Kirsty wondered what a pretty woman like her had to be unhappy about. Then she realized that she, herself, was unhappy a lot of the time and she wasn’t ugly. Maybe Miss George didn’t have a mother and maybe her father didn’t want her around. Maybe she was lonely and scared like Kirsty.
Another wave came in and slapped her legs and Miss George laughed louder, so Kirsty turned around because it confused her when she saw her being a real person like her and Graham. She wanted to think of her as an enemy like Miss Harrington and Chester Farriday. They were easy to not like.
She heard a horse whicker and turned. Her father was riding Jack and they stood high on the rise above the cove. She waved, but he didn’t wave back. Her hand fell to her side and she just stood there, feeling silly and ashamed for waving at him.
He wasn’t looking at her. She followed his gaze. He was watching Miss George.
Kirsty stood there for a long time watching Miss George. She was walking through the water, not paying any attention to her or to Graham.
“Look! I got the first lobster!” Graham was standing on a rock ledge. He was tugging a lobster trap that they’d found in an old boat on the other side of the island. Fergus fished for lobster all the time and he had told them how to use it.
Kirsty ran over to look at the lobster. “For something that tastes so good it sure is ugly.”
Graham was squatting down beside the cage and he was poking a stick inside the trap and watching the lobster grab it. “Look at those pinchers! I bet he can pinch even harder than you can.”
Kirsty looked at the lobster, then back to the spot where her father had been. He was gone now. She glanced out at Miss George, who was walking up the sand, her skirt flapping in the wind and her hand shading her eyes.
Kirsty was very, very quiet, then she looked at Graham and said, “If you want to test those pinchers, I have a great idea.”
“Sure.” Graham nodded.
Boys were always so easy.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late at night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Georgina had come here every night, to this spot just below the hemlock tree that looked as if it sprouted right out of the granite cliff. It was cold tonight, colder than it had been the night before. Graham had told her there was frost in the mornings now, icing the trees and ground.
Had this year been like all the other years, had she been at home in the family town house in Boston, she would have never noticed the moon or when the first frost came or if the night was colder than the night before.
She would have been too busy, flitting from soiree to soiree, toasting friends who weren’t really friends with glass after glass of champagne. Laughing and dancing, probably with John Cabot, whose nose came to her shoulder and whose bald head had been known to catch the glare of the glittering gaslights in a ballroom.
She leaned back against the trunk of the tree and watched the orange moon rise, a bright ball of fire against the deepest purple sky you had ever seen. That moon was so bright it almost hurt to look at it.
The leaves had begun to fall the past few days, floating down the ground every afternoon when the sea breeze blew in. Now the harvest moon turned those leaves bright gold.
It was beautiful here on this isolated island, especially at night. She left the tree and walked along the trail, listening to the leaves crackle under her feet.
She went up the hillside, back into a meadow where a winding path led to a small bridge near a pond. A pair of swans were sleeping in a cluster near the bridge, their heads tucked safely under their wings.
Georgina walked along the edge of the pond, where the pussywillows were thick and the elderberries grew wild. In the last hour the wind had slowed to just a light breeze and the air seemed quieter, the sea in the distance sounded calmer.
She stood near the bridge, watching the lazy swans floating on the still water while they hid from the night. She looked way up at the stars and thought about Amy. She wondered where she was and what she was doing.
She wondered what her own life would be like now, where she would go from here. What would happen to her?
