Mr. Reed appeared at a loss as to what he should do next, whether he should come into the cottage or leave immediately. “Well, I wouldn’t want to disturb Sarah’s lesson,” he said.
“No, no. We’ve just finished it,” Miss Channing told him. She stepped back into the room. “Please, come in.”
Mr. Reed hesitated a moment, but then came into the cottage and took a seat by the window as Sarah and Miss Channing disappeared into the kitchen to serve the cake.
For a time Mr. Reed said nothing. I could tell that my presence disturbed him. Perhaps at that time he thought me an informer, certain that I’d rush back to Chatham, tell my father about his visit to Miss Channing’s cottage. Then he glanced at me with a certain apprehensiveness I’d never seen in him before. “Well, Henry, are you enjoying your classes this year?”
“I guess so,” I answered.
He smiled thinly and returned his attention to the window.
He was still staring out of it a few seconds later, when Miss Channing and Sarah came back into the room. Miss Channing placed the cake on the table in front of him and began to cut. The first piece went to Sarah, the second to Mr. Reed. Then, turning to me, she said, “Would you like a large piece?”
I shook my head, trying to be polite.
She smiled, no doubt sensing my hunger, then spoke a line that life forever proves to be a lie. “Take as much as you want, Henry. There is plenty.”
A few minutes later the four of us walked out of Miss Channing’s cottage, swung to the left, and followed Mr. Reed as he led us down Plymouth Road, then up a gentle slope to a clearing at the top of a nearby hill.
Once there, we sat down on a fallen tree, the four of us in a single line, facing back down the hill toward Black Pond. The snow had thickened by then; a layer of white gathered on the leafless trees and settled onto the brim of Mr. Reed’s hat.
“A snow like this,” Miss Channing said. “The flakes so small, but so many of them. Like confetti.”
Mr. Reed smiled at her. “Is that how you’d paint it, Elizabeth? As confetti?”
She smiled, but didn’t answer him. Instead, she walked a few paces farther on, while Mr. Reed remained in place, watching her as she reached the crest of the hill, then stood, peering out over the pond. For a moment she remained very still, as if lost in thought. Then she lifted her arms and drew them around her shoulders. It was a gesture made against the cold, quite unselfconsciously, I think, but one Mr. Reed must have experienced as a vision so beautiful and so brief that it remained with him forever after that, set the mark against which everything else would ultimately be measured.
We stood in a ragged line at the crest of the hill, facing east, across Black Pond, to where a curl of chimney smoke could be seen rising from the trees along its most distant bank.
“That smoke must be coming from your house, Mr. Reed,” Sarah said, pointing to it.
Mr. Reed nodded, his manner now strangely somber. “I should be getting back home,” he said, glancing toward Miss Channing. “Abigail is waiting.”
“It looks just like a Christmas card, if you ask me,” Sarah said happily. “The house by the pond. The snow. Just like a Christmas card, don’t you think so?”
Mr. Reed smiled, but with a curious wistfulness, as if it were something he remembered fondly from a distant past. “Yes,” he said, his eyes now fixed on the far bank of the pond. “Yes, it looks just like a Christmas card.” Then he turned away and I saw his eyes light upon Miss Channing, linger upon her profile for a moment.
“And are you going away for the Christmas holiday then?” Sarah asked him. The cold air had caused the color to rise in her cheeks and her eyes sparkled with excitement.
He seemed reluctant to answer, but did so anyway. “Yes,” he said. “I’m going to Maine for a couple of weeks. We always do that, go to Maine.”
With that, he turned quickly and led us back down the hill to Miss Channing’s cottage.
Mr. Reed stopped when he reached his car. “I’ll be getting home now,” he said, his eyes on Miss Channing.
“I’m glad you dropped by,” she told him, her voice quite soft, almost inaudible.
“Perhaps I’ll come again,” Mr. Reed said in a tone that struck me as subtly imploring, as if he were asking for some sign from her that he should return.
If she gave him one, I didn’t see it. Instead, she shivered slightly. “It’s really quite cold.”
“Yes, it is,” Mr. Reed answered, his voice now entirely matter-of-fact. “Would you like a ride into the village?” he asked Sarah and me.
We accepted his offer and climbed into the car. Mr. Reed remained outside it, facing Miss Channing, the snow falling between and around them. He spoke to her again, words I couldn’t hear, then stepped forward and offered his hand. She took it, held it for just an instant, then let it go, smiling quietly as he stepped away. It was then I saw it in all its naked force, the full measure of the love that had begun to overwhelm Mr. Reed, perhaps even some hint of the exquisite agony that was inseparable from it, not yet fierce, and certainly not explosive, but the fuse already lit.
Instead of going directly to Chatham, Mr. Reed swung to the right and drove to his own house on the other side of the pond. “I should tell my wife that I’m going to the marina,” he told us.
“The marina?” Sarah asked.
Mr. Reed nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I rented a boat-house there a few years ago. I’m building a boat in it. A fifteen-footer.”
Sarah stared at him admiringly, the thought of such a grand endeavor playing in her eyes. “When will it be finished?” she asked.
“With a little help, I could probably finish it by summer,” Mr. Reed answered.
Impulsively, without giving it the slightest thought, I suddenly made an offer that has pursued me through the years, following me through time, like a dog through the night, its black muzzle forever sniffing at my heels. “I could help you finish it,” I said. “I’d like to learn about boats.”
Mr. Reed nodded, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Really, Henry? I didn’t know you were interested in that sort of thing.”
“Yes, I am,” I told him, though even now I don’t know why I felt such an interest. I do know that it had not come from the seafaring adventure novels I often read, though that was the reason I offered Mr. Parsons the day we walked through the boathouse together. More likely, it had sprung from a voyeur’s dark urge, the allure of the forbidden already working like a drug in my mind.
We reached his house a few minutes later. Sarah and I remained in the car while Mr. Reed went inside.
“He’s such a nice man,” Sarah said. “Not an old fogy like some of them at Chatham School.”
I nodded. “Yes, he is.”
He came back out of the house almost immediately, a long roll of white paper beneath his arm, bound with twine, like a scroll. I watched as he made his way across the yard, his daughter Mary rushing down the stairs behind him while Mrs. Reed stood at the edge of the porch, wiping her hands on her apron as she watched him trudge back toward us through the falling snow. She was still in that position when he pulled himself into the car, but Mary had bounded toward us, then stopped, smiling mischievously as she attempted to roll a snowball in her hands.
Once inside the car, Mr. Reed started the engine and began to pull away. We’d drifted back only a few feet, when Mary suddenly rushed forward and hurled the snowball toward us. It landed on the hood and exploded just at the base of the windshield, sending a flurry of white onto the glass. Mr. Reed turned on the wipers, and as they swept across the windshield, I saw Mrs. Reed still standing on the porch, watching motionlessly as Mr. Reed continued backward, away from her, leaving two dark cuts in the snow.
I told my father about that scene as we stood together on the hill overlooking Black Pond.
“Do you think she’d already sensed it?” my father asked me when I’d finished the story. “I mean, before Christmas. Before they all went to Maine together? Do you think Mrs. Reed already suspected something?”