Stella pulls up her dress above her knees so it won’t get caught in the chain and heads west. She’s wobbly but definitely faster than on her first ride with Cynthia. Her father hasn’t even seen her ride her bike and he’s judging her. She stops at Main Street. To the north Stella sees the dark green mountain trimming the edge of the Valley. And the red brick library across the street, to the west.
Stella stands up on the pedals and leans forward over the handlebars. She’ll show her father how fast she can go. She feels her dress slip and she looks down. Tires screeching, a horn wailing. The car barely touches her but she falls to the ground anyway, her balance so precarious, the dress hauled up and caught in the chain. She can’t win. Her hip burns. She touches it and sees blood on her finger. She’s scraped the skin off her elbow too.
“God almighty, missy. Look both ways! I could have killed you.” A man looms over Stella, blocking the sun. It’s hard to make out his face. The sun gleams on his bald head. “Are you okay?”
Stella pushes herself up to her knees. She’s gasping, weeping, and the man holds out his hand. “Let’s get you up.”
But Stella doesn’t want to touch his hand so she gets up herself and pulls her dress free and down. “Sorry,” she says, trying not to sob, wondering why she’s apologizing.
He picks her bike up and leans it towards her, looking it over. “Bike’s okay.”
She looks at him and he stares back at her eyes. “You got off lucky, Stella Sprague.”
She looks down, self-conscious, her eyes marking her as some sort of freak. But how does he know her name? She quickly thanks him and then walks her bike across the street to the library. She hears him get in his car and drive off. She leans the bike against a tree.
The library is comforting, the universal soothing smell of dry books and polished wood filling her with a terrible melancholy. This is one library she’ll never explore with her mother. Her mother will never visit Seabury. Her mother has been turned into ash and shipped to this Uncle Isaiah whom Stella has never met. Her father had mentioned this was what her mother had always said she wanted, for her ashes to go home to her brother. She was superstitious that way, her father said, about returning to whence you came, and that sort of thing.
The library is almost empty, except for a woman who is busy at the card catalogue. Stella looks around but she doesn’t see Cynthia. The woman smiles at Stella. “If you need any help, just let me know, dear.” Then she goes back to her cards. Stella sits at a table by the window and looks at the giant bend in the river, now covered with whitecaps. A wind has come up. Stella takes out her notebook and tries to draw the waves but her heart pounds, alive in her chest, trying to get out, realizing it’s trapped. Stella understands how close she came to being hurt out in the street, hurt again. She closes her eyes and remembers how loud it was when they hit the tree, the rain, a smashing sound and glass breaking, her mother’s voice calling, then blackness, then her head heavy, too heavy, a bird chirping, as if there had been no crash, then blackness again. A month later in the hospital, her father coming in when she was finally conscious, her eyes stinging, her splitting headache, the medication, the nausea, the catheter because she couldn’t walk without barfing and falling over, her father by her bed, whispering that her mother was gone, Stella thinking he meant on a trip, her father bawling, Stella dozing off and waking up in a darkened hospital room with an empty chair by the bed, the doctor making it clear her mother was not on a trip.
She can’t tell her father about the near miss or he’ll never let her ride the bike again. Then she’ll be stuck in the house with him and the dense misery bulging between the two of them.
Just then, the library door opens. A man’s voice asks, “Mrs. MacLean, have you seen Cynthia?”
The librarian comes out of a back room. “Hello, Frank. You just missed her. She’s gone back to Granny Scotia’s, she said, to change before dinner at the diner.”
It’s Cynthia’s father. Stella has forgotten they are supposed to have the noon meal at the diner with the Seaburys. That’s what the locals call dinner. And they call dinner supper. Stella’s learning. Today is a diner dinner. Her father must have forgotten they were supposed to meet the Seaburys. He didn’t mention it when she left on her bike.
“I see . . . Stella?” Cynthia’s father walks over to the table. “My goodness, are you okay? You’re so pale, dear. I can give you a ride home and then just bring you and your father to the diner.”
“It’s okay, I have my bike, the one you gave me. My dad will want to walk.”
He studies Stella’s face. Stella sees he is trying to decide if he should push the issue or leave Stella alone. “Are you sure?”
Stella bobs her head.
“He’s all-out with preparations for the new position. Your
