The Ebbing Tide by Elisabeth Ogilvie Read Free Book Online Page A

us—and all the Bennetts—but even at that she’d give us a chance to buy, wouldn’t she?”
    â€œYou still surprised at what people do?” Owen cocked an eyebrow at her. “People that hate us? Listen, kid, she’s been waitin’ for years for a chance to say, ‘To hell with you beggars.’ Now she’s said it. She’s sold out Bennett land to outsiders, and this one time you can’t do anything about it, so relax.”
    â€œAnd asking us to look out for the—” She put her hands against her burning cheeks, trying to cool them. “I can’t imagine what he’d be like except that she’d be sure to find somebody that would be horrible—he’ll shut off the road—he’ll—Oh, I wish I had her by the throat! Darn her smug soul!”
    â€œSay ‘damn,’” Owen advised her. “Damn her soul. It tastes better. Damn Jeff and Hugo too, for my money. Even it they don’t want to live here, they could at least hang on to the land.”
    She stood by the windows, gazing out at Uncle Nate’s Place, that had been Bennett property since Grandpa Bennett had bought the Island from the State of Maine. Was it for this those earliest Bennetts had toiled, living in a log cabin through their first winter on an uninhabited island twenty-five miles from the rest of the world; building the homestead with the sheer strength of their hands and shoulders; was it for this that her grandfather, and then her father, and then herself, Joanna, had fought to hold the Island community together? So that a Bennett’s wife could betray him as soon as he was in his grave by selling his and his children’s birthright?
    If Jeff and Hugo hadn’t wanted it, Jamie might have had it some day. But it was a stranger who had the deed. He owned the barn where she’d played, and the dose-cropped meadow land above Long Cove where the cows had come home at night, with all the western sky and sea ablaze with sunset behind them. He even owned the wild roses that grew against the seawall above Schoolhouse Cove. He owned the fields that were spangled in June with blue flag, red and white clover, daisies, buttercups in a shimmering sheet of gold, the sudden hot flame of devil’s paintbrush; he wouldn’t care about the strawberries that came in July, sweet and small, in clusters of rubies among the tall grasses; the Queen Anne’s lace that made the field look frosty in the late August moonlight, the blackberries, and in October the glossy purple-red crop of cranberries. A stranger would claim the great pink pond-lilies that Uncle Nate had planted one year in the ice-pond, among which the seagulls came down to drink, settling themselves like white blossoms among the pink ones.
    Her throat constricted. She wanted to cry, to swear, to go out and walk for long furious hours in the rain until she could wear out this passion of rage. She wanted Nils terribly, but even as she wanted him, she knew he couldn’t help her.
    She swung around accusingly on Owen. He sat at the table, his arms folded before him, his dark face set in harsh lines.
    â€œI won’t have him in my house!”
    Owen shrugged. “I don’t want him either. But we’ve got the little end of the stick and about all we can do is find out about the gink. We won’t know much if he stays with Sig—or Thea.”
    That decided her. Whoever he was, and whatever he was, it was certain that he’d heard a good deal of nonsense about the Bennetts from Aunt Mary, and he’d hear even more—of an unmistakably low caliber—from Thea. Out of self-defense, she would have to take him.
    â€œI’ll write to her,” she said.
    â€œHe might not be so bad—how do we know?”
    She gave him a look and didn’t answer; neither of them spoke of the letter again that day. When she wrote to Nils, she didn’t tell him about it. Nothing was