Free The Seasons Hereafter by Elisabeth Ogilvie

careful about what spirits you haul into this pure atmosphere. You might drag in some bad actors on that beam of yours.”
    â€œYou laugh, Mark, but you know the truth just the same.” She tapped his chest with her finger. “It’s all right, I can stand being laughed at. I’m not one of them dead-serious ones. I’ve seen some that was crazy as coots.”
    â€œMebbe we better drag for that lean pork, my girl.” He winked at Vanessa.
    â€œI can’t remember what I wanted,” she said abruptly. “I’ll be back later, or Barry will.” As she turned and walked away from them she almost bumped into a young girl who gazed at her from heavily made-up eyes that seemed to fill half a short and pallid face. Her hair was done up high on rollers and wrapped in a scarf.
    â€œHi,” she said indifferently and passed on, swinging her large handbag. She wore an immense hairy cerise sweater and black stretch slacks. She was like an apparition from Water Street, an affirmation that it still existed.
    Behind Van Maggie exclaimed, “Hello, Gina! When are you going to stop in and have that cup of coffee with me?”
    â€œWell, here’s Merry Sunshine in person,” Mark said.
    Van walked faster and faster, as if something inside her were going to give way if she didn’t get inside her own door as fast as possible. Once she was there she leaned against the entry wall, panting and dry-mouthed. “I can’t stay here,” she whispered. “I can’t. They’ll be the death of me.”
    She remembered the frenzy in which she had cleaned the kitchen this morning, but it seemed like a very long time ago. The sun had moved away from the window sill where she had set her dishes, and they were now ordinary and a little pathetic. She looked down at the clothes she wore; the illusion of elegance set off in the Bennetts’ mirror had been as deceptive as the rainbows flashing in the sauce dishes and illuminating the amber glass hen. She dropped her wet clothes and sodden shoes and ran upstairs, where she got out of the borrowed things in shuddering haste, and crawled naked into bed.

CHAPTER 8
    B arry didn’t get home until late afternoon and by then she was up and dressed, with supper ready, the borrowed underwear washed, all Helmi’s things put into a box ready to be returned to her. Barry was proud and excited, gazing at her with merry incredulity, as if she had changed from a toad to a princess. He’d been ashamed of her when he left in the morning; she knew that he had probably hated her. But he had come in to find out at the lobster car that he had a wife whom everyone else admired. He could hardly believe it when Mark said, “That’s some woman you’ve got, Barry.”
    He repeated it to Vanessa again and again, taking new fire each time from the very sound of it. He told her also what Philip, Charles, and Stephen Bennett had said; what Foss Campion, Matt Fennell, Rob Dinsmore, and Nils Sorensen had said. He reported each significant nod, glance, or turn of phrase that had occurred when the boats gathered at the lobster car.
    â€œYou’re in , Van,” he told her in triumph. “Not but they all wanted to be friendly before, but you acted like you didn’t think anybody was good enough for you. Now it’s different . . . they know you’re alive, they know you’re real.”
    â€œDid anybody interview the cat?” she asked him.
    He didn’t know what she was driving at, but he was pleased because she was talking to him and the house was clean. “That’s a damn’ good fish hash you turned out. I’ve never eaten anybody else’s fish hash was any good. Where’d you get the pickles?”
    â€œThey were in the cupboard.” Poor Barry. In these intervals of detachment she knew that cruel things had been done to him. Now he was as giddy with joy as a child at Christmas—not