Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

Marsh was ferrying over to Hatteras every day to work, I was helping out in my aunt’s craft shop during the season. When Ky asked if we wanted to buy in for twenty percent and take over as managers, we jumped at it.” She smiled, pleased, and perhaps relieved. “It wasn’t a mistake for any of us.”
    Kate remembered the homey atmosphere, the excellent sea food, the fast service. No, it hadn’t been a mistake, but Ky… “I just can’t picture Ky in business, not on land anyway.”
    “Ky knows the island,” Linda said simply. “And he knows what he wants. To my way of thinking, he just doesn’t always know how to get it.”
    Kate was going to avoid that area of speculation. “I’mgoing to take a walk down to the beach,” she decided. “Would you like to come?”
    “I’d love to, but—” With a gesture of her hand Linda indicated why Hope had been quiet for the last few minutes. With her arm hooked around her dragon, she was sprawled over the rest of the animals, sound asleep.
    “It’s either stop or go with her, isn’t it?” Kate observed with a laugh.
    “The nice thing is that when she stops, so can I.” Expertly Linda gathered up Hope, cradling her daughter on her shoulder. “Have a nice walk, and stop into the Roost tonight if you have the chance.”
    “I will.” Kate touched Hope’s head, the thick, dark, disordered hair that was so much like her uncle’s. “She’s beautiful, Linda. You’re very lucky.”
    “I know. It’s something I don’t ever forget.”
    Kate let herself out of the house and walked along the quiet street. Clouds were low, making the light gloomy, but the rain held off. She could taste it in the breeze, the clean freshness of it, mixed with the faintest hint of the sea. It was in that direction she walked.
    On an island, she’d discovered, you were much more drawn to the water than to the land. It was the one thing she’d understood completely about Ky, the one thing she’d never questioned.
    It had been easier to avoid going to the beach in Connecticut, though she’d always loved the rocky, windy New England coast. She’d been able to resist it, knowing what memories it would bring back. Pain. Kate had learnedthere were ways of avoiding pain. But here, knowing you could reach the edge of land by walking in any direction, she couldn’t resist. It might have been wiser to walk to the sound, or the inlet. She walked to the sea.
    It was warm enough that she needed no more than the sheer skirt and blouse, breezy enough so that the material fluttered around her. She saw two men, caps low over foreheads, their rods secured in the sand, talking together while they sat on buckets and waited for a strike. Their voices didn’t carry above the roar and thunder of surf, but she knew their conversation would deal with bait and lures and yesterday’s catch. She wouldn’t disturb them, nor they her. It was the way of the islander to be friendly enough, but not intrusive.
    The water was as gray as the sky, but she didn’t mind. Kate had learned not just to accept its moods but to appreciate the contrasts of each one. When the sea was like this, brooding, with threats of violence on the surface, that meant a storm. She found it appealed to a restlessness in herself she rarely acknowledged.
    Whitecaps tossed with systematic fever. The spray rose high and wide. The cry of gulls didn’t seem lonely or plaintive now, but challenging. No, a gray gloomy sky meeting a gray sea was anything but dull. It teamed with energy. It boiled with life.
    The wind tugged at her hair, loosening pins. She didn’t notice. Standing just away from the edge of the surf, Kate faced wind and sea with her eyes wide. She had to thinkabout what she’d just discovered about Ky. Perhaps what she had been determined not to discover about herself.
    Thinking there, alone in the gray threatening light before a storm, was what Kate felt she needed. The constant wind blowing in from the east would keep her head clear. Maybe the smells and sounds of the sea would remind her of what she’d had and rejected, and what she’d chosen to have.
    Once she’d had a powerful force that had held her swirling, breathless. That force was Ky, a man who could pull on your emotions, your senses, by simply being. The recklessness had attracted her once, the tough arrogance combined with unexpected gentleness. What she saw as his irresponsibility had disturbed her. Kate sensed that he was a man who would drift