The Ice Cradle by Mary Ann Winkowski, Maureen Foley

do like the idea of working chronologically,” I began. “I like that a lot. But we have an awful lot of material, and at some point, that concept is going to break down. People are going to want to follow the drama of the whole situation and may start to feel impatient or lose interest if the telling of the story, for lack of a better term, is being delayed by too much information. I don’t know if this is making any sense to you.”
    From the expression on Caleb’s face, I suspected that so far, my concept was as clear as mud.
    “Go on,” said Caleb.
    “For example, at the beginning of the story, our story, meaning the book we create that
tells the story
of those hours, we might have, oh, profiles of some of the passengers and their reasons for boarding the boat. This would serve to draw in the reader and add a feeling of anxiety and tension, because we know what’s about to happen to them. It’s poignant, in a way, to think of them getting on that boat and having absolutely no idea that they’ll never reach New York. That can really hook the reader emotionally. But later, we might be less interested in every last passenger and much more interested in how the news reached the island, who heard it and what they did first, how they felt.”
    “Okay,” said Caleb.
    “So I thought that the main book, the one people would look at if they were only going to examine one, might be a very creative if somewhat loose chronology using the most dramatic pieces we have, whatever we decide they are. Some passenger profiles, say, followed by a weather report, followed by thatfirst-person narrative you have about the captain’s retiring for the night, those quotes about hearing the ship’s warning siren, maybe that lace handkerchief that washed up, anything that would make the story of that night come alive. I’m not saying that these would be the actual pieces, but the idea is that we’d find documents and maybe some objects that generate emotion of one sort or another and then we’d string them together like pearls on silk. All in the service of telling a dramatic story.”
    “That’s great,” Caleb whispered.
    “Really
?” I thought I’d sounded dense, slow, and inarticulate.
    “I like it,” he said. “And of course, there would have to be other books, given that we have so many other documents.”
    “Acid-free boxes might work for some of them. I don’t see everything in a book. Also, I wouldn’t rule out using some of the documents as the basis for exhibition pieces.”
    “Like what?” Caleb asked.
    “You might record people reading the first-person accounts. Maybe the descendants of the islanders who actually wrote them. There could be an audio component to the exhibit. It wouldn’t be very expensive.”
    “Maybe actors and actresses!” Caleb said. “We’ve had some fairly high-profile vacationers.”
    “Maybe,” I said.
    “This is great,” said Caleb. “I like these ideas a lot.”
    “There’s one more thing,” I added. “Those snapshots, the ones by Honor Morton. We really should do something with them.”
    “They’re amazing, aren’t they?”
    “You couldn’t frame them all—it would be too expensive—but maybe you could have them put between mats.”
    “We could have an exhibition! Celebrate the opening of the—
Larchmont
Archive!”
    “She deserves it,” I said. “She had an amazing eye. Whatever became of her?”
    “It was strange,” Caleb replied. “It seems she left the island when she was twenty years old and never came back. There were rumors that she—” He broke off.
    “Died?”
    “Took her life,” he said sadly.

Chapter Ten

    I MET LAUREN IN the upstairs hall. It was about one thirty, and I had walked back to the inn from the Historical Society, planning to get a few hours’ sleep before I had to pick up Henry. With Caleb’s permission, I’d filled a sturdy plastic file box with most of the documents I hoped to include in our principal volume. My plan