Read Beachcombers for Free Online Page B

again. And his hazel eyes sparkled.
    "So you've rented the Playhouse."
    His face continued to flame as he turned toward the bottom of the garden. "Well, yes, in this economy I've got to say I can use the money."
    "Who's the renter? Is she nice?"
    Jim Fox cleared his throat. "Her name's Marina Warren. She's from the Midwest, and yes, she's very nice. I just gave her some bluefish, actually. Iggy Holdgate hauled in a large catch and gave me some." He opened the cooler. "A big guy."
    "Super! I'll cook it for dinner!"
    "You'll cook? Honey, you just got here."
    "Oh, I'm fine, I had a good nap. I love bluefish."
    As they talked, they went into the mudroom and on into the kitchen. Her father put the fish in the refrigerator, then said, "I'm going to take a shower."
    "Fine. I'll get started in the kitchen."
    "Where are your sisters?"
    Abbie squatted down to dig through the crisper and found a bag of fresh lettuce and two bunches of asparagus.
    She told her father, "Lily's taken off--I don't know where--and Emma's upstairs in her room."
    Worry flashed across her father's face.
    "We had a great talk." Abbie handed him a cold beer. "I'll have one, too, while I cook." With forced enthusiasm, she said, "I'm so glad to be back!"
    "Are you really?" her father asked. "I know it's not London."
    "It's summer on Nantucket!" she told her father. "Nothing could be better!"
    She moved around the kitchen. Everything was familiar, everything was right where it had always been: the knives in the wooden block, with the bread knife space still empty--they never had figured out where that knife went. New heat-proof rubber spatulas hung out with old wooden spoons and slotted spoons in the blue speckled container, while the less popular utensils mingled messily in the top drawer to the left of the sink, along with so many crumbs Abbie suspected the drawer hadn't been cleaned since she was last here.
    The red enamel colander and the salad spinner were on top of the refrigerator, and just inside the pantry door hung their mother's apron. It said Kiss the Cook and their mother had given it to herself for Christmas, laughing as she showed it off. That had been the Christmas Abbie was fifteen. Whenever Abbie came in from a school event or the beach at dinnertime, her mother would be wearing that apron as she prepared dinner. She'd tap her apron and arch her eyebrow.
    "Oh, Mom, you are such a dork," Abbie would say, and she'd huff over, rolling her eyes, to peck a kiss on her mother's cheek before stomping out of the room.
    Now Abbie touched the apron, allowing the memory to flood back. She wished she had been nicer about kissing her mother.
    And there by the far wall, on the low shelf with the cookbooks, was a large white oyster shell she'd found at the beach at Pocomo, the last time the sisters had gone beachcombing. Abbie picked it up and held it in her hand. She'd wanted, after their mother's death, to keep up the tradition of the Beachcombers Club, but the first time she'd forced her younger sisters to go to the beach to search for prizes, they had all ended up sobbing in helpless wrenching grief. She marshaled them out to beachcomb the next year, but their hearts weren't in it; the beach held no magic--it just wasn't the same with their mother gone. They never tried it again.
    Anyway, as the girls grew older, they lost the time and interest for beachcombing. Months passed, and then years, and the gripping sorrow eased into an ache, and then into something more like the memory of an ache. Their father had changed after his wife died. He'd retreated deep inside himself, and he seldom talked about their mother or shared his own grief with his daughters. But on Danielle's birthday, he always took the girls out to dinner, and he always proposed a toast. Abbie could remember lifting her juice glass, saying, "Here's to Mom. Happy Birthday, wherever you are." It was her father who coined the phrase. The girls knew it was exactly what their mother would have liked