business-women, couldn’t possibly think she had enough talent to make a go of it.
‘Prussian blue would be preferable.’ Meredith finally spoke. ‘Better for the digestion. You get pink and all that heavy food, and it would be too much.’
‘I know that place,’ Annie added. ‘It’s been up for rent for a while. I reckon I could help you get a good deal on it. But that doesn’t have to be a secret, Nina. It’s a plan. A good one too. You should do it.’ She reached over and clinked her glass with Nina’s.
‘I guess I’ve kept it secret from my mother and Brad. They can only see me at home with the boys. But they’d cope, wouldn’t they? I could be back home in time to make their dinner.’
‘They’d have to cope,’ said Meredith. ‘And it would do them good. Your future daughters-in-law will thank you every day of their married lives.’
Nina was thrilled with their votes of confidence. She sat back and nursed her drink. Her hands were trembling. She was already behind the counter ladling steaming borscht into bowls.
‘Now it’s your turn, Meredith.’ Annie took up the wine bottle and filled her glass. It seemed to her that the flames of the camp fire flickered with an almost supernatural intensity.
Meredith leaned back in her chair. She couldn’t remember ever seeing so many stars—an immense, broad canvas of glittering eternity, tonight as close as her own bedroom ceiling.
‘I painted Donald’s den that colour on purpose. I was sick of him being in there for hours talking on the phone, working at his stupid computer on his ridiculous ideas, leaving his toenail clippings on my pure wool carpet, taking up useable space. We’d run out of things to talk about after nearly thirty years and all I could see ahead was another thirty years of vacuuming around him, cleaning whiskers out of the sink, wiping his muddy boot prints off the parquet floors. To be perfectly frank, Donald had become just one more thing to dust.
‘I spent weeks looking at paint charts trying to decide what colour would annoy him the most and, when I found a lovely grey named after a duck—mallard grey—that was it! Donald in his mallard grey duck den! I don’t think he ever got the joke. I’ve turned the room into a place for gift-wrapping. I believe Martha Stewart has just such a room, and now, so do I. You can’t tell anyone I did it on purpose though. It’s a secret. But I’m glad I shared it with you.’
Annie and Nina weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry. To think that the dynamic partnership of Donald and Meredith—their shared artistic passion and determination to change the world—had come down to whiskers and muddy boot prints? And that Meredith had chased him out of the house as if she was taking a broom to trespassing poultry?
Annie disappeared from the circle of light and raided the haul of stolen scraps she’d stashed under the van for the fire. Her petty thievery from the nearby cabin woodpiles might be something she’d keep to herself. As she turned back to the fire with her arms full of offerings for the blaze she thought of what secret she might give up.
Annie could have come up with more hair-raising tales of illicit and outrageous behaviour that would have shocked her companions, but that wouldn’t have been in the spirit of things. So perhaps, she thought, now was the time to trust her companions with her secret. Maybe this was the real reason she’d decided to come on this trip. To find a time to tell it and rid herself of the burden that seemed to be getting heavier with each passing year.
When the fire was stoked once more, Annie began. ‘This is a strange secret, because I think I’ve kept it from myself more than I’ve kept it from anyone else.’ She paused to consider how she might best continue.
‘When I was eight, my six-year-old sister drowned in our dam.’ In her mind’s eye, Annie saw the flat oval muddy surface of the water blink in surprise.
‘I remember Dad running up to the house with Lizzie in his arms and her long black hair dripping. The drops of water made little round marks in the dust. I remember thinking that even a black tracker would never be able to find someone who’d drowned and been carried away, because I watched the drops sink into the brown earth and disappear. Water’s