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repeated, making it sound special. "I'm David."
    I stood still, looking into his eyes, a fascinated thing like the hens would get when the
boys petted them on their throats.
    "Well, Sophie, I'm here to help you plant the roses. I came back up to get my paints. It's
a natural day for painting, as it is for planting roses. But, I knew perfectly well that you would be
here, maybe not today, but sometime. We couldn't go on forever seeing each other and never
meeting, now could we?"
    "Well... I never really thought about it." I mumbled the lie. This mumbling around was
awful. He was going to think I was a complete idiot. Shrugging my shoulders in what I hoped
was a casual manner I spoke up more firmly. "No, I guess not. After all," I said lightly, "we're
neighbors."
    "No Sophie, we're more than neighbors. I know it, don't you?"
    I struggled against answering but his eyes demanded an answer. An honest answer, and
for the life of me I couldn't lie to him. "Yes," then, angry at his forcefulness, I found my tongue.
"If we're not just neighbors, what do you think we are?" I didn't want him examining what I
thought we were.
    "Friends," he answered. The dark blue eyes relaxed their grip on me and became sunny
again.
    "Friends, Sophie, and Lord knows that's as rare as, well, as rare as having an
ebony-haired beauty greet me every day with a beautiful smile."
    "Ebony-haired beauty?" Me?
    I'd never had a man speak so fancy to me before. Once a fellow at a dance who'd had too
much to drink told me I was, "a great looking dame," and men had certainly said fresh things to
me when making passes, but most men had to have something to drink before they could get
brave enough even to approach me. Mandy said I scared them off, but I don't know why.
    And then, during the war they were either gone, or when they came back they seemed
gripped by a frenzy to get married, an idea that always chilled me. The life of my mother, or my
sister, was not what I wanted. Sometimes I scared myself. I knew I didn't want to lose my
freedom. But it was all confused with the feelings that at times nearly overcame me. At least
David seemed safe.
    He turned back to the roses. He was relaxed, and with a silent sigh of relief, I relaxed
too. Together we planted the roses. Maybe they're still there. They took hold right away and by
the end of September were blooming so much that David cut some to take to his wife.

8. If You Want Me...
    After that I was usually outside when he passed. As the summer took hold, David lost
the routine of winter. Often he stopped to pass the time of day. Those were times of complete
happiness for me. I took lots of walks on the beach, collecting the shells left behind by the
waves. It became an obsession to see what new things were there. I found and kept so many that
I felt guilty being so greedy. I wrote Mandy to tell the kids that I was collecting shells for them.
It sounded so good I believed it myself.
    More often than not, as I walked farther and farther I "happened" upon David. His
favorite place was near a stump far up the beach. From that angle, early in the morning, the
sunshine played on the Rock so that parts were in shadow.
    He didn't just paint the Rock, he painted everything: the sea at storm, the seals, the gulls,
many different places along the shore. He got tangled up in the colors, too, like me and my quilt.
It was his fascination with the different shades of sand, and the different light--morning light and
afternoon light, cloud light and sun light, shadows, rain drops and the bird footprints that added
the depth to my quilt that it finally had. I've never looked at sand the same since.
    And people. Sometimes he went to town or back in the hills to the farms. David knew
most of the people who lived up in the mountains.
    The Hosmer family lived up one of those dirt roads. About once a week David visited
them, liking to have lunch with them but more, he loved seeing the children as they were,
natural, so he could paint them