Free Light Over Water by Noelle Carle

for her quiet presence with a loosening of the strain in his features,
patting her lumpy fur or studying her yellow eyes until she slipped into happy
contentment.
    Alison watched him
closely and observed that he acted as a person in shock would be.  Her father
told her that when a sudden or traumatic event occurred within the body, shock
was a protective reaction to manage pain.  This was how Remick acted, like he
was in pain but somehow protected himself and everyone else from it.  She
thought that might be worse than feeling the pain, like being dead.
              Remick made no effort
to try to dissuade Owen from his enthusiasm over all the war news.  He answered
Davey’s questions about the battles and the Germans, but as if he were reading
accounts from the newspaper, as if none of it actually happened to him.
              Alison found it a
great relief to have him home, but was frustrated that he was so different.  “I
can’t see the old Remick there,” she confided to Esther as they walked home
together a few days after the funeral.  The air had changed and felt like a
layer of velvet on their skin.  The sunlight pooled around them as it set in a
peachy glow and they carried their sweaters, too warm now to wear them.
              “He’s there, Allie. 
I think he just has to get used to…the changes.  The losses. And to being home
and knowing that everyone knows how hard it must be for him.”  She smiled and
looked away.  Alison realized suddenly that Remick had talked with Esther more
than she thought.  She felt an irrational flare of jealousy when Esther spoke
again.  “It gives me such comfort, him coming home when he did.”  She gripped
Alison’s hand suddenly.  “It’s almost as if it were planned, isn’t it?  I felt
I couldn’t bear it, Momma dying, and I prayed that God would help me.  Then
Remick came home!”
              Alison watched her
best friend’s shadowed profile.  She squeezed her hand back as they walked up
the path to the Eliot’s house.  She doubted suddenly that God had anything to
do with it.

Chapter Six
    Grim Necessity Indeed
     
              With a basketful of
damp laundry under one trembling arm and baby Caroline clutched in the other,
Mary Reid carefully crossed the back yard to the clothesline.  The younger
boys, Richard and Peter, were playing in a patch of dirt with a set of blocks their
father had fashioned from wood scraps.  The ten year old twins, Ivy and
Isabella were taking turns on the swing that was hanging from the branch of a
maple tree.  Caroline, at seventeen months, was more than old enough to walk,
but she cried every time Mary put her down.  Her white blonde curls were sweaty
and her cheeks had splotchy red spots that got hot when she cried. She
whimpered even when she was carried, missing her momma and the things only she
could provide. 
    Earlier, the twins
cared for Caroline while Mary, Esther and Cleo did the washing.  Mary was used
to doing her own bits of washing; not the clothing and bedding for eleven
people, including diapers.  Nothing had been done for a week since the funeral,
so Mary told the girls at school on Friday that she would come over to help. 
Now her back was knotted with sore muscles, her arms were throbbing with pain
and the skin on her hands was raw and wrinkled.  But Esther and Cleo moved
easily, running the clothes between the ringers, then whipping them out,
getting each other soaked.  They laughed while they were hanging the clothes
and diapers, and draping sheets over a hedge of cedar.  The sun was strong,
married to a stiff breeze, which made short work of the wet clothes.
              Mary hung up her basketful,
leaving Caroline in the grass by the basket.  The child screwed up her face and
cried again, so her skin flushed red and her eyes were tight bunches.  “Oh,
give way, baby, give way,” Mary muttered as she lifted one of Reg’s shirts and
shook