Free Sea Fever by Virginia Kantra

knobby with age, the nails yellow
    with smoke— and felt a surge of love and panic tighten her throat.
    Antonia would never admit it, but she couldn’t do as much as she used to.
    Margred was great with customers, but she went home to her husband at
    night. And Regina . . .

    70

    “Things change,” Regina said shortly.

    “Sex changes things,” she’d said to Dylan.

    Oh, boy, did it ever.

    Her period was late. Only a day late. One day.

    Maybe she wasn’t knocked up. But she felt the weight of worry like
    a live thing pressing on her abdomen, burning beneath her breastbone.

    “It’s those damn catering jobs,” Antonia told Margred. “She took on
    another one, family reunion, week after Frank Ivey’s birthday party. Now
    she wants to hire help.”

    Regina grabbed a knife and started chopping scallions for the pasta
    salad, ignoring the ball in her stomach. “Six bucks an hour, a couple
    hours a day, a few days a week. Big deal.”

    “We can’t afford him. Not once the season’s over,” Antonia
    grumbled.

    Chop chop chop. “He won’t last that long. He won’t want to stay
    here in the winter.”

    “He could. He looks crazy enough.”

    Maybe he did at that. Her knife faltered.

    “I don’t like him,” Margred said.

    Regina glared at her, feeling betrayed. “You were okay with him
    before. He’s a vet. Like Caleb.”

    “He smells bad.”

    Regina remembered Jericho’s freshly scraped jaw, the line of dirt
    around his neck, and felt an uncomfortable prickle of guilt. “So would
    you if you didn’t have a place to take regular showers.”

    Margred shook her head. “Not that kind of bad. He smells . . .
    wrong.”

    71

    Antonia slapped a plate on the pass. “As long as he doesn’t touch the
    food or scare off the customers, I don’t care how he smells.”

    Regina gaped at this unexpected support from her mother.

    Antonia set her hands on her hips. “You going to stand there jawing?
    Or are you going to serve this hash before it gets cold?”

    The next few hours passed in a haze of work and steam. At eleven
    o’clock the menu changed from eggs, hash, and home fries to
    sandwiches, subs, and pizza. The tables filled with summer people who
    didn’t want to cook, campers in search of a hot meal, yachters ashore for
    shopping or some local color.

    No Dylan. Regina caught her gaze wandering to the pass, watching
    the door for his tall, lean figure, and pressed her lips together.

    “Shit, oh, shit.” She jerked her hand from the cutting board.

    Her mother looked over. “You all right?”

    “Fine,” she said, examining her white fingers. She’d only caught a
    nail this time, under the knife’s edge. No blood, no foul.

    No blood.

    She’d run to the bathroom three times to check, as if the act of
    pulling down her underpants could somehow transform the sweat of the
    kitchen into good news: Not pregnant.

    She needed to go to Rockland and buy a damn test.

    She needed to keep her mind on her work. She loved cooking, took a
    deep satisfaction in feeding people. But there was no challenge in it
    anymore. No distraction. She could prepare this menu blindfolded.

    “If I never fried another clam or made another lobster roll, I could be
    happy,” she muttered.

    “You’d be happy, and we’d be out of business,” Antonia said.
    “Order up.”

    72

    Eventually, the line of tickets shortened. The dining room cleared as
    customers returned to their boats, vacations, lives.

    “God, I need a cigarette,” Antonia said and went out by the
    Dumpster to smoke.

    Regina garnished the last two orders: lettuce, tomato, a slice of red
    onion. As she set the plates on the pass, she glanced again at the door.
    Tall man. Dark hair. Just for a moment the pressure eased. Dylan?

    But it was only Caleb, standing with his weight on his good leg,
    talking to Margred.

    “Get you anything?” Regina asked. “Cup of coffee?”

    His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Coffee would be