Moonlight Man by Judy Griffith Gill Read Free Book Online

remind myself of it every day,” said the elderly lady, “and I know heaven will reward me. But speaking of warm and exotic places, Marc, I saw that shell you gave to Sharon. She tells me you’ve traveled much of the world. What do you do?”
    Sharon’s ears pricked up at that. She had wondered more than once exactly what it was Marc did. Her imagination had suggested everything from drug importer to spy.
    “A little of this, a little of that,” he said with an easy smile. “I learned how to bake cookies when I worked in a bakery in New Zealand.” He spoke directly to the children, then added, “I took up diving in Fiji and worked there leading snorkeling tours for a while before shipping out on a freighter to Japan, where I spent several months.”
    “Wow!” Jason said, leaning forward eagerly. “Did you jump ship?”
    “No.” Marc laughed. “I had only signed on that far. I wanted to see some of the Orient. I just bummed around for a few months in Japan, in Hong Kong, and in mainland China, then caught a ride on a sailboat that was coming back this way shorthanded. I wasn’t much value to the skipper for the first week, with my head hanging over the rail, but I enjoyed the rest of the trip and learned a lot about sailing. So much that I crewed again, all the way back across the Pacific.”
    “Where else have you been? What else have you done? It sounds as if you’ve led a fascinating life,” said Zinnie.
    “I’ve done so many things, I can’t remember them all. I tend to work at something until it’s not fun anymore, then go on to something else. Living that way, I’ve seen a good portion of the world. But here’s something I’ve been wondering about, and now that I’m at the same table as a marine biologist, maybe I can get an answer. I was wondering if you’d know about gray whales …”
    Zinnie did know, and the conversation ranged then from the habits of the different species of whales to how stress factors have to be worked into bridges in high-risk earthquake regions, and what color upholstery fabric is most pleasing to the owners of ocean-going yachts, but it never managed to stay long on what Marc Duval had done with his life.
    He was being deliberately evasive, Sharon concluded, the third or fourth time he deflected the conversation, and when he disappeared into the kitchen with Rolph and Harry, who claimed it was a tradition in the McKenzie household that the men clean up after the women had done the cooking, she told herself she was glad to see him go.
    Freda and Zinnie were working on the jigsaw again, wanting to see it completed before they had to leave in the morning, and Sharon had just come down from getting the children into bed when the men returned. She was sitting staring idly into the fire, listening to the murmured conversation going on behind her at the card table. Marc sat beside her, as if it were his rightful place to be.
    “Will you play for us?” he asked softly, and she flinched away from him.
    “Not” It was a sharply whispered refusal.
    “Why not?” He spoke in a normal conversational tone, drawing everyone’s attention their way: “I’d like to hear you play again.”
    “Oh, Sharon, please. Hearing you yesterday was such a treat,” Zinnie said.
    Yesterday? For a moment, she couldn’t remember what Zinnie meant. For some reason that whole day seemed far in the past. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t want to. I don’t play anymore.”
    “You played at your sister’s wedding.”
    “That was different. It was a promise I’d made. I had to.”
    Marc looked at her intently, speaking as if the two of them were alone. “I know I’m only a guest in your home, Sharon, but we’ve enjoyed a traditional Leslie family dinner, done a traditional McKenzie family cleanup in the kitchen, and now I’d like to add a Duval tradition to this very wonderful Christmas you were so kind to share with me.” He smiled at her, and her stomach flipped over a few times before