The Season of Open Water by Dawn Tripp Read Free Book Online

forgotten pack of cigarettes left on a side table in a downstairs hall.
    The woman drawing-in has not noticed him. She is intent on her work. The sun streams through the window and rests on her shoulders. Her fingers, deft and quick, slip through the yarn.

Bridge
    She could feel his eyes on her as she walked away, a light warmth like the sun on her neck. She does not look back. She does not turn around. She keeps walking until she is around the bend and out of sight. Then she stops. She stands still in the broken shadows at the edge of the woods, clutching the sack of flour. She looks down at her feet, at the sunlight flung in irregular patterns across the ground. She can feel her heart beating, and it is as if her body is hollow and she is only her heart.
    In her left overall pocket, she can feel the tin of oysters that she stole, its slight weight against her thigh. In the store, she had recognized him right away, of course. But it took her a moment to realize she had been caught—she had never been caught— it had taken her another moment to realize he would say nothing. He simply stood there, at the other end of the aisle, looking at her, and the way he looked at her washed through her like cool water, strange and intimate and unfamiliar.
    She tries not to think about it. She fingers the tin in her pocket. She feels young and ridiculous, ashamed that he had seen her take it, annoyed with herself, annoyed with him. She tries in her mind not to see it at all, not to see his face, not to be moved one way or another by their encounter or the odd chance of meeting him twice in twelve hours.
    She cuts down to the river. There are skiffs tied up against the wall of the canal. She steps onto one and lies down across the wooden thwart. The sun is warm on her face. She caps her hand over her eyes to shield out the light and looks toward the Head. She tells herself that she is not looking for him. She knows it is a lie. But he is gone. His car is gone. The village has begun to stir to life, bodies milling in the clear, midmorning light. Abigail Dean is opening up her hat shop, hanging a set of copper chimes on a hook above the door, sweeping off the front steps. Harold Steele draws open the window shutters of the tea room and sets small iron tables on the walk outside. On the front porch of the mail-stop, Abiel Tripp hauls himself out of his chair. He readjusts his suspenders, then takes a turn to the other end of the porch and back, his worn body ambling with a rickety grace.
    Cars and trucks flow back and forth across the bridge and up Old County Road. Bridge watches them from the boat. The thwart is hard against the back of her head. The sun is smooth on her face, the river rocking gently underneath her. Her mind is loose, and it occurs to her that she is thinking of him, still, Vonniker, without thinking of him. She is waiting for him, perhaps, without waiting for him. She smiles to herself. It is late—close to ten. She stands up and picks up her sack of flour. She steps off the skiff onto the wall of the canal and walks home.

Cora
    Cora sits in the kitchen between two of the galvanized tubs—one filled with bluing water for the whites, one for the rinse. She knows they are here, and she does not want to think about them—Honey Lyons and the three strangers he has brought with him. They are waiting on her father. She wants them to be gone.
    She has known Honey Lyons since she was a girl. She does not want him in her yard. He is a slippery nail of a man, a damaged wolf. Once she saw him twist the neck of a goose for no other reason than to do it. She has heard he is up to his chin in the rum-running trade, that he works for the Syndicate, and these men in their dark suits he has brought with him, she knows they are no good. When Bridge walked by them earlier on her way to Shorrock’s store, two of the men had looked her up and down with that slick and hungry way some men have. Bridge had shrugged them