered if visitors ever lamented the lost house, the one Carl Laski had inhabited.

This used to be an inn. Years ago, Nora said. After World War II, it became a private home. Theres an early photograph. Behind you on the wall.

Harrison stood and leaned in toward the wall, balancing himself with his hand on the back of the couch. The photograph, framed in dark walnut, was remarkably detailed and clear, every blade of grass and twig made distinct with a kind of vision denied the naked eye. The picture was of a white shingled building with a cupola on its roof. It looked to be November or early March, to judge from the light dusting of snow that outlined the furrows of a garden. At the rivers edge, there was a trail of mist, but he saw, on closer inspection, that it was really smoke from a moving train, the train itself a blur, merely a shadow.

The photograph dates from 1912, Nora said. It was made from a glass negative. Theres a rose garden there. And a racetrack.

Harrison sat again on the couch and wondered if anyone else had arrived yet. He had wanted to be the first, to see Nora without the noise of the others. It was an inn, then a house, and then an inn again? he asked.

She smiled at his confusion. When Carl and I moved here, it was a private house. We lived here for fifteen years. After he died... after he died, I had the idea of reconverting it to an inn. It had always wanted to be an inn. Even when it was a house.

How many rooms are there?

There used to be twenty-two.

How did you manage?

We closed most of the rooms off. Would you like more coffee?

No thanks. Im fine. Any of the others here yet?

Agnes said shed be here by lunch. Bill and Bridget, too. Rob... Rob wont be here until later.

Robs coming? Harrison asked with pleasure. He hadnt seen Rob Zoar in... well, in twenty-seven years. Harrison was startled by the number and recalculated. Yes, twenty-seven. Hes in Boston now, isnt he? I think I read that.

He performs all over the world. He gets wonderful reviews.

I was surprised to hear he was a pianist. He kept it quiet at Kidd, didnt he?

I think he tried to resist it.

It seems like this wedding came together very fast, he said.

It did.

Too fast for Harrisons wife, Evelyn, to rearrange her schedule. Bill had sent Harrison an e-mail saying that he and Bridget were getting marriedat the innand he wanted Harrison and Evelyn to come. Harrison and Bill had for a time kept in touch (their families had gone skiing together twice), but Harrison had had no idea at all about Bill and Bridget.