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beginning.
    Later, Alice said it was inevitable that Sam and Lee should fall in love. She maintained it was because of all the good karma Sam had accumulated creating wedding cakes for brides while she herself remained single. Alice believed in things like karma, or her understanding of it, which was pretty much gleaned from daytime TV. The Gospel According to Oprah governed Alice’s life. Although Sam wasn’t about to make light of Alice’s beliefs (she had her own rites and rituals that saw her through), she was banking on there being no such thing as karma. She didn’t even want to think about all she might have to answer for.
    By moonlight Sam made out the hulks of two boats resting in yard cradles. They had been delivered the week before and were, she knew, rotted and worm-eaten. One had been vandalized.
    It always amazed Sam that these wrecks could be salvaged. It seemed it would be easier to start from scratch with a new boat than to go to the labor and expense of attempting to restore these disasters. To the average viewer, to her, they looked beyond reclamation, but not to Lee. He saw in them the possibility of new life, or, more precisely, a return to their former glory, a careful restoration, every step undertaken with the integrity of the original vessel in mind. “Boats have feeling and personality,” he had told her. “Start screwing around with that and who knows what’s going to happen to you.” He worked on these projects with a patience that astonished her. He talked about antiquated tools the way another man might talk about a perfectly executed double play or about Elle Macpherson. He claimed he could tell if a hull was wood or fiberglass not with his eyes but with his ears. Wooden boats were smoother under way, he said. And the sound of water hitting a wooden hull was much more real and pure than the slapping of water against plastic. He was truly saddened that there were entire generations who would never learn the tradition of wooden boats. He was a rescuer. A rescuer of boats and cats. And her, although, before Lee, she hadn’t even known she needed rescuing.
    She stood in the lot a moment inhaling the salt-heavy air that blew in off the harbor. She had grown up in the western part of the state, in the shadow of the Berkshires, but she had never felt a connection to the mountains like the one she felt to the sea. After a week in Sippican she’d vowed that for the rest of her life she would never live more than an hour’s drive from the ocean. She took one more deep breath and then she slipped in through the office door, holding it open so the two yard cats could sweep in. A Phish CD was on. At least he wasn’t playing Ricky Martin. A string hammock holding rolled cylinders of boat designs hung over the drafting table. A bracketed shelf on one wall sagged beneath the weight of books, empty champagne bottles. Stacks of WoodenBoat magazines were piled on the floor beneath.
    In the workshop, Lee was fairing the mahogany planking of his current project, a twenty-foot ketch, which was nestled in cradles. He was building it from scratch. It was commissions like this that enabled him to take on the restoration jobs.
    â€œRelief arrives.” She held the six-pack aloft.
    He put aside his sandpaper and embraced her, leaving sawdust on her shoulders. He kissed her neck, inhaling her scent. “Ummmm. Sugar and chocolate. My weaknesses.”
    She kissed him back, hungrily. He smelt of raw wood, epoxy, sea air. “Does that mean you want to eat me?”
    His smile could have sent her straight to a cardiologist. “Count on it.”
    â€œI am,” she said. Her belly was heavy with longing. She pressed against him, felt his breath on her cheek, turned her face up for his kiss.
    He kissed her softly, then pulled back and studied her. “Is everything all right?”
    â€œIt’s been a long day,” she said, avoiding his question. One of