Free Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara Page B

him,but Jacob’s father had somehow finagled an agreement, driving his son down two hours of dirt roads and at least two flat tires a trip to Lincoln Bell’s Connecticut studio once a week, from the time he was sixteen until he went down to New York in 1926.
    “Oh, he wasn’t nearly so ornery as the public believed.” He went quiet, almost somber, and she wondered if bringing up Lincoln Bell had somehow been a mistake. “But people often want to believe the worst of people, don’t they?”
    “I suppose they do,” she said uncertainly.
    He looked away with an attempt at a smile. “Sorry. It’s just that we got some bad news from my cousin Brieghel today.”
    Jacob never talked about Berlin—he had plenty of stories about the print shop in Amsterdam, and Spain, which he’d loved, and London, where he had stopped to earn traveling money. But about Berlin, where he’d spent months with Brieghel and his wife, he’d said almost nothing at all.
    “What news?”
    He shook his head as if he’d rather not elaborate, and Dez’s mind turned to the latest stories coming out of Germany, the kinds of stories you read sidelong in the newspaper, sliding away from the words even as you took them in, telling yourself that things couldn’t really be as bad as they were made out to be.
    “So everyone’s talking about the big meeting next week,” he said.
    “There’s a very good chance they’ll take Whistling Falls, but Jacob, is your cousin all right?”
    He chewed his upper lip, as if deciding whether to speak. Then he said, “His wife wants to leave. She thinks they should get to England while the getting is good.”
    “It’s really that bad? Will they go?”
    “He’s going to give it a few more months, through the summer, hope for the best. In the meantime, try to put money aside. That shop is everything to them.”
    “You must worry.”
    “He doesn’t think it can go much further. I guess a lot of people don’t. They think the Nazis are preposterous, and deluded if they think they can get away with all this. I was there during that boycott of Jewish shops and businesses, and it was all very unpleasant but no one really took it seriously.”
    Still. “It must have been terrible,” she said quietly.
    His face seemed to shadow. Dez would one day try to sketch that shadow—it was a certain lowering of his eyelids, a setting of his lips.
    He walked over to the window, put his hands in his pockets, and looked out for a few moments. Then he spun around with an air of decisiveness. “Let’s talk of pleasant things,” he said. “Did your friend end up coming?”
    “She did, and I was thinking this morning that it seems like more than just yesterday that she was here.” When weather changed abruptly, transitioning to another season within hours, time felt altered. Abby arrived during what still felt like winter, and then in a matter of hours, spring had arrived with warm wind and rainstorms. Even now, the room was darkening with another spring storm.
    “I’m a bit concerned about her. She doesn’t have a job to go to, doesn’t have any money.”
    “Brave of her. Or foolish.”
    “That’s what I thought. Although, it almost seemed like she was hiding something. I don’t know.”
    “Maybe she has a fancy man.” He smiled at her surprise. “Is she that kind of girl?”
    “She did say she would model if she had to.”
    “Well, there you go.”
    Dez wondered if she’d been naïve. Maybe a secret lover was the reason Abby had been so reticent. “She does pride herself on being a bit wild. Her only definite plan was to join the Art Students League.”
    “Is she talented?”
    “A bit too derivative perhaps, but she’s good, yes.” She headed to the shelf where she’d put Abby’s sketch, then stopped herself. Asa had nailed that right; she was a bit embarrassed by it.
    “Dr. Proulx commissioned another painting,” he said. “He seems to have taken an interest in me. I’m not sure why, I don’t