Free Strawberries in the Sea by Elisabeth Ogilvie Page A

be hers? She hovered protectively over them, until suddenly her elation died. She got up from her knees and bumped her head on a rafter. The pain and surprise put tears in her eyes, and they became tears for something else. Where your heart is, there is your treasure also , the Bible said.
    What did that leave you?
    She blew her nose and wiped her eyes and went down the ladder. Angrily she saw that someone was working on the Sorensen wharf to her left, out of sight behind the barrier of drying traps. It was high tide, and they had brought a boat in and were loading traps on her for tomorrow. Logical, reasonable, part of a lobsterman’s work. Only why’d they have to be around right now? And why had she ever believed she’d have privacy?
    She remembered what Mark Bennett had told her, that the nephew who had put her boat off had that fishhouse and wharf, and she supposed that she should go around and thank him.
    But not while she looked and felt like this, dammit.
    She worked doggedly, starting a heap of burnable trash in one corner and sinkable junk in another. Buried under the debris she found a good spade. When she thought the red had gone away from her eyes and nose, she put the spade across her gear on the wheelbarrow and went home.

CHAPTER 8
    W hile she was starting to dig the trench behind the toilet, trying to break through the tough turf, she heard the girls’ voices, and froze, but they went by the house and up the lane. She caught a glimpse of them through a gap in the trees, a swirl of hair, a profile clear for an instant against dark spruce. There were more than three this time, some younger; a baby rode on someone’s hip. They flowed through the gap like a school of bright fish flashing through a sunray. Their voices were still heard, laughing and calling from further up the lane.
    At their various ages she’d been happy too, as long as she could be aboard a boat. Too bad I didn’t run away to sea while I was young, she thought dryly. With the right shape I could have disguised myself as a cabin boy.
    The spade cut down through roots at last, and with a certain satisfaction she turned the first sod.
    When Con walked into the yard, she had no warning. She was hot, and had come out from behind the building to let the breeze strike her, and there he was, grinning at her. He was wearing green bellbottoms, and a green-and-gold striped knit shirt. Phyllis’s choice, no doubt.
    The first reaction was the hope that he’d identified himself as Rosa Fleming’s husband where enough people could hear him and thus be astonished that anything like her had acquired anything like him. However, a swift recognition of her own idiocy was helpful. She said calmly, “Well, Con?”
    He looked her over deliberately: twigs and leaves in her hair, her face flushed and sweating, her shirt pulled out, her jeans powdered with dirt. It was as if he were savoring the contrast with his own dapper perfection.
    â€œWhat do you think you’re doing out here, Rosie?” he asked indulgently.
    â€œDigging a hole behind the toilet to shovel the shit into,” she said.
    â€œYou would be!” he said in amused exasperation. “Who but you? My God, Rosie, why in hell—”
    â€œBecause I got tired of shoveling my way through the Fleming variety,” she said. “At least this is a change. It wasn’t thrown at me in the first place.”
    â€œDon’t give me that,” His amusement was as thin as her poise. “What’s the idea of pulling this crazy stunt? Scaring the guts out of me and leaving me with no boat and five hundred traps to haul?”
    â€œI want a drink of water,” she said, and walked by him into the house. She took a drink, then brushed the spills out of her hair, put more cold water in the basin and washed her face. When she straightened up and was drying herself, he was sitting on the edge of the table, smoking a