Free Bone River by Megan Chance Page A

the bay was gray and touched bright here and there with reflections from the ever-changing shadows of the sky. The sloop was crowded with the four of us. We’d be sitting on top of each other once the oysters were aboard, but the more hands there were the more quickly we could load, and I knew by the set to Junius’s face that I had cost us; we needed those extra minutes.
    Junius sat aft to manage the rudder and the mainsail and the jib, and Lord Tom sat to his right. Which meant there was only one seat left, for Daniel and me to share. He leaned away as far from me as he could, his face tight with distaste. Whatever charm I’d seen in him was nowhere in evidence.
    I tried to ignore it, to make myself smile despite my rapidly growing distrust. He was my stepson, and I owed him. “Do you know how to sail?”
    He didn’t look at me, but pulled his collar up further over his chin. “No.”
    “Junius, you should teach him.”
    My husband stared at the sail. “What for, Lea? I doubt he’ll have much use of it in San Francisco.”
    “You never know. It’s a useful enough skill,” I insisted. “What do you think, Daniel?”
    Daniel said, “I think it would be a waste of time for everyone.”
    I went quiet then. There was no point, especially if neither was going to try.
    Gulls swooped and cawed, and I shuddered, remembering my dream, and felt Daniel’s quick glance, which I ignored. I put the dream behind me—for now, I had to think about oysters, not mummies or finding answers or the strange and unwelcome sense that there was something wrong that I must fix, and she was the key to that. None of it made sense. It wasn’t rational; it wasn’t real.
    Pelicans flew in lines one after the other, their bodies elongated
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’s against the full gray of the clouded sky, more graceful than they looked on the ground—scarcely the same bird. Ducks and herons grouped along the shores, the ducks huddled into themselves against the cold. The culling bed was almost halfway between the Querquelin and Stony Point, and once we were there it was only work and hurry, a constant rhythm of shoveling up the oysters, checking them to make sure they were the palm size we needed and that there were none broken, which happened too often, as the Shoalwater oysters were delicate and thin-shelled and the tongs we used to harvest them were crude and too rough.
    The water was cold, but at least it wasn’t raining. Junius had Daniel and me on the sloop, sorting through the shovelfuls he and Lord Tom tossed aboard. Once I showed Daniel what we were looking for, I left him alone. He was a good worker, quick to catch on, and I was grateful for that, at least, though the silence between us was strained.
    The hold was half full before he said, quietly, as if to himself, “Christ, this is miserable work.”
    “It’s worth it. And June and Lord Tom have it worse. At least you’re on the boat.” I glanced to where the other two stood in knee-deep freezing water as they shoveled oysters from the culling bed onto the deck.
    My leather gloves were soaked through, my fingers numb. I picked up a handful of oysters, glancing through them before I dropped most of them into the hold and a broken-shelled one into the bushel we’d be taking home. Nothing to do but eat them.
    He said, “So do I have any brothers or sisters? Or did they all run away to avoid this?”
    The question surprised me, not just that he’d asked it but because of the stab of unwelcome pain it brought—surely I should be used to this by now. I’d answered such questions a hundred times, but coming from him it felt personal and somehow...accusing. “No,” I said shortly. “We’ve no children.”
    He raised his gaze to mine, and I said quickly, wanting to stop that conversation before it went any further, “What sorts of things do you need to know for your story?”
    He let me change the subject. “Anything you can tell me. Where you think she’s from. Who you think she might