OTHER BOOKS BY ANN HOWARD CREEL

The Magic of Ordinary Days

While You Were Mine

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Text copyright © 2016 by Ann Howard Creel

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781503936898

ISBN-10: 1503936899

Cover design by Rachel Adam

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIVETEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

She opened her eyes to blackness. Salty blackness. She moved her arms against water, then remembered. The ocean. The flight. The flames.

No.

Now her arms and legs would not move. She was drowning, falling into the cold depths. Below her, the pull of invisible arms and no light. A silence pure and dark. Her face down, her vision gone, she was plunging fast into infinite time. She could not hold her breath much longer; she was going to die.

How predictable.

A meaningless life. More than anything, she had wanted to be useful. She had wanted to better herself and those around her. She had wanted to live as one with the sea in her soul. And she had wanted love. She had thought love would save her. She had hoped she would be worthy. She had dreamed of redemption. And for a time she believed she had found it all.

A stream of air escaped her lungs and bubbled past her lips. Her head felt compressed and rang as if a string of clanging bells was pulled taut between her ears. Not much longer. Her life almost over now.

Flashes of memories: skimming over the water into darkness, salt on her lips, big boats lingering on the horizon, crates of liquor luring them out, rolls of bills in her hands, lawmen on the take, and funerals. Desire and kisses. New York City on the arm of a man. A nice dress. Racing over the ocean. Whiskey bottles. Fear and exultation.

How had it come to this?

And where was love now?

CHAPTER ONE

1908

When death came to Della Hope, this story begins.

Della never set foot more than a few paces off the waterfront. A sweet little thing with brassy hair and misty green eyes, she made a living off being shapely and willing, with no other means to support herself. As the town whore, she lived above one of the ramshackle dockside establishments and catered to men coming in off a fishing boat, reeking of the sea. Along the way she caught a disease that drove her mad—and then killed her.

On the day Della passed from this world, Silver motored in to the docks later than usual. The day had been warm, with buttery September sun, so pleasant that after he ate some bread and cheese he’d packed for his lunch over the mudflats raking clams, he lay back on the boat deck and his eyelids closed. He woke just as the anchor was pulling free of its hold and the tide was rushing in to fill the bay and the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers to their banks. He extracted the anchor and coaxed the engine to life, then slowly let the motor and tide take him home.

Breathing in the familiar smells of fish and salt water, he nosed his boat into the row of mostly handmade and pieced-together craft of his fellow clammers. He heard the news as soon as he hopped onto the dock; people were milling around and beating their gums about what was to be done, since Della apparently had two little girls, who were now orphans.

Once or twice Silver had seen the older of Della’s girls, about five years old, playing on the docks, but he hadn’t paid much attention to her and had never known there was another. The man they called Hawkeye, who had only one good eye, which made him peer at a person real serious, was dockmaster that day, and he was pacing the wooden planks of the long pier in between cursing the messiest of the fishermen, kicking their fish heads into the sea, and shooing off seagulls.

It was a Sunday, and Hawkeye paced about as if he didn’t know what to do. The sun was sinking low in the sky. “No one’s gonna help them girls. They’re gonna end up on the streets in the city, selling flowers . . . or themselves,” he said to Silver, who reckoned Hawkeye was really talking to himself. Hawkeye pushed the gray-hazed rat’s nest of black hair off a forehead that was etched with horizontal lines as deep as the river, and Silver could see that Hawkeye’s eyes were bloodshot and teary. Silver figured Hawkeye had a sweet spot for Della, even though he was a married man with three or four children—Silver couldn’t remember the exact number. “Who do I send for? Who’s gonna decide what to do with them girls?”

The setting sun trailed a golden glow over the big city across the bay. It was Silver’s favorite time of the day. Almost time to head home.

“I can’t do a thing to help them,” Hawkeye said, speaking more frankly than Silver had ever heard the man speak before, Silver guessed on account of his grief. “My wife, you know.” He looked away. “They gonna end up like their mama, and that’s what Della didn’t want. Della wanted better for them girls.”

Silver was aiming to stay out of this business. Though he was about the only man down on the wharves who didn’t have a wife and kids at home, he’d never partaken of manly pleasures with Della. Many of those other men had indulged in Della’s services, but when she took ill there was no help for her, save some Catholic women who came down to nurse her a bit, as if Della were the fallen Madonna with children. The men had vanished, except for Hawkeye, who couldn’t afford to incur his wife’s wrath by letting her know about his past infidelity and present concerns. Silver guessed it was the way of men. Fine lot, all of them,
he thought gravely.

Hawkeye said, “I guess I’m going to have to go call the police. Let them take those babes away.”

A wave of sadness washed over Silver, but he had no part to play in solving this problem. He hauled his day’s clams to be weighed and sold, and when he came back, the docks had all but cleared out. Hawkeye was gone, too, and Silver thought that was the end of it. But as he was leaving to walk home, he passed the wharf-side bars above which Della had operated her whoring business, and there outside on the rough wooden walkway that sloshed to the beat of the incoming tide, sitting on top of a small, scarred valise, was Della’s older girl, her Indian-black hair tangled, her dress stained and dirty, her feet bare, and a hard look to her jawline that said, Leave me alone,
despite the fact that she was but a little child holding a helpless babe in her lap. And yet this small, dark-haired girl was beautiful, a heavenly mistake, as if something had blown across the ocean on an errant breeze from the shores of the Mediterranean. She could’ve been from some noble Italian or Greek family rather than the bastard daughter of the town whore.

The baby, who looked to be nearing a year old, was much fairer than her sister, with skin so pale and thin it looked near to transparent, and atop her head were fine threads of almost-white hair. She appeared as if blown here by some strange wind, too, though hers of Norse origins. She ought to be growing up in the mountains of Scandinavia, not by the harsh, burning sea,
Silver thought. It was pretty obvious who’d fathered the baby, a big-time lobsterman called Whitey, who lived over in Atlantic Highlands. No other person for miles around had Whitey’s near-colorless hair, except his other children. But who sired the older one remained a mystery.

The older girl stared out over the water, the sun now turning blood orange, the light over the sea a burned red, and as he drew closer, the look of the girl took hold of Silver and made him stop. Her feet were planted solidly, she held her knees together tightly, her arms were curved loosely but protectively about the baby, and she wore an expression of shattered defiance on her face, as if she’d been overtaken by some kind of stupor or shock. She didn’t gaze up at him as he started to pass by.

Silver stopped for a moment, rubbed his thatch of gray whiskers, and shrugged his shoulders, first one, then the other, as he did when he found himself at a loss. The girls’ story was a fitting tale for Highlands, where the rich lived across the bay in New York and in the hills above town, and those just getting by—the clammers and fishermen—lived down by the docks and the shifting deeps. There wasn’t much actual space between them, yet those two places were worlds apart. Big money came to Highlands to sit on the verandas of their summer homes, slip amid clean, soft sheets in the new hotels, and comment on the quality of the clam chowder in dining establishments along the water. Big money lived in two-story, porch-fronted houses on the hills above town and traveled in automobiles and ferries. It came for the beautiful beaches, which were nearby, but at the same time far enough away from the clammers that they didn’t spoil its vacation. It came to private swim clubs, beach resorts, and boats people took out for pleasure and not for work. Scant money came to the folks who washed dishes and mopped floors in the hotels, clubs, and restaurants, and to the hardy men making a living out of the rolling waters: fishermen, lobstermen, and clammers, mostly clammers. It lived packed together in small cottages and rooms near the water, where winds whipped, storms threatened, and the streets sometimes flooded during summer high tides . . . and, of course, scant money also came to women like Della Hope.

The older girl didn’t move or utter a word, and yet there was something different about the light and evening breeze picking up, and it told him to wait, just wait for a minute. Don’t leave those babies alone. He was aiming to stay only until Hawkeye came back. He figured the other man would show up with help soon enough, and in the meantime the little girls shouldn’t be left by themselves on the wharf with the light fading. By now the sun was only a half dome cupped over the hills, and there was still no sign of Hawkeye.

“You hungry?” asked Silver, who was thus nicknamed because his hair had turned old when he was but twenty-five.

She looked at him then, the first time she’d ever really looked at him, although she had to have seen him around the waterfront plenty of times before. By God, the color of her eyes was a steely gray like he’d never seen before, and her appraising gaze was powerful. The look was neither good nor bad, trusting nor untrusting, helpless nor helpful—just a stare of pure sizing up. What he’d first interpreted as stupor was instead clearly intense concentration, as if everything in her surroundings had just transformed, and she was still trying to adjust to the altered appearance of it. Certainly her young life was now shattered.

Her eyes never moved, never watered, never told him a thing.

Clearly she wasn’t going to answer. “You got a bottle for that baby?” he asked.

She reached down to her side and picked up a baby bottle, but there was no milk in it.

“You wait here. I’ll be coming back, ye hear?”

Silver walked away toward Bahrs Landing, only a short stroll down the waterfront. He didn’t want to go far; he aimed to stay where he could still keep an eye on the girls.

When he returned with clam fritters and a small glass bottle of milk for the older girl and another one for the baby, the older girl poured the baby’s bottle. She fed that baby first, and Silver wondered how long she’d been mothering the child while Della took sick. Only a child, she was already taking care of another life on this earth. Already doing what he had shied away from doing his entire life, nearly fifty years of it.

Silver liked people to a point; he liked to hear them tell of some important news or share a laugh, but then solitude was always calling him back. Too much contact with people took things away from him—his energy, his soul, his freedom. There was something too loose and scattered about the outside world. He had taken to the sea from the moment his father taught him to clam, but even out there with all that openness of sea and sky, the one thing he craved after a day out was his own private space. Life had whittled out a little place for him and painted the sea beside it, just as he’d wanted.

After the baby had been fed and burped, the girl’s face seemed brighter, as if the light of the day were opening up instead of drifting away. Still holding the baby, she started eating the fritters with one hand, picking up two, three, four of them at a time and stuffing them in her mouth, barely chewing before swallowing. Where her baby teeth had come out, there were gaps big enough to put a finger through, her lips were reddened and chapped, and she smelled musty, like a dirty room.

Silver said, “Slow down. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

She kept on eating that way until the fritters were gone, and then she licked at her fingers and touched the bottom of the paper bag to pick up each and every last crumb.

“I should’ve brung you some more food,” he said.

She handed him the empty bag and then fixed him with that gaze again.

“You talk?”

She smacked the final crumbs from her lips and swallowed them, and he saw the tendons shift in her little neck. “I talk when I got something to say.” Her tone wasn’t necessarily disrespectful, but it was utterly sure. She sat tall, her shoulders firmly set, and her chin level despite it all. Some people have that inner pride inside that no amount of hard knocks can ever beat out, and this girl had it in barrels. Her eyes bore through him, and they seemed to say, I’ll never belong to anyone. Not to you, not to anyone.

Something odd, like an invisible wire, sparked and shot between him and the girl, then fizzled up his spine. Silver couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Hawkeye came back and said there wasn’t anyone at the police station that night, and he guessed he was going to have to walk up into the hills to wake up the judge or the mayor. “I even went to one of them Catholic ladies who used to come around and nurse Della, but she don’t want ’em.” Hawkeye pursed his lips. “A fair crowd gathered to watch the police take Della out of here, but then everyone went on about like nothing happened. No one paid a bit of attention to these girls.”

“I’ll take ’em,” Silver said, stunning himself. Some spirit must have pulled those words out of his mouth. He’d never believed in ghosts, but he smelled something of Della’s perfume just then, as if she’d just gone strolling by. He shook his head even as he said, “Just for tonight.”

Hawkeye stared at him and started to thank him. But Silver couldn’t have any of that. “I’ll put ’em up for one night.”

He was sure he meant it at the time.

Hawkeye said, “The girl’s Frieda. The baby’s Beatrice.”

“Bea,” said Frieda as she gazed up into the darkening sky. “I like to call her Bea.”

Hawkeye said, “’Cause she’s little, like a bee, yeah?” and laughed at his own joke.

The girl darted her eyes away. Silver didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t make a joke on a day like this.

Instead he leaned closer, laid his hands on his thighs, and studied the girl. “Well, come on. I got to get you some more food,” he said, holding his breath, not knowing whether she would go with him or not. Why did he suddenly care so much? Some kind of madness had struck him, like the sickness that smacked down so many young men when they fell into a frenzied, passionate love. He’d never fallen into that, not once, but now he was experiencing something even more profound than what he imagined that romantic love to be. Some kind of powerful longing to save something before it was too late, and that feeling was swelling solid-like in his chest.

Would she come? There was no way he could ever replace what she had lost, but for the first time in his life he believed he had something to offer, and he was ready to give it finally, as though he had awakened from a lifelong sleep.

She must have recognized the shift in him, or else she knew him as one of the few men who hadn’t come to her mother, or else she saw something else she deemed worthy. After only a few seconds, she stood up and let him take the ratty valise. She carried the baby in one arm, and as they walked to his place in the gathering dark she put her free hand—a little soft creature—in his, and it changed Silver’s life for good. From that moment on he wasn’t going to let either of those girls go.

He knew it wouldn’t be easy, and a pointed finger of doubt poked him in the ribs. Was he up to this? All he could think to do was send into these fathomless stars above an urgent plea: Let me do right by them.
Could love reawaken an almost-dead man and save two young lives? He wanted that now as he’d never wanted anything before. But he never foresaw the future. Who would have? The storm of change still lay far away past the horizon.

CHAPTER TWO

1921

Frieda refused to show up for graduation. She’d stayed in school to please Silver and the state authorities, who’d let Silver keep the girls only if he saw them through school. But now that she had her high school diploma, she wanted nothing more to do with the school or anyone in it. At age eighteen and a legal adult, she’d reached this point in her life surrounded by a town that had ruined and shunned her mother, and the way she saw it, all the local people still wore some of the soil from the dirty life her mother had been forced to live. They were all to blame. And yet they’d had the nerve to look down on Frieda and Bea.

“Well, you’ve graduated even if you didn’t show up today. I’ve been saving money so you can take a secretary course now,” Silver said to her. He was sitting in his favorite chair on the front porch, squinting into the afternoon light that had settled over Highlands as soft and silky as a yellow chiffon scarf. Still wearing his clammer’s overalls and shucking clams out of a bucket sitting at his feet, he was preparing for one of his lectures, Frieda thought grimly.

She stood with her feet planted and her arms crossed. “I’m not going to secretary’s school. I’ve done what I had to do. I hated school but I finished, for you.”

Silver looked up with that wary expression in his eyes he got every time they disagreed, which was often. “Then what you going to do with yourself? You’re eighteen. Not a kid anymore. You got to have a future.”

Frieda stepped forward to the porch rail. She wore a pair of Silver’s old pants, hitched up and held at her waist with one of his belts, into which she’d carved extra holes. He’d bought her a graduation dress, which hung on a nail in the room she shared with Bea, but she’d never even tried it on.

The house, in its snug spot at the end of the road, sat perpendicular to the water, and she looked to her left toward the bay, where the breeze was lashing up little whitecaps and the late, slanting light sparkled on the swells. Out there was the only part of the earth that spoke to her.

She pushed back a tendril of long, unruly hair. “I’ll clam with you.”

With her firm gaze, she followed some incoming fishing boats. On the water—that was where she belonged. The sea didn’t care about differences in human lives; it didn’t judge. Out there the rest of the world seemed far away, and the inner emptiness she’d felt for most all of her life eased. Something else filled it, something other than her anger toward the townspeople, her fear for Bea’s future, the looks people gave her, or her constant worry about getting by. When the bay was furious and churning, those frothing waters pulled the resentment right out of her and fed it to the waves. And when the tides stopped surging and the bay became silver and flat, it was as if some almighty power had smoothed her rough edges while leveling the surface of the sea with big, broad hands. She felt as if she could sail out past the land and lighthouses and float on forever.

Silver tossed the empty clamshells into a different bucket, and the loud clinking sound told Frieda he was getting ready to say something she wouldn’t like.

“Clamming ain’t no work for a woman.”

Frieda stood tall and hinged a hand on her hip. “Why not? Any work on the water is better than something shoreside. It’s been good enough for you.”

“Because I didn’t have no other choice.”

“Well, I do have a choice, and I’m not going to any more schools. I’m done with that. Besides, remember I took a typing class junior year? I was terrible at it, and I hated every minute. My fingers didn’t work when I couldn’t look at the keys, when I had to keep my eyes on the paper. I have to look at what I’m doing.”

He sat back. “Well, I cain’t work much longer.”

Frieda had noticed. Silver had always been old to her, lined with age and the sure tracks of a hard life out in the sun and sea winds. But he’d also been spry for his years. Going out in the boat every day, making runs to the school, cooking, and taking care of two girls had made that a necessity. Now he was beginning to lose stamina, move slower, and complain about aches and pains. Over the past two years his time on the water had gradually been cut in half.

Silver said, “We got to get you some working skills.”

Keeping her gaze on the bay, she said, “I can take over the boat now.”

She could feel his piercing stare on her back as he said flatly, “I sold it.”

His words hit her like a rogue wave, fierce enough to slap her down but not kill her. Sold
it? She spun toward him, gasping for air. “What?”

He looked down. “Like I said, I sold it.”

Her heart started thumping, and her voice came out in a screech. “What are you talking about?”

“I ain’t getting any younger, and I got a fair price. Fella’s coming by later to pay me off.”

So it wasn’t sold yet
. She pulled in a long breath. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”

Silver shucked another clam. “Good fella. You know him.” His brow furrowed, and he tossed the shell. “Sam Hicks.”

Incredulous, Frieda asked, “How could you even think of selling the boat? If you don’t want it anymore, give it to me.”

“I sold it, I said.”

“B-But . . .”

“I already made the arrangements. It’s done now.”

“I-I always assumed . . . you’d let me have it. You know how I love it out there!”

“I never made no promises. I need to get some money out of her while I still can.”

Her eyes bore through him, but he was having a hard time looking her in the face. “Are you crazy? How’re we going to live?”

He edged the knife around another clamshell. “I been putting away money for some time. I got enough to get by. This house is paid for, and I’ll pick up an odd job here and there. Might crew for some fishermen when the weather’s good. After I sell the boat, I’ll have the money so you can go to that secretary school.”

“I want the boat! I want to be out on the water. You know this.”

“Like I said already, a life on the water ain’t no life for a woman.”

Frieda snorted, even as panic started to pummel her. Silver seemed dead set, not budging. “I’m not like other girls. How, how . . . ?”

“You can marry
a clammer if you want.”

A dreadful realization blanketed her brain. “Oh no you don’t.”

“He’s a good man, Frieda. Always been a good young man. You might take a liking to him.”

“How dare you!”

“I always been looking out for you. Sam Hicks could make for a good husband. And now that he’ll be owning the boat, if you marry him you can still go out from time to time.”

In that moment she came as close to hating Silver as she’d ever come before, despite the fact they’d always tangled. But arguing was pretty pointless with someone as stubborn as Silver. Trying a different approach, she consciously slowed her breathing and softened her tone. “Please don’t sell the boat.”

He clearly tempered himself a bit, too. His eyes were a tad bit sad even. “I already done it, Frieda. I’m sure sorry if it don’t suit you.”

“You can change your mind, can’t you?”

“No,” he said, and wiped the knife on his overalls. “I gave the man my word.”

“Puh-lease
, Silver!”

He shook his head and kept on shucking clams, but his rhythm was off.

“You didn’t even talk to me about it!”

He pointed at her with the knife. “You won’t see it this way now, but in time you’ll see I’m doing right by you. You ain’t never been out there in the world of men. You need some kind of skill for working indoors, and in time you’re going to want yourself a husband.”

“Obviously you’ve missed the fact that it’s 1921. Everything has changed. We girls can do anything.”

“Anything?” Silver squinted up at her. “I don’t want you doing anything
. I want you doing something safe, by God.”

Frieda huffed. “I’m as good as any man on our boat. I figure that if you gave it to me, I’d try some new areas for clamming, and I’d find a way to make more money than all the others. I’d stay out from dawn to dusk and save up every cent for Bea’s future. She loves school, loves her teachers, each and every one. She wants to be a teacher, don’t you know that? And college will take money.”

“You ain’t never gonna make enough to pay for no college, not as a secretary or by fishing, neither one. Bea’ll be better off marrying a good provider.”

Rage flaming again, Frieda shouted, “Are you going to pick her husband, too?”

He looked at her keenly. “You might give the man a fighting chance.”

“Silver, please don’t do this. The boat has been in your family for so many years, in our
family.”

“I’m trying my best to make sure you’ll always be alright.”

“But you know I can take care of myself.”

Silver snorted, briefly seeming to be experiencing an ounce of regret. But his tone never wavered. “I made the decision, and now you just gotta take it like a grown-up.”

Frieda knew exactly how the rest of this conversation would play out. She and Silver would argue back and forth, and the one who held the power would win. She’d held the power when it came to graduation. Silver held it with the boat.

She stood in a state of exasperation, heat building inside her head. If she had to stay in his presence a moment longer, she’d explode.

“You’ve taken everything—everything—from me!” She let out a grunt and kicked an empty bucket, which rattled across the porch, startling some nearby gulls feeding on fish guts by the water, then took heavy steps down the porch stairs and marched away. As she stormed off, she thought hard. She had to come up with a plan. The boat hadn’t changed hands yet. What could she bargain with?

Both she and Bea had the last name of Hope, same as their mother’s. No one knew who their real fathers were. It didn’t matter, because they were Silver’s daughters. For him she had put up with the school filled with rich kids who’d sneered at her, as if she were little better than a cast-off rag doll. Not only was she poor, she was the dead whore’s daughter, and many mothers didn’t want their children to befriend her. Besides, the children were mean, often avoiding her, whispering behind her back, then bursting into sudden laughter over their private jokes. She couldn’t make friends with the clammers’ kids who had attended school either, for a different reason. Each and every one of them had something that made her think he or she could be related to her or Bea. Each could be a half sister or half brother. Every dark-haired boy or girl could be one of hers; every blond, one of Bea’s. She’d put up with it all for Silver, and now look what he’d done to her. Her escape had always been to the water, and he’d just taken that away from her.

Silver had promised to sell the boat without telling her, and even worse, he was giving up the boat to a man he thought she’d marry just so she could hold some claim to it. Sam Hicks was about twenty-five, and after growing up here he’d served time in the Great War working on engines for the navy. His age meant that he was too young to be Bea’s or her father, and she’d known him to be a decent, hardworking sort who stuck mostly to himself. A few times they’d run into each other on the docks, and once he asked her to join him for a soda. She declined because Silver was waiting for her. Another time she caught him following her with his eyes as she helped Silver moor the boat. But she’d always kept her distance from boys, even those in her class. She had never been one to believe in happy endings; that was Bea’s territory.

As if she’d conjured her sister’s presence by the ferocity of her thoughts, here Bea was, running up behind Frieda.

“Slow down.” Bea, now fourteen years old, panted out the words. “Don’t go off mad. I can’t stand it when you and Silver fight.”

Frieda’s feet kept hammering the ground, her sister on her heels, and she glanced back to see Bea’s face scrunched up in agony. “Then why were you eavesdropping?”

“You were yelling!”

Still storming off, Frieda said over her shoulder, “I can’t be around him right now. I swear, I want to shake him.”

“It was my idea,” Bea blurted out.

Frieda stopped dead in her tracks and slowly turned around. Was this whole day going to be filled with startling and infuriating confessions? “What?”

Bea leaned over her knees, catching her breath. Then she lifted her tormented face to Frieda’s glare. “It’s true. It makes sense—you and Hicks with the boat together. So don’t blame Silver; I was the first to bring it up. You always blame him . . .”

“And you’re always too eager to shoulder the blame! Stop it, will you? I know you didn’t come up with this on your own.”

Sunlight trembling in Bea’s silk-spun hair, she straightened, sucked in a long, tight breath, and focused on Frieda’s eyes. “OK, so I might not have come up with it first. But I think it’s a great idea.”

Frieda harrumphed. “And I like to think for myself!”

“Look, you know me. I like to think of romantic endings.”

“Good lord, Bea.”

Bea wrung her hands together. “Come back home. Apologize.”

When Bea set her clear blue eyes that way, Frieda was normally hard-pressed to refuse her anything. Something as pure and sweet as her sister should never have landed here. Bea was too fragile and sensitive for such a hardscrabble life. Silver had tried to make things as good as he could, but it was up to Frieda to make them better. Without the boat her chances were nil, and the boiling anguish inside her was erupting. “Why don’t you do it for me? You apologize so well. Besides, I think he should be apologizing to me! You, too. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“His mind is made up. It’s obvious he can’t keep going out anymore. He’s getting tired and old. Have some mercy. Knowing he’d have to sell, he wanted to do it before the boat fell into disrepair, and he chose a good man.”

“This is unbelievable. He doesn’t want me to be
a clammer, but it’s OK for me to marry
a clammer?”

Bea looked away, as if a tiny splash of shame had just run through her. She rubbed her temples. “Something like that . . . But Hicks is a veteran and a mechanic, too. He can do other things. He can always make a living.”

“So now you’re planning my life, too.”

Bea let her hands fall to her sides. “I have dreams. I know what I want. I want you to have some plans, too, something to work toward. What, dear sister, do you want, anyway?”

“You know what I wanted! How many times do I have to say that?”

Bea’s eyes pleading, she said, “Well, the boat’s gone. Find something else to want. Otherwise, you won’t have anything to reach for.”

Frieda chuffed out a laugh. “Such flowery talk. You have promise, Bea. You have so much to offer the outside world. I’m just a regular girl trying to chip an itty-bitty pebble of my own out of a hard rock situation.”

“See? You’re flowery, too, only you’d never admit it.”

Frieda kicked at the pieces of oyster shell that littered the road. She couldn’t hold still another moment. She loved her sister, and Bea needed her. Even small slights hurt Bea deeply, so Frieda normally protected her. But not today. Her feet flying again, she yelled over her shoulder, “Leave me alone, please!”

Bea called from behind her, “Don’t be gone long. Silver will worry . . .”

Frieda ran as if she could crush the day’s revelations on the shell-strewn street. She ran until her breath was ragged and sweat swam down her spine. Finally walking to calm herself, she strode down the dock, where the sinking sun lit up the distant water with floating topaz twinkles. Clammers still in their bright-yellow oilskins were gathering for talk and drink after a day over the shoals. Some of them spoke to her, but most of them only glanced up, rheumy-eyed and weary, stooped over their catches or their boat engines, and didn’t say anything. Some looked her over like hawks eyeing their next meal. She didn’t know if they stared the same way at all young women, who were rare on the docks, or if it was because of her mother’s legacy. Their stares seemed predatory and leering—the way she imagined one would appraise a whore’s daughter who might be forced into the same business someday.

She walked past them all, feeling lost, then trudged uphill to the cemetery to sit on her mother’s grave. Some people said it was disrespectful to sit on a grave, but that was the only place Frieda could recall anything about her mother. The memory of a five-year-old is blurry, but she could dredge up a few things: her mother teaching her to make sand castles on the beach; being tucked in at night; having a cool, damp cloth placed gently on her forehead when she was sick. She remembered her mother’s caring hand and missed it, and yet she never wanted to grow up to be her mother. She had to make sure that never happened to her or Bea.

The warmth of the earth seeped into her bones. Today there was a new bunch of wildflowers on the grave of the long-dead town whore. Frieda figured Silver left them from time to time. She’d seen bunches of flowers laid out here for years. At one point she thought Bea brought the flowers, but Bea denied it.

Picking them up, she curled her legs underneath her on the grave marked with only a once-white wooden cross. These flowers were fresh, and she knew that Silver hadn’t been up here today. She lifted the flowers to her nose and took a sniff. Earth and nectar. Not salt and water.

Who else still thought of Della? Had anyone loved Della while she was of this earth? Della Hope: what a heartrending name for someone who’d had such a hopeless life. No one ever mentioned her, as if sad subjects should not be broached. People knew—everyone knew—but it was as if Della Hope had never existed and all that remained was her legacy of two leftover girls. Long ago, kids at school had stopped whispering about Frieda and Bea’s origins, and only the occasional kid had the nerve to mention it now, then quickly regretted the impulse. Frieda had made sure of that with her thorny exterior, and Bea had accomplished the same thing with her personality and likeability. The old story had passed its prime, making her mother more dead than ever.

And what of life and love after her death? Had Della risen past clouds and flocks of dewy angels into the open arms of a kind Lord in heaven? These questions never met up with answers. Instead they floated like each of her breaths—then disappeared.

Through a break in the trees, the town, the bay, and the big city beyond spread out like a map. From that vantage point they seemed vast and unknown, and yet in a strange way small, as if in miniature. Just like her own life. At times Frieda felt the massive openness of her still-unfolding life and all its possibilities, and at other times she felt trapped in a muddled cage of smallness and mediocrity. Where was her place now in this world that surrounded her, this bustling scheme of life? Confusion about the future had always haunted her, but the one thing that had felt secure was the boat. That one small possession around which to build her life as an adult. Something to hold on to; it had sustained her and given her refuge and purpose. Out on the water she could forget about her mother’s tainted past, the judgment of others, and her isolation. It didn’t matter out there; it all drifted away.

She knew that Silver hadn’t meant to hurt her. As she gazed out over the bay, the tide ebbing, her rage ebbed somewhat, too. The first time Silver had taken her fishing, she had been but a little thing, and somehow she got a fishhook caught in her hair. It had panicked her; it was as if that tiny hook and some fishing line could tie her up and trap her forever. Silver stopped what he was doing while the boat rolled on the swells, and he worked that hook out ever so gently. Frieda remembered his calming voice, his easy but sure touch, and his patience while she fidgeted and gulped in big breaths of air. How he had soothed her, talking to her in his low rumble; how his solid presence reassured that he would always take care of her.

So yes, Silver meant no harm; she knew that in his mind he was settling her down, but he had no idea how much his decision had unmoored her.

When she made her way back toward the waterside, the dying daylight sparkled on scales and tiny shells caught in fishing nets draped over skiffs for drying, but the approaching night already seemed the darkest in the world.

Silver had made his living on the water; he should’ve known. He should’ve understood that the sea had a way of evening out her rough edges and reviving her hopes and dreams. Now her sorrow was as big as this bay. And in her mind’s eye she saw pockets turned inside out and empty piggy banks. How was she going to make money? What was she going to do with her life?

Sam Hicks was already at the house. He lounged on the porch alone, sipping on iced tea out of a chipped mug, and papers sat on the rough little table between the two chairs. Frieda strode up the porch steps, and he stood to greet her.

As she glanced at the papers, her heart fell into her gut. Silver had already signed the papers to sell Hicks the boat. Her boat. Nothing she’d said had made a bit of difference. Her defiance came seething back. Defiance was an old comrade that had kept her company for many years.

“Evening, Miss Frieda,” Hicks said with a smile.

Well, well . . .
He looked as though he’d dressed up for the occasion. Instead of clamming overalls or rubber boots, he wore a pair of nice pleated slacks and a freshly ironed shirt, cuffs rolled up to his elbows. Hicks was a large man with a roundish face that made him appear little older than a teenager. He was attractive in a burly, boyish way, like someone who had grown into a man nestled away in some sleepy farm town and not in the grip of a bloodbath war. Though with clean-shaven skin and not a pockmark in evidence, he still had a bit of the soldier about him. He had combed his unremarkable brown hair away from his face with oil so it lay back in wide threads. She’d never seen him in anything other than work clothes before, but it made no difference. Everyone who lived down here lay bare. They could cover themselves in different cloth, but the fiber beneath remained the same. It was pointless to try to appear anything but salt and sea stained. She rather liked herself that way.

She was not about to feign politeness. “What’s the occasion?” she asked.

He smiled. Only a few little lines on his forehead and tiny etched curves in his cheeks were evident. He hadn’t been out on the water long enough to show it yet, and if she didn’t resent him so much for buying her boat she might have thought him comely.

“I just bought myself a boat today.” He actually looked pleased with himself. Obviously Silver had not shared her feelings about the sale with this man.

She chuffed out, “So I heard.”

She walked straight through the door into the house and let the screen door slam behind her. No matter how much they aired out the place in the summer, the small rooms held the smell of salt, damp wood, fried food, and smoke from the stove. Bea was helping Silver in the kitchen.

“Where you been?” Silver barked. “We could’ve used some assistance around here.”

Frieda stopped for a moment and watched Bea—pretty, sweet Bea, helping as always. Cutting up cooked potato, stirring