Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

just an island boy who’d gone away, no different and certainly no better than any of the men she had considered and rejected over the years.
     
    Men she hadn’t had sex with.
     
    Shit.
     
    “Sorry, kid,” Dylan said.
     
    “Yeah.” Nick dropped the coin into Dylan’s palm. “Me, too.”
     
    Regina sighed as her son stomped into the kitchen.
     
    Dylan turned toward the door, stretching his legs into the room.
    Long legs, Regina noticed. No socks.
     
    “Who is that?” he asked.
     
    Regina jerked her attention from his corded legs and followed his gaze to the front window, where Jericho waited on the sidewalk. “Jericho Jones.”
     
    She gave him the islanders’ wave, lifted fingers, an almost-nod. The vet shouldered his pack and disappeared around the corner of the building.
     
    “What does he want?”
     
    “Nothing. A sandwich.”
     
    54
    He came by once a day, or every other day. She slipped him food through the back door when Antonia wasn’t watching.
     
    “I meant here, on the island.”
     
    Regina shrugged. “Maybe he can’t afford the ferry back to the mainland.”
     
    “Is that what he told you?”
     
    “I didn’t ask. It’s your brother’s job to question people. I just feed them.”
     
    Dylan’s gaze narrowed on her face. “You are kind,” he said, almost accusingly.
     
    “Not really. The way our country treats its returning soldiers sucks.
    He shouldn’t be living on the streets, he—”
     
    “— could be trouble.”
     
    “Look, he doesn’t bother the customers, and he’s not a registered sex offender. That’s all I need to know.”
     
    “And how do you know that much?”
     
    She flushed. “Your brother told me.”
     
    “Where does he sleep?”
     
    “Jericho? I don’t know,” she said irritably. “Around. I don’t know where you sleep either.”
     
    “Would you like to see?” he asked softly.
     
    Her pulse jumped. “N-no.” She cleared her throat. “No. It’s just . . .
    The inn’s full up, and most places were rented months ago. Unless you’re staying with your family?”
     
    Dylan’s brows rose. “With the newlyweds? I think not.”
     
    She wiped her hands on her apron. “What about your dad’s place?”
     
    55
    His face closed like a poker player’s. “My father and I do not speak.”
     
    “But your sister—”
     
    “Lucy was a baby when I . . . left.”
     
    He had Margred’s habit of pausing before certain words, as if English was his second language or something. Regina wondered again where he’d lived and how they’d met. “All the more reason to get to know her now,” she pointed out.
     
    “You’re suddenly very interested in my personal life.”
     
    “I—” Oh, shit. “I’m thinking about Lucy. She was Nicky’s teacher for two years, you know. First and second grade.”
     
    “I did not know.” He caught her eye and for a second looked almost embarrassed, like the boy he must have been before his mother took him away. “We do not have much sense of family.”
     
    But that wasn’t true. Bart Hunter had been devastated by his wife’s desertion. Lucy had turned down a post in Cumberland County to teach on the island and keep house for her father. Caleb was a thoughtful and devoted brother. Since his return from Iraq, he had even begun a painful reconciliation with his dad.
     
    “You mean, you don’t have much sense of family,” she accused.
     
    He shrugged. “If you like.”
     
    She didn’t like it at all.
     
    *
     
    The next morning, Regina sat on the toilet, counting the days in her mental calendar, controlling panic.
     
    Her period wasn’t even due yet, not for another— she counted again— two days, she wasn’t late, she couldn’t possibly be pregnant.
     
    Her throat closed.
     
    56
     
    Well, technically, she could.
     
    She could take a pregnancy test. Regina thought about walking into Wiley’s Grocery and requesting a pregnancy kit from the Wileys’ teenage daughter and shuddered. That would certainly liven up the discussion in the checkout line.
     
    Regina swallowed. Okay, no test. Not yet. Not until she could get to the mainland, Rockland or someplace, to buy one. In the meanwhile, she would count the days and pray and stay as far away as possible from Dylan “No Family Ties” Hunter.
     
    57
     

Five
     
    LIVING IN HUMAN FORM AMONG HUMANS was like being dragged naked over rocks.
     
    Dylan stood motionless on the wharf outside the lobster cooperative, itching