Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

not aware of a time requirement. How long must you know someone before you can get pregnant?”
     
    Memory swamped Regina: Dylan, plunging thick and hot inside her, filling her, stretching her. Her own voice panting, “I could get pregnant!”
     
    Her stomach dived. Oh, God. She couldn’t be pregnant. Nobody could be that unlucky twice.
     
    The bell jangled as a scarecrow figure pushed through the door: thin face, thin beard, dingy fatigue jacket over layers of sweatshirts.
     
    Not a camper, Regina thought, despite the backpack. The patina of wear, the dirt embedded in the creases of his knuckles and his boots, went deeper than a week in the wild. Homeless, maybe.
     
    “Can I help you?” Antonia asked in a voice that meant something else. Get out. Go away.
     
    39
    Regina understood her hostility. World’s End barely had the social services to support its own population. The ferry and the local businesses catered to residents and tourists, not the homeless.
     
    The man eased the pack from his broad, bony shoulders to thump on the floor. “I’m looking for work.”
     
    “What’s your name?” Regina asked.
     
    “Jericho.”
     
    “Last name?”
     
    “Jones.”
     
    At least he had a last name. It was more than Margred had offered when she first came to work for them.
     
    “Do you have any restaurant experience, Mr. Jones?”
     
    His gaze slid to meet hers, and her breath caught in her throat.
     
    Alain used to say the eyes were windows to the soul. Regina figured it was mostly a line to get her into bed, but she knew what he meant. You could tell when nobody was home. But this guy . . . His eyes were crowded, haunted, like he had too many people living in his head, jockeying for position at the windows.
     
    Schizophrenia? Or substance abuse?
     
    She didn’t care so much if he was using. Half the staff at Perfetto’s had been addicted to something, booze or drugs or the adrenaline rush of a perfectly performed dinner service. But she wasn’t hiring a crazy to work in her mother’s kitchen, her son’s home.
     
    “Call me Jericho,” he said.
     
    She cleared her throat. “Fine. Do you have any—”
     
    “I washed dishes in the Army.”
     
    Margred set her bus tray on the counter. “You were in the Army?”
     
    40
    He nodded.
     
    “Iraq? My husband was in Iraq.”
     
    “Yes, ma’am.”
     
    Regina bit back a groan. Of course he would say that. He’d probably say anything to get a job. Or a handout.
     
    “We’re not hiring,” Antonia said.
     
    Margred frowned. “But—”
     
    Jericho picked up his pack. “Okay.”
     
    That was it. No resentment. No expectations. His flat acceptance got under Regina’s skin, made them kin somehow.
     
    She scowled. Nobody should live that devoid of hope. “You want to wait a minute, I’ll make you a sandwich,” she said.
     
    He turned his head, and she did her best to meet that haunted, eerie gaze without a shudder.
     
    “Thanks,” he said at last. “Mind if I wash up first?”
     
    “Be my guest.”
     
    “He trashes the restroom, you clean it up,” Antonia said when the door had closed behind him.
     
    “I can clean,” Margred said before Regina could bite back.
     
    Antonia sniffed. “We can’t feed everybody who walks in off the street, you know.”
     
    Regina was irritated enough to shove aside her own misgivings.
    “Then maybe we’re in the wrong business,” she said and stomped into the kitchen to make the man a sandwich.
     
    She glanced up the apartment stairs as she passed. Nick had already visited the kitchen to eat his lunch and punch holes in the pizza dough.
    But she could call him down for a snack, shoo him outside to play.
     
    41
    Summers were tough on them both. School was out while the restaurant stayed open longer hours. Nick had more free time, and Regina had less.
     
    This summer for some reason had been worse. Maybe because Nick was old enough now to chafe at his mother’s restrictions. Regina rubbed the headache brewing between her eyebrows. She ought to be able to sympathize with that.
     
    “Nick,” she called.
     
    He was silent. Sulking? She’d been short with him this morning.
     
    Distracted, Regina thought guiltily, trying hard not to remember Saturday night, Dylan’s hands on her hips as he moved slickly, thickly inside her.
     
    No sex on the beach was as important as her son.
     
    “Nicky?”
     
    The restaurant cat, Hercules, meowed plaintively from the top of the