her money, we’re all happy. If it isn’t you, she’ll find someone else. Don’t worry about it.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. I’d rather you than some stranger hanging off my shore with a pair of binoculars.”
Normal, all very normal. Who wouldn’t be a little depressed after what the newspapers would call a “tragic accident,” huh, Ed? And so maybe since you didn’t like Tamara Collins all that much anyway, you’ll take what she said with a whole shakerful of salt and say the hell with her and all her talk about Mother’s need for sedation and Mother’s raving about voices and watchers, and you’ll just decide that Mother is actually a nice normal crackpot of a female who just decided to come live on a deserted rock and rebuild a weird shack, for the fun of it. You take Tamara’s money (no, my money, Rae supposed) and don’t bother to keepquite as close an eye on things as you tell her you’re doing, and we’ll all be happy.
Besides, someone rich enough to own an entire island in the San Juans is bound to be a little flaky anyway.
In any case, the discomfort of talking about Tamara had distracted Ed from the possibility of another attack, and when he finished admiring the unusual handle on her hammer, he stretched out to drop it into its loop—even pointing the head in the right direction, either by intent or by accident.
“So, you build a lot of stuff?” he asked with a dubious glance at the strange-looking object (modernistic sculpture? clothes dryer? alien antenna?) that had so occupied her she hadn’t heard his boat approach. Rae thought she knew the source of his discomfort; it was something she had been dealing with all her adult life, since that first hardware store owner had tried to talk her into a lighter hammer.
“I’m a furniture maker. Tables and desks, storage chests and chairs, sometimes kitchen cabinets if people want a custom job. I specialize in inlay work.”
This last was the deliberate addition she used to nudge people away from the mental image of badly designed coffee tables with uneven legs and into the realm of the true craftsman. People who knew their stuff would at this point ask her name, and recognize it. Others like Ed would not know her from Joan of Arc, but would nonetheless grant her the aura of Artist. Ed was nodding wisely.
“We got a lot of people up here who paint, do pottery, that kind of stuff. Guy on Lopez, sells his pots in Seattle for three, four hundred dollars each.”
Rae did not tell Ed that her small pieces went for five figures in New York and Los Angeles, and figured that he wouldn’t be too impressed that one of her more experimental armoires was owned by MOMA, but he seemed happier now that he could think of her as one of those artistic types. Artistic tendencies explained a lot—even, it would appear, threatening your deliveryman with a hammer.
“Another coffee, Ed?”
“Oh no, thanks, Mizz Newborn.”
“Mr. De la Torre, anyone who nearly gets clobbered by a woman’s hammer and still agrees to carry away her dirty laundry ought to be able to call her by her first name. It’s Rae.”
He ducked his head in embarrassment—not just, it seemed, at the indelicate subject of dirty underwear. “Yeah, it’s funny. I first heard your name in the boathouse … short hair and heavy coat and all—it was kind of confusing when your daughter called you ‘Mother.’ Wasn’t till you spooked when I came up behind you just now that I was sure you weren’t some kind of trans—whatever. You know, like you read about. Always thought it must be confusing for their families, and … Well, anyway. Next time I’ll toot the horn,” he said, wrenching the subject violently back to the very beginning of their conversation. “Good thing you didn’t happen to have a shotgun leaning against the tree. I’d have sure got a surprise then, wouldn’t I?”
Rae had been under the strong impression that a move on her part, back under the
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. I’d rather you than some stranger hanging off my shore with a pair of binoculars.”
Normal, all very normal. Who wouldn’t be a little depressed after what the newspapers would call a “tragic accident,” huh, Ed? And so maybe since you didn’t like Tamara Collins all that much anyway, you’ll take what she said with a whole shakerful of salt and say the hell with her and all her talk about Mother’s need for sedation and Mother’s raving about voices and watchers, and you’ll just decide that Mother is actually a nice normal crackpot of a female who just decided to come live on a deserted rock and rebuild a weird shack, for the fun of it. You take Tamara’s money (no, my money, Rae supposed) and don’t bother to keepquite as close an eye on things as you tell her you’re doing, and we’ll all be happy.
Besides, someone rich enough to own an entire island in the San Juans is bound to be a little flaky anyway.
In any case, the discomfort of talking about Tamara had distracted Ed from the possibility of another attack, and when he finished admiring the unusual handle on her hammer, he stretched out to drop it into its loop—even pointing the head in the right direction, either by intent or by accident.
“So, you build a lot of stuff?” he asked with a dubious glance at the strange-looking object (modernistic sculpture? clothes dryer? alien antenna?) that had so occupied her she hadn’t heard his boat approach. Rae thought she knew the source of his discomfort; it was something she had been dealing with all her adult life, since that first hardware store owner had tried to talk her into a lighter hammer.
“I’m a furniture maker. Tables and desks, storage chests and chairs, sometimes kitchen cabinets if people want a custom job. I specialize in inlay work.”
This last was the deliberate addition she used to nudge people away from the mental image of badly designed coffee tables with uneven legs and into the realm of the true craftsman. People who knew their stuff would at this point ask her name, and recognize it. Others like Ed would not know her from Joan of Arc, but would nonetheless grant her the aura of Artist. Ed was nodding wisely.
“We got a lot of people up here who paint, do pottery, that kind of stuff. Guy on Lopez, sells his pots in Seattle for three, four hundred dollars each.”
Rae did not tell Ed that her small pieces went for five figures in New York and Los Angeles, and figured that he wouldn’t be too impressed that one of her more experimental armoires was owned by MOMA, but he seemed happier now that he could think of her as one of those artistic types. Artistic tendencies explained a lot—even, it would appear, threatening your deliveryman with a hammer.
“Another coffee, Ed?”
“Oh no, thanks, Mizz Newborn.”
“Mr. De la Torre, anyone who nearly gets clobbered by a woman’s hammer and still agrees to carry away her dirty laundry ought to be able to call her by her first name. It’s Rae.”
He ducked his head in embarrassment—not just, it seemed, at the indelicate subject of dirty underwear. “Yeah, it’s funny. I first heard your name in the boathouse … short hair and heavy coat and all—it was kind of confusing when your daughter called you ‘Mother.’ Wasn’t till you spooked when I came up behind you just now that I was sure you weren’t some kind of trans—whatever. You know, like you read about. Always thought it must be confusing for their families, and … Well, anyway. Next time I’ll toot the horn,” he said, wrenching the subject violently back to the very beginning of their conversation. “Good thing you didn’t happen to have a shotgun leaning against the tree. I’d have sure got a surprise then, wouldn’t I?”
Rae had been under the strong impression that a move on her part, back under the
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