Free The Sea Grape Tree by Gillian Royes

fault with Danny, she’d put his business in the street the way she always did. Then ( oh, God! ) he envisioned the opposite: Danny dumping Janet and going back to America without her. She’d be enraged and tell everyone what a bumba claat no-good he was, because she was not an easy woman. And, either way, Danny wouldn’t come back to Largo. Every possibility Shad imagined concluded with the investor pulling out of the deal and the death of the new inn.
    The next morning over breakfast, Shad told Beth about Janet’s offer to be Danny’s tour guide.
    â€œI telling you,” he said, and slurped his ginger tea, “the woman just outsmart me. I was offering to take him around, but she just bounce me out of the picture.”
    â€œWe know she only after one thing.”
    â€œAnd you know what I realize yesterday? Is not only a conniving woman that can mash up the hotel plan. An innocent woman can do it, too.” While Beth unbuttoned her blouse and settled Joshua at her breast to feed, Shad told her, scene by scene, the way he always did, something disturbing he’d seen the previous afternoon, a wake-up call about the future of tourism in Largo.
    It was close to five o’clock, and he’d been making his usual trek back to the bar for his evening shift when he’d glanced across the road. Between two houses, he’d had a straight view of the beach, where three people were in conversation under a coconut tree. He’d strained for a better view of the three, because one was a white woman he’d never seen before. She was so tall and lanky, her hair so red-red, that he would have remembered her if he had. And her legs and arms were so pale, pale as the sand she was standing on, that he knew she’d just arrived.
    Standing on either side of her had been two local layabouts, one thin and the other stocky, both a head shorter than her. The youths were doing all the talking, it looked like, and the woman was looking uncomfortable but smiling politely. The bartender had waited until a pickup passed, crossed the road, and walked between the cottages to the beach.
    â€œWhat up?” he’d called out as he approached the group. The boy who was talking had broken off and all three had turned around. The woman had started edging away.
    â€œYou just come to Largo?” Shad had said to the redhead, speaking slowly so she’d understand. She nodded, and the flaming hair nodded with her. She’d been a nice-looking woman even if she was thin— mauger, Beth would call her—the kind of woman who was too well mannered to say no. Trouble waiting to happen.
    â€œZebediah,” Shad had asked the skinny youth, “you not bothering the lady or anything, right?”
    â€œWhy I want to do that?” the boy had said, and glanced at the other. “We making friends with her, seen, like how she just come to Largo.”
    â€œWell, I come to take her to the restaurant,” Shad said, waving the two away. “So both of you can go about your business now.”
    â€œWe not doing nothing—”
    â€œGo on,” Shad insisted, and the two teenagers had sauntered away, sucking their teeth.
    â€œYou mustn’t do any business with them, you hear, miss,” Shad had explained. “They want to take your money from you. Don’t have nothing to do with them.” The woman’s face had relaxed and she’d thanked him for helping her.
    â€œThey wanted to sell me some marijuana, I think,” she’d said in a nice English accent. “I couldn’t understand them, but they said something about ganja and I know what that is.”
    â€œWe don’t have a lot of visitors, you know, and they see a chance to make little money. The boy Zeb, his grandmother can’t handle him, you know. He sell weed now and again, and he getting his friend into it, too. Bedward was bright-bright in school, but he stop going to school and start