Free The Body in the Kelp by Katherine Hall Page

earth-shattering, but you have to go home with something from an auction, especially a historic one like this. Faith got a cradle, a quilt top, and who knows what in the boxes, and I got my usual—china, glass. Sam says we’re going to have to have an auction soon.”
    â€œThanks for the invitation, Pix. We’ll see you soon,” Eric said. “Good-bye, Faith—I haven’t forgotten about our gazebo party. You and Pix and whatever husbands are around can come sometime next week.”
    â€œThat would be lovely, but husbands are not arriving until close to Labor Day, so you’ll have to put up with the company of women.”
    â€œNever a chore.” Eric smiled. His mood seemed to have lifted, and Faith was sure it was not just her imagination that Jill gave them a look filled with gratitude as she said good-bye.
    The events of the auction had been unsettling, and Faith
found it hard to sleep that night. It had been after six when she finally got back, and she was exhausted. She left the boxes in the barn to go through later and brought the quilt top into the house. It was even more beautiful than she had thought when they had held it up. She spread it on the bed in the spare room. It seemed at home.
    After a hasty supper she read to Benjamin and settled him into his crib, then got an Angela Thirkell out of the bookcase and went to bed herself. She must have slept, because when she looked at the clock several hours had passed, but now she felt wide awake. She opened the book again and tried to lose herself in Barsetshire, but the comings and goings of the Brandons did not distract her.
    There also seemed to be a lot of comings and goings in the cove and on the shore road opposite the cottage. She remembered that she had heard the same boat and truck noises a week ago Thursday night, because Tom had been lying next to her and thought it might be night fishing. The next day they had seen herring nets, so the fishermen must have been catching a run, then unloading at Prescott’s straight into the trucks.
    She got up, turned out the light, and went to the window. She couldn’t see much, just pinpoints of light and the occasional long sweep of headlights. She didn’t hear any talking—just the boat engines and the trucks. Well, it was after two o’clock and they, of all people, would know how voices carried on the water. Still, it surprised her a little that they should be so considerate. From what she had seen at the auction, Sonny Prescott didn’t seem like a man who would whisper if he had something to say. If it was Sonny out there in the dark, that is.
    Benjamin would be up in a few, very few hours. Faith crawled back into her bed, thought wistfully about Tom, and wondered if she would feel better or weird if she piled some pillows in his approximate shape next to her. Weird. She fell asleep.
    Â 
    Faith spent most of Friday in the hammock watching Benjamin chase croquet balls on the lawn. The owners of the cottage maintained a large, carefully manicured lawn in the back of the
house, bordered on three sides by the meadow filled now with Indian paintbrush, Queen Anne’s lace and other wildflowers. The lawn looked a bit odd there, as if someone had spread a piece of felt over the meadow, but it provided a place to sit and play all those games stored in the barn.
    She did rouse herself to get lunch, which the two of them ate on the grass. Faith found feeding Benjamin al fresco made life much simpler. Anything he dropped would be picked up by the gulls later. At four o’clock Tom called. They had decided he would call her, since he wasn’t as sure of his schedule as she was of hers. No schedule.
    It was a case of two people who are very close to each other with not much to say. Or rather a lot to say, but nothing to say of common interest. Faith started to tell him about the Casserole Supper and Bird’s entrance and the auction and the trouble between the