Lea...
What was she doing? Maggie looked down at the paper thin old caftan that the breeze molded against her from breast to thigh. Looked around her at cottages she couldn't be sure were empty. Looked up at the sun, high overhead.
She thought and then quickly decided not to think of just how long she'd been standing there. Ignoring Lea's presence was not so easy. Stepping back into the kitchen, she looked to the tiny clock on the stove.
Quarter of one - she couldn't have been lost in a fog out there for three whole hours.
One-thirty on Tuesday. Why did the time bring a day with it? A day and a date? One-thirty on Tuesday, September eighth...
"Maggie! Open the fucking door and let me in!" Lea rattled the hooked screen door limiting her to the porch and stopped when she saw the other woman watching her from the kitchen. "Christ, Maggie, you didn't forget, did you?" But the redheaded woman with her round face and full-curved body wasn't really asking.
Maggie finally moved, flipping off the hook and going straight around to her room to dig through the wicker trunk for the most normal clothes she could find.
She'd left all her office clothes in New Hampshire. She couldn't even remember why, unless it was just that they had no longer mattered. Not with what she'd heard, what she'd been setting out to do. But down at the bottom of the trunk - she'd been sure that she'd kept something -
There. She pulled out a mid-calf length skirt of dark blue cotton. It had a fine pattern of green threading scrolling over it, but it was simpler than anything else she owned. And under it, a short sleeved shirt of the same cloth. She was tucking the shirt into the skirt waistband with one hand, brushing her hair back with the other and still her mind couldn't break out of its senseless spinning.
Lea talked from the next room, wandering from shelf to shelf. Maggie thought Lea talked to her, but her ears couldn't pick words from the buzzing. Lea. Court. Lea'd volunteered to go to court with her, for the mess that Danny had roped her into. The mess that had scared her so much, she'd scared HIM...
"Is this okay?" She stopped in the bedroom doorway and Lea looked around.
"What you had on wasn't bad." Lea was female enough to not sound altogether pleased. "You look pretty normal."
It figured Lea'd like the caftan. It was so old it was almost transparent and nobody could accuse Lea of hiding anything. The waitress's lushness overpowered anything she wore, from her uniform to what should have been an unremarkable green skirt and sleeveless yellow top.
Maggie couldn't imagine NOT hiding and the redhead was heading for crowds looking like a buttercup in heat. But she'd also volunteered to keep her company and was the closest thing to a woman friend
Maggie'd had in years.
"You forgot, didn't you?" Lea was asking again, leading the way to the car parked behind Maggie's.
* * * * * * * * *
All Danny wanted to do was stay out of jail long enough to collect his money. That was what sent him to work, to a job he'd held for maybe three weeks, which had to be some record for that summer. He even got there on time.
A fact that Russ pointed out, seeing his dishwasher in the middle of wrapping an apron around his narrow waist, preparing to start cleaning up after the breakfast crowd before the lunch prep cooks had turned up.
"Weren't you supposed to be -"
"Fuck off," Danny said.
The kid could be entertaining, sort of like having a mouse run out of its hole to screech at him, but through the kitchen door, Russ saw someone enter. Goddamn Pat showing up again - that wasn't so funny. Predictable in a stupid kind of way, but not funny.
Taking his time, Russ moved down the narrow aisle behind the bar.
Lea wanted to know if she'd forgotten.
From Lea's car, Maggie looked back. Only hours before, she'd stood there, unable to make herself run away. Only hours - her eyes clung to the rust on green Dodge as Lea backed rashly out onto the street.
Only the night before, she'd waited by the dock.
Forgotten - she'd give her life to forget. At that sweeping thought, she quieted. More accurately, she'd give her life for there having been nothing TO forget.
Court. Danny and his lawsuit. They wanted to ask HER if he was mentally competent to take legal action. Wanted to ask HER about sanity.
How could they expect her to deal with this? Gaffer - somebody'd killed Gaffer and they were worried about some smartass kid working the system. Why were they worried about Danny instead of Gaffer?
Numbly, she found herself pulled along in the redhead's wake. Town, then the court building. Police all around the entrance. A metal detector that stopped Lea twice and allowed Maggie through with bitter ease.
There'd been a police station, when she'd first come there. Another official place. But that memory too she pushed aside.
As Lea pushed her own thoughts aside to focus shadowed green eyes on the other woman's distraction.
Lea'd had better days. It was better now than the morning. But this was better than sitting around idle. And Maggie was mess enough for half a dozen people. She looked like if she once stopped moving, she'd shiver herself into some kind of fit.
"Here." Lea elbowed aside a couple of confused looking kids, and then a scruffy looking woman with a baby to plop Maggie down on one of the wooden benches running the length of the central hall. "Now what?"
Maggie blinked and shook her head hard. She hadn't survived so much and so long by losing it. She couldn't afford to lose her nerve there. Gaffer - Gaffer'd have expected better than that of her.
'Now what?' That was a good question. But part of this was easy. Part didn't even need thinking about. Which left more room for what she tried NOT to think of. "There'll be docket schedules -"
Lea looked blankly at her.
"There." She pointed to the bulletin boards scattered along the walls. "Beside the entrance to each courtroom, there'll be a case list." She scrambled to get some sense together. "This should be a civil case, two insurance companies, and Danny's name."
Lea shot her an odd look and wandered off. It took only a few minutes to find it. The notice was posted beside the courtroom to the left of where she'd dumped Maggie. That held less interest to her than the bronze haired woman who looked around her with a feral kind of tension.
"What's with you and courts?" Lea asked from just beside her, knowing that the other woman hadn't seen her return. This time Maggie didn't even jump.
She was studying the state troopers camped around the clerk's office across from them. Close at hand, there was a terrible fascination about them. One of them - she was almost sure one of them was the man from the dock the night before. Louis. That had been the name. The trooper to the right of the others, that had to be Louis.
Cops. Everywhere she looked they wandered about, with uniforms from half a dozen towns. The only thing missing was running into the one from that first day. The one who'd told her she was too late.
Maybe that was why she'd suddenly stopped running, stopped so completely that she'd spent three years in one place, long enough to think of that cottage as home. Utter failure could be relaxing.
"Its not like this is about you or anything," Lea pointed out. "I mean its Danny's thing. Its not even a traffic ticket."
For the first time, Maggie studied the redhead with attention enough to see the circles beneath the bloodshot green eyes and see some signs of wear and tear. Had she even heard about Gaffer? She hadn't mentioned a word and Maggie didn't see how anyone would have failed to at least comment. Even a stranger would have commented. Things like that - they didn't happen there. Not to anyone, let alone someone most everyone knew, in one way or another.
But Lea was following her own line of thought. "Are you in some kind of trouble or something? Is that why you're so freaked? But shit, with the cards and all, you do crazy stuff all the time. How could THIS freak you out?"
The erotic buttercup that was Lea shimmered green-gold, like the frames of a cartoon passing just a hair too slow, with a flicker she shouldn't have been able to see. But then she saw a lot of things she shouldn't have seen. Like hollow things that should have been solid. Or bits of souls. Gleaming gold fragments drifting through the empty universe within the atom.
She supported herself reading Tarot cards for tourists and believed in things that made her angry and other people nervous. She saw what one saw if they had no doors to close and bolt against the outer world. Saw what she would not have chosen to see, what she could not look away from.
As far back as she could remember, she'd been trying to reach normal and failing, but when she saw how far outside the lines her life had gone, she scared herself nearly as badly as her lifestyle frightened people like the rental agent.
The rental agent - they were going to sell her cottage. She'd forgotten that again, with what had happened after.
God, how she hated those lines. The ones that tucked some things inside, labelling them as good, and others outside, labelling them as something else. Locking one in, locking one out. Separating. Except for where she was in 'no line' territory, where one could see occasional flashes of gold in the darkness. It was a lonely place, where she was. And where Gaffer was. Had been. That was how she'd made that unlikely friend. He too had been familiar with the place outside the lines.
"Are you in some kind of trouble?" Lea's persistance penetrated Maggie's haze of questions. "Should I sit on the other side of the hall? Pretend I don't know you?"
Maggie blinked and then shook her head. If she were in trouble, it wasn't the kind that the waitress meant. "You don't have to be IN trouble to GET in trouble around places like these," she said finally.
"Things just start - happening - and its like a car without brakes going down hill. It doesn't care what it runs over until it runs out of steam."
Like something had run over Gaffer.
Where was he now? In the same sick way she'd - known - something the afternoon before, she was afraid she knew. She was afraid of turning to face that endless ocean from whose shore she made her tiny casts for bits she shared with strangers. She was afraid of being drawn out on the water, terrified of balancing on some fragile brittle skin whose floating atop the depths defied all gravity and sense. Afraid of going anywhere near where what had been Gaffer now knew all that she had wanted to know, all she'd craved knowing, where the iron will to which she'd been drawn, and from which she'd run, would still be intact, strong enough to not dissipate into the whole -
He was out there.
Safely inland, surrounded by a different kind of danger, she felt it as strongly as her irrational terror of stepping onto one of the decks that spent day after day defying all logic. He wasn't lost, as she'd spent her life. Not clinging to some bit of driftwood while the waves thinned what was her until there was no her...
Lea was like everyone else. Lea asked what could freak her out after card reading, like she thought Maggie CHOSE to dwell in those places outside the lines, and the joke was that the only thing Maggie'd ever wanted was an answer. One answer. One set of limits. One explanation. And her adopted parents' gift to her had been a vocabulary of questions.
She'd been so sure for so long that if she could only have understood, then the feeling of being exposed, of being locked outside some safety that enclosed everyone else, of being abandoned and without walls - those feelings would all have been silenced. Even if they'd known that there were no answers, they could have lied to her, at least at the beginning. When she'd felt sure of the question.
Back when she had thought she knew her question, they could have pretended to know an answer...
Maggie looked around her at a kind of place that had once been familiar. "Nothing here cares what it runs over."
"Ms. Stevens?" A man stood in the door of the courtroom beside them.
Lea looked over and saw Maggie staring at the state troopers across the hall.
"Margaret Stevens?"
Frowning, Lea put energy into the elbow digging into Maggie's ribs.
"What?"
Lea motioned to the man beside them. "He's calling you. Christ, pay attention."
Reluctantly, Maggie got to her feet. The man looked harmless enough. But then he wasn't the driver of that car rolling down hill. He wasn't even a passenger. He was the clerk of the court. He stood off to one side of the road and took notes on which way the car swerved and whose bushes it flattened. People didn't come into it.
"Ms. Stevens?" He didn't even seem surprised at not being heard, which was kind of sad. But then, he didn't listen either, assuming her identity simply because she'd risen.
She thought of that as they walked away. He'd told her the case had been postponed till Thursday and she hadn't spoken a single word to him. He'd said that Danny was unable to make it. That he was out on a fishing boat or something.
He made that sound like running away to the carnival.
"Now what are you pissed about?" Lea asked as she unlocked her door and watched Maggie fume. "You got out of it didn't you?"
"For today. Its all to do over again Thursday. And the little shit got someone to lie for him. He's not out. I saw him. I saw him last night..."
Last night...
"And you're not in any trouble," Lea said, putting the car in gear. "All this panic is because you just don't like court houses and cops."
"I'm not in trouble," Maggie said tiredly. "Not the way you mean, anyway."
But then there were all kinds of trouble.
The big man leaned back and let Pat sweat. Russ had created a - situation. THEY had made the mess.
One there was no getting away from without someone getting screwed. And screwed was screwed, fast or slow, rough or gentle.
The feral blond he'd married, that was one kind of screwing. They knew each other, took their sidetrips, wandered back with newly sharpened fierceness, like they found companionship in some bitter grieving for softer things lost.
Lost. Like the girl had been when she'd first turned up there, wandering through his door like someone cast up on the tide.
A summer town always had its discards, but she hadn't been that kind of lost. Not separated from a nighttime companion, not stranded without bus fare somewhere, not waking from some medicated holiday. Disconnected was closer. But in her disconnection, had been another kind of awareness, like another kind of mind looked out, one without labels or words, with bigger definitions. One with no word for armor. One without need for anger...
It had been eerie. He'd never seen anyone so completely defenseless, and so smoothly unreachable.
Even the card thing, such craziness should have been the chink in her armor, but that was as smooth as the rest of her. He'd let her camp at that back table and lay out those damnable cards for hours at a stretch and watched as she came back every day that week. He'd given her a sandwich and soda now and again, in exchange for the business she drew. Talked to her a moment the first day, longer the second, and more every day after that, all the time sliding along all the smooth surfaces, looking for the angle, the crack, the chink that would let him translate her into something more familiar.
And the cottage had been empty. A four month fling had moved on, and he'd already taken the edge off his - loss - with the only one who knew him. He'd been calmer for the moment. And fascinated.
At the end of the first week, he'd proposed a business arrangement for the summer season. Generous instincts were all well and good, but he had no doubt his curiosity would fade soon enough and things needed to have something in them for both, if they weren't to go sour. So he bargained for twenty percent of what she made and four nights of her presence, two weekend, two weeknight. Three days later he told her about a place that might be for rent cheap, since it was already into the season, and gave her the corporation phone number.
It had taken her another two days to call, a time that doubled his curiosity about her mental processes.
And in the nearly three years since, with his occasional flings housed elsewhere, his curiosity had not dulled.
He was definitely not in a mood that afternoon to overlook Pat's role in this clusterfuck. He hadn't taken care over his forty-seven years only to have some two-bit car salesman bring it all crashing down around him.
"I don't know what the hell you're bitching about," the man had said, shoving the empty bar stool with his foot, sending its vinyl top to spinning. "I did what you asked. Put out the word, told them to have someone call the people here and send someone by to say the place was up for sale. Its not my fault you like to keep your 'squeezes' two feet from your back door."
"She's NOT my 'squeeze'. Get your mind out from behind your zipper," Russ said with ominous calm.
Danny'd heard that voice before. Taking a mouthful of the sandwich he'd made for himself, he moved a half inch farther back behind the half doors between kitchen and bar.
"Right. You just adopted her when she wandered in off the street, gave her some half-assed job and then a fucking bargain rent. Tell me another."
What the hell did this have to do with Mag? And he didn't care if the guy was Russ's age or twice that. Nobody mouthed off at Russ. The guy was asking to be decked. He'd seen Russ toss out troublemakers before. Danny almost choked on a chunk of ham and turned red with his effort not to cough. He'd fucking choke till he turned blue before he'd miss seeing what Russ would do to this guy.
The big man turned slowly away from the liquor list growing under one ham-like hand. "You want a cookie for making a fucking mess of a simple problem? You want maybe a bonus because you don't know who you can 'front' to and who you can't by now? Shit, the kid in the kitchen knows more about who's safe to give credit to and who isn't. HE could have called it better than you. Get out of my fucking face before I fix your mistake the way I'd like to," the big man said coldly and went back to his list.
The other man slid off the stool abruptly and Danny jumped back from the kitchen door, frowning over what Ned's old man was doing letting Russ talk to him like that, wondering just what it was the guy had been told to do. Wondering what it all had to do with Maggie.
Watching Pat walk stiffly out, Russ told himself that maybe now the man would stay away for a while.
Some flicker by the kitchen doors caught his attention and he kept from looking. The only thing more stupid than doing something stupid was looking furtive about it, in case anyone had any doubts.
So the kid had listened. Russ could have been quieter, could have taken the man outside. All the kid could know was that Russ thought Pat had been a lazy asshole. That couldn't be much of a flash.
The kid wasn't the problem. Even Pat wasn't. Not any more.
Now it was how far she'd go. The man perched on the edge of the cooler frowned across the dark empty room.
Max wasn't wondering about much of anything as the net surfaced. Feet braced slightly apart against the motion of the deck, the perpetual breeze cool against his bare arms and gripped by a used up kind of tired, he looked at what he had and at what he lacked and what he could want. Maybe he could get the hang of having a life. It wasn't like he was stranded ashore. Even HE should be able to adjust to a dry week between trips out. If the work picked up. If he could stay busy ashore, exhaust himself so he could at least feel useful. If things got busier, it might be easier. He'd been there five fucking years after all. There was no reason to think things would change now. He'd changed to his mother's maiden name before he'd enlisted and in that family, nobody had ever paid attention to anything but the paternal line. He'd escaped notice that long. On a night like that, anything was possible.
The winch whined as the net started to clear the water. Looking around, his eyes went to the cable and winch first, and then the net, only to have his momentary optimism congeal. Anything, on that last haul, turned out to be round and spiked and festooned with seaweed...
"Shit!" Max jumped and shoved Barry out of the way, throwing the lever and stopping the winch before the other man had picked himself up off the deck. Before he could turn and start bitching, Max pointed up at the bag, where, along with a nice lot of flounder, they'd managed to catch a mine.
A World War II leftover. Its ominous black outline silenced all five men for a full minute.
The two transits had the least to lose by saying what all of them thought. "We're way out of the shipping lanes. We can just dump it and head back, can't we?" The older of the two spoke, but both of them looked to Max. "You don't want to sit out here for hours waiting for the Coast Guard, do you?"
Barry groaned audibly. "You're asking the wrong man," he said. "Max'd rather stay out here than fuck, if he even still remembers how."
Max thought he heard something from far away, some faint yelling, the traces of quick crude retaliation for an out of line remark. What he would have done. Anger was so clean, so easy. So simple. And so off limits there if he wanted to continue unnoticed.
Turning away from the swaying net and unstable old explosives, Max looked to Barry. "Do you have a problem with something?"
"You mean besides getting knocked on my ass and not being trusted to set the doors? Is that what you mean?" Barry glanced to Lon, the other regular, and then back to Max. "Yeah, I have a problem. I'm tired. I smell bad. I got bills to pay and things waiting on me ashore. And I don't feel like sitting here just to play boyscout because you got no fucking life!"
Contempt flowered in the words, blossomed around them in the night. It was only Barry and he was a prickly son of a bitch, but Len wasn't meeting his eyes and the transits were both looking for comets or flying fish or something. Either it was very new or he hadn't been listening. Or he heard now because there was a bit of truth wrapped up in the horseshit.
Something inside him that had lain idle and dust covered came sharply taut - and was as quickly unhooked, rocking him with the backlash.
No more. Not there. He'd walked away from it all, good and bad alike. But among the offal remaining were pieces of old knowing. Like he knew that the only good thing about a bunch of oddballs was that they had no idea how to gang up on somebody. Len was Barry's buddy. He was just avoiding meeting Max's eye so as not to get drawn in. The others - they wouldn't hold a thought past their next cup of coffee.
Another man in another place would have just stepped forward and laid the man out. Simple, quick and clean. This - this bloodless way was empty. Flat.
"You know the drill. And the reasons for it," Max said. "Your attitude is way outta line."
"We're not in the bloody army! I'm not like you. I have a life, things to go back to. I don't feel like sitting out here wasting time with something most other boats would just throw back."
Barry said the words. The two transits looked away, never having intended to push things that far.
Len looked from Barry to Max and back, waiting to see who'd win. "Other boats do it," the man said finally, compelled to back Barry up but lacking real fire. "Other boats let them go and forget they ever saw them."
Max's attention returned to the round, spiked, weed festooned shape. That was the touchy part. The other boats did what they did out of ignorance and a blind faith in luck. This was only the second one he'd had the fun of netting. The first one - that had been at the beginning and Milt had been aboard. The holds had been full, the boat riding low in the water and bad weather coming in. Max had been looking at what he knew of weaponry and unstable explosives when Milt had made his choice, slicing the net free.
Max remembered waiting for three agonizingly long minutes before breathing again. Remembered turning away in silence. Remembered puking over the forward rail.
They were all luckier than they deserved, with how often they got away with throwing the things back.
He didn't have the advantage of their ignorance and if they let it go, it would only be some other poor fool having to make the same decision.
IF he'd even considered caving in to Barry's sudden challenge.
He'd been regarding his new partnership as a possible mistake. THEY were regarding HIM as a joke.
And if he'd wanted to exercise power, he'd never have cashed in his chips and walked away from twenty years' efforts. Hell, he'd never have run away in the first place.
"You know the drill," he repeated flatly, breaking off the silent battle of wills. "Since Barry's in heat, he can call the Coast Guard."
He let the bag swing farther over the open deck and then down to where he could reach the net. Grabbing a knife before he could change his mind, Max sliced through the bag in two places and let a stream of silver cascade to the deck, lightening the bag and still holding the black spiked iron ball captive.
He strung a line through the net and made it fast to the starboard rear cleat, then waded through the silver to do the same thing to port. Then, with their unwelcome guest relatively secure, he leaned back against the tailboard, ignoring the other three men who'd settled into sorting the catch.
Druggie or not, Barry'd never squared off on him like that. But then, up till now, Max had not questioned himself. The Barrys of the world, they could smell doubt, fast as any smart mouthed private.
As long as the weather stayed as it was, seas relatively calm, with little wind, they could wallow slowly back to port. But once either the seas or the wind picked up, then they'd have to lay to and wait for the Coast Guard to reach them.
Barry had returned, eyeing him across the silver mass. "Call's in. Bet you fifty bucks we spend the day dead in the water waiting. And they just pulled Gaffer out from under a dock in front of the fishplants."
Max looked up sharply.
"As in dead," Barry said. "Someone seems to have knocked him out, wrapped him up and sunk him, tied him up to some shit down under the dock."
Madness was stretching fingers into all kinds of places suddenly. Gaffer. A misfit who worked around the fringes and didn't amount to an annoyance. Why would anybody take that trouble over a loner who didn't even take up space?
"Like a couple of weeks ago," Barry said straight to Max. "You've been on your own and didn't even know it."
Max took one long step away from the rail. "I don't know what the hell your problem is, but you can keep it to yourself," he said flatly. But another thought struck him, an alternative reason for Barry's sudden rebellion. It wasn't always bringing things out with them that caused a problem. There were things that got - found - and taken back into port. There were sidelines of all kinds around the water. "If you've been stupid enough to bring ANYTHING on this boat that shouldn't be..."
"You're getting pretty jumped up now you're partners with Milt. Just because you had the cash and give a good blow job."
Other times and places and choices faded away. Barry wasn't even enough of anything to deserve attention. "If ANYONE finds ANYTHING in your gear, or on this boat, that sets us up for trouble," Max said flatly, "I'll drop you over the side someplace where I don't have to waste a cement block to know you won't be turning back up."
Barry broke eye contact with Max to find the other three men regarding him with as much interest as they'd regarded Max earlier.
"Oh, fuck off," he said, turning away.
"Go below, police your stuff. Or I will," Max said behind him. Barry flung away and vanished belowdecks and the others went back to sorting and not looking at anyone.
He was out of practise. It took about two minutes to see the opportunity he'd handed Barry to screw off.
Another ten was spent swearing at himself. Squatting beside the hatch, Max settled back on his heels and studied the corner where Barry had faded into the shadows.
"Five minutes more and you drop to a half share," Max said clearly. He felt the men behind him come to attention at that. Now, he messed with sacred tradition, threatening the percentage of the boat's profits one of their own was entitled to. It was a captain's priviledge seldom invoked, but unquestionably his to make.
It got Barry's attention. "Go fuck yourself." He shoved past the older man and headed for the others who'd stopped work to watch the show. "There's other boats."
"Yeah. You can fish with your buddy Sam," Max said. "His one trip every couple of weeks - you'll be so broke, you'll be glad to smoke tobacco."
Len looked up, glancing from Max to Barry and then away.
"Yeah, well, Sam takes care of his guys," Barry said.
It was Max's turn to go below. They still had the deck to clear. He'd been up for more than twenty hours and if he wasn't going to leave someone else in the wheelhouse, he needed to grab a nap. An hour or two anyway, enough to get him through another day.
Before he was halfway below, he heard Len say something and the others laugh. Something let go for a second and Max spoke before thinking. "You really want a piece of this?" he asked from the shadows. "I gave you more credit."
There was silence for one heartbeat. Another. He considered the next move.
"No big deal," Len said. "I just said it wasn't too bright comparing you to Gaffer. You can't whittle worth spit."
"That's true," Max said quietly and went on below. That was one rule that never changed. Squad, bar, boat, bed - the smell of blood turned the weakest ones bold. But nobody would see him bleed. He would do whatever he had to, say whatever he had to, BE whatever he had to. It had gotten him away from them, gotten him by in the army, kept him going after.
In the darkness below, Max stretched out on his bunk. It was probably challenging Barry's share of the trip. Or maybe that he'd made Barry look like a fool. If being top dog mattered all that much, he'd have paid the price and stayed where he was.
The hell with them. The hell with it all.
All or nothing - clamor to emptiness. Five minutes after Lea let her off, Maggie couldn't remember if she'd thanked her. But then she couldn't seem to remember what she'd done with the clothes she'd worn the night before and in such a tiny house, that shouldn't have been a puzzle. It had something to do with a panicked need to get into something normal and away from that cottage. Away from herself.
Outside, the wind whispered around her ears, calling up echoes of other days. Echoes of another voice.
Words Maggie chose not to hear. Not then. Not after seeing that she could not simply run away.
Turning away from the street, she made her way across the soft sand, slipping her sandals off and leaving them there for her return, intent only on reaching the wet firm sand at the water's edge.
The tide was going out.
Shoving her hands into her pockets, she felt something. Drawing her hand slowly out, she opened it to regard the tiny shape. A flying gull... This was NOT the skirt she'd worn when - when they'd found him.
She'd put that gull in the jewelry box. She knew she had.
She'd thought she had...
He was gone! This tiny wooden thing she had no memory of ever taking from him screamed out the loss she'd closed her ears to inside and turned away from in the salt laden wind.
Damp sand stretched out on her left up the slope of beach. Like ripples radiating out from a stone cast into the water, the highest layer of damp left behind by the surf was already light and half dried.
Subsequent rings cascaded down the slope, darkening till they reached the wet sand where even now white foam curled around her ankles.
Ahead of her, the long gentle curve of beach arced out towards the farther wall of the breakwater and she made her way toward it. Movement helped calm her stomach. It always had, which was part of the reason she had known Gaffer as well as she had. Some need had kept him in motion too.
The whipping of the scarlet folds around her legs slowed to a gentle sway, as water stains from the occasional higher wave darkened and weighted the hem. Letting the tiny carved gull fall back into her pocket, she turned her face into the wind.