Free Evercrossed by Elizabeth Chandler Page A

to end the discussion. Will looked up from his work, his anger gone, but his deep brown eyes troubled. "I'm not trying to win. I'm just trying to understand what's going on."
    "Me too," Ivy replied honestly, and headed into the cottage.

Ten

    "BUT YOU LIKED TO KAYAK ON THE RIVER AT HOME," Ivy said to Beth at noon on Sunday. With only a few guests staying past the weekend, they had finished work and were returning to the cottage, following the stone path through the garden. "Billingsgate Island sounds so mysterious, rising out of the water at low tide—and that sunken ship!" For the past week, Beth had been complaining of writer's block. "They'll inspire you," Ivy added encouragingly.
    "I guess," Beth replied without enthusiasm.
    "Maybe it's not the kayaking," Ivy said, after a moment of thought, "but the person you're doing it with. Has something happened since the ice cream date with Chase? You seemed to really like him then."
    Beth shrugged. "He texts me a lot."
    "Meaning too much," Ivy concluded. "And you're too nice to tell him to back off." Beth turned to Ivy.
    "You know you're too kindhearted," Ivy said, smiling at her friend. "You don't even swat at flies."
    "I might swat this one," Beth said as she entered the cottage. Ivy retrieved a paperback mystery, one of the many left behind by visitors to the Seabright, and carried it around to the inn's porch.
    Oceanside, running the length of the inn and wrapping one comer, the porch had its own special light. In the early morning it was an airy room adrift in the marmalade and yellow of the sunrise, but gradually it became as cool and blue as the distant streak of sea. When no guests were around, Ivy liked sitting there.
    Tilting back in a wooden rocker, her feet up on the porch railing, she gazed past the green edge of Aunt Cindy's yard to the ocean and cloudless sky, her mind drifting.
    It's such a great feeling, Ivy. Do you know what it's like to float on a lake, a circle of trees around you, a big blue bowl of sky above you? You're lying on top of the water, sun sparkling at the tips of your fingers and toes.
    She had pictured it so many times, floating with Tristan at the center of a sun-spangled lake, that the dream had become as tangible as the real memories she carried of Tristan.
    Why had she thought that escaping to Cape Cod would put distance between her and her memories? There was water everywhere, and everywhere that there was water, she thought of Tristan.
    Ivy sighed, opened her book, and stared at the words without reading them. A week ago she had awakened in the hospital certain that she had been kissed by Tristan.
    That had been no comforting dream as Beth had suggested; rather, it had made her long all the more for Tristan! And it made painfully clear the difference between what she'd had with Tristan and what she felt for Will. The weekend visitors and full work schedule had helped her and Will get through the last few days, but now that they had time to be together, she had been relieved when he said he was headed into Chatham to shop for art supplies.
    "Hey, girl, get off your sweet bum and come running with me," Kelsey called to Ivy, shaking her out of her thoughts.
    Kelsey had trotted around the side of the inn and jogged in place for a moment.
    Her auburn hair was pulled high on her head in a bouncy ponytail.
    Ivy smiled at the invitation, which she suspected wasn't real, and shook her head no. "How far do you run?"
    "Today I'm doing five miles on the beach, which is like ten on the road, then twenty minutes of hard swimming and an hour of biking. I'm thinking of doing a triathlon in September."
    "You're amazing," Ivy replied.
    "You don't have to tell her that," Dhanya said, stepping onto the porch, carrying a bowl of frosty looking blueberries leftover from the inn's breakfast. "Kelsey already thinks it way too often."
    "Knows it," Kelsey corrected, then adjusted her iPod and took off for the stairway to the beach.
    Dhanya sat down. "Berries?" she