As Good as It Got by Isabel Sharpe Read Free Book Online

them back together. She had to remember that and believe.
    One final push and she was on the other side, breathing fast, sweat breaking out on her forehead. In front of her the bay spread blue and inviting, space and peace and freedom.
    She felt as if a dark box that had been holding her inside was suddenly opened up to let in light and air.
    Once upon a time there was a woman named Martha, who was so full of pain that she walked to the end of the earth, following the setting sun. At the end of the earth lay a clear blue beckoning ocean. Though she didn’t know how to swim, Martha took off her clothes and plunged into the water. She found magically that she could swim, and she set out toward the sun, hoping to fling herself into the clean yellow fire. Eventually, though, she became exhausted and was forced instead to welcome the long slow drop under the sea. But the gods, who had been watching her long journey, took pity and turned her into a mermaid, who still haunts the sea with her eerie sad songs.
    The drop to sea level from the shore was about ten feet, but in front of her a flat-topped outcropping sloped gently down. She moved forward onto the craggy rock, buckled and cracked and scarred, colored with white veins of quartz and green scabs of lichen. Not to mention generous contributions by the gulls—crab and mussel shells from their dinners and postdigestive offerings. She scanned the shore on either side.
    No one.
    Thank God. She needed time to recenter. To rid herself of the conviction that it had been a mistake to come to this camp. Eldon wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. As his 42 Isabel
    Sharpe
    journey would teach him about his life, so this one could teach her about hers.
    She sank down on the flattest surface she could find and pulled her legs under her, straightened her spine, closed her eyes and went inside herself.
    The call of a sea gull made one eye open. It swooped down and settled on a rock sticking out of the green-blue water, shamelessly photogenic.
    Again she closed her eyes, starting the familiar relaxation patterns, the familiar retreat inside . . .
    A boat engine, at first a distant drone, became suddenly louder, and she saw that the small craft had come out from behind one of the three islands in the bay. Two men were in it, one tiny shape standing in the stern, one even tinier sitting in front. Her heart pounded hopefully. Eldon, coming to meet her. The boat drew closer on its way west, and she realized the man in the front was of course not Eldon, but a dog. She imagined it, eyes narrowed, fur and ears streaming back, loving the speed and the salt spray and the company of its master. Life would be much simpler as a dog.
    She blocked the sight again and let her mind reach beyond the present space, beyond consciousness, to the place where she was at complete peace, where no thought disturbed her, the place of total relaxation where inadvertent joy filled her like a golden—
    “Hey there.”
    A male voice, unexpected, jerked her somewhat painfully back into full consciousness and she opened her eyes. He was young, probably early to mid-thirties, and very handsome, coming toward her on the rock in sure, bare feet, which would explain why she hadn’t heard him.
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    “You okay?” He stood looking down at her, tousled hair falling nearly to his eyebrows in front, shorter on the back and sides. His eyes were light—not quite blue, she couldn’t tell what color exactly. A tiny gold hoop glinted in one ear.
    His nose was lightly sunburned. He wore a blue T-shirt and faded ripped jeans, and looked like a rumpled pop star. She could imagine throngs of women throwing their underpants at him.
    “I was meditating.”
    “Oh, yeah, okay.” He sat down beside her, long legs stretched along the rock in front of him, leaning back on his palms, oblivious to the concept of meditation requiring silence and, in her case, privacy. She felt a prickle of irritation. “Meditation is