Free A Month at the Shore by Antoinette Stockenberg Page A

move it for you, no charge? I could do it at the end of the week."
    "No, we couldn't ask you to do that," Corinne said immediately. But the pleased look on her face stayed right where it was.
    "It's not a problem, Rin," said Gabe. "Come on, let me do this. I owe you. I know how to operate the equipment—are you forgetting that I used to drive that same John Deere way back when? I'm done with my crew by four; that'll leave me plenty of daylight to tackle this. It might take me a couple of evenings, though."
    "Deal!" said Laura before her sister could offer any more tedious objections to the offer.
    It was clear, at least to Laura, that the plan had advantages for Gabe as well: he couldn't be too wild about looking out his front windows every day and seeing a pile of dirt. "And when you're done, come to the house for supper," she said to him impulsively. "We'll celebrate the removal of this blight from the landscape."
    "Thanks for the invite," he said, looking away. "I'd like that."
    How shy he was, she thought, bemused. He didn't used to be that way.
    Oh. She glanced from Gabe to Corinne and back to Gabe again. Was it possible?
    Well, well. She was going to have to watch and find out.
    Gabe sounded reluctant as he said, "I guess I'd better get myself over to Bayview to check on my crew."
    "You're the ones doing the fences for that?" Laura asked, impressed. "That's a really upscale project; we drove past it on our way in yesterday."
    "Yeah. The developer's thrown a lot of work to the locals, a nice boost for Chepaquit. Every job helps when you've got a payroll to meet and families to feed."
    That's what a businessman and politician would say, Laura realized; but it was also what someone who cared about people would say.
    She glanced again at her sister, who was carefully folding her all-natural T-shirt to fit back in its bag.
    "I love this," she said with touching sincerity. "I really, really do."

Cha p ter 7
     
    By the end of the backbreaking day, Laura had cleared out the greenhouse, salvaging less than three dozen perennials for possible sale. Every bone in her body ached: working in a nursery took ten times the effort as playing in a garden.
    Snack had disappeared in town for longer than he should have. When he came back from his errands, there was beer on his breath and a swagger in his walk that Laura hated to see. But he went back into the barn, and he replaced the thermostat, and he still had five cans of the six-pack under his arm when he returned to the house to join his sisters for supper.
    The three of them, tired wolf pups by then, polished off Miss Widdich's casserole, newt eyes and all, and then they lined up to take turns showering under the rickety arrangement of pipes in the clawfoot tub. It wasn't until Laura began emptying the pockets of her dirt-covered Levi's that she remembered the watch that she'd found.
    She stepped out of her room into the hall and said, "Hey! Guys! Take a look at this."
    Corinne had just finished showering. Wrapped in a robe and with her hair bound in a towel, she emerged from the bathroom all shiny and sweet-smelling. At the same time, Snack, stripped to the waist and not at all sweet-smelling, came out from his room.
    Laura held up the rusty watch by the pinless end of its expandable band. "Look what I found in the greenh—Oh, my God, will you look at this? It works! It must be a self-winding watch and I got it going again. Too cool. Anyone need a watch?" she said, dangling it in front of them both.
    "Let me see," said Corinne, taking it from her. "It's not an old one of mine; I've always used the strap style. How about that? A mystery. I wonder whose it is? If we at least knew how long ago—"
    Snack cut in to say, "It must have been a customer's. Toss it."
    Laura took it back from her sister and scrutinized it. She was fascinated by the fact that the spunky little watch still worked. "I hate to do that. It's waited all these years for someone to discover it and let it be a