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“I think he needs a break from it.”
Ismay got up off the couch, where she’d been under a blanket, to stretch her legs. “If things don’t turn around, I think he should come to Mariners.”
“Mariners!” her mother cried. “Why on earth would he go there?”
“To get away from it all.”
“But that’s clear across the country. What would he do for a living?”
“At first, nothing. He needs a chance to find himself, Mom—to determine what he wants to do with the rest of his life.”
There was a brief silence. Then she said, “I didn’t realize that hadn’t already been decided.”
Jack hadn’t told them he didn’t want to be a farmer, because he didn’t want to face their disappointment. He’d told her it was a moot point; he had a wife to support, and they were trying to have a family. He needed to stay and provide. He was now no longer under that yoke, which was the one bright spot Ismay saw in all of this.
“He has the chance to reassess,” she said to her mother, trying to state the problem as euphemistically as possible. The last thing anyone in the family needed was more grief. Ismay was just glad her father was old-school and misogynistic enough to believe only his boys could work on the farm. To him, it wasman’s work, and that was the only reason she’d been able to escape Tremonton.
“There’s a lot going on,” her mother said. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
Ismay frowned at this response. “Okay. We can talk about it later.”
“I’d better go,” Betty said. “I’ve got a lot to do.”
Her mother hadn’t even asked how she liked Mariners, but Ismay understood that Betty was preoccupied and considered the oversight atender mercy, to use her mother’s saying.
They said goodbye. Then she was at loose ends as to how to spend the day. Fortunately, because of the generator, she had internet service. So she went online and tried to distract herself from everything—the storm, what she’d found in Remy’s closet, and Jack’s predicament—by doing some swimsuit shopping.
She ordered a red bikini, hoping the weather would turn around and she’d soon have a nice tan to go with it, and answered some emails from past instructors and fellow students wishing her well as she left UCLA and began her career. When she hadn’t heard from Bo by three o’clock, she began to wonder if he’d had lunch. He seemed like the type to work straight through if he had a goal in mind.
She decided to make him a sandwich and take it over before the storm got any worse. If he wasn’t hungry now, he could always eat it later, and she wanted to get it to him before the rain made it any more difficult. It’d been drizzling for the past few hours, but there was an ominous feeling on the island—as if it were bracing for another onslaught, possibly worse than the last.
She made him an egg salad sandwich with a touch of honey—her mother’s secret ingredient—then put it on a paper plate and wrapped the whole thing in plastic before heading out in the same coat she’d borrowed from Annabelle the day before.
She could hear a chainsaw as she squished through the mud in her running shoes and once she’d cleared the trees, she saw Bo up on the roof wearing a bright yellow slicker. “Hey!” she yelled as she drew closer, waving to get his attention.
The chainsaw was so loud and he was so focused on what he was doing that he didn’t notice her. It wasn’t until he’d finished cutting off the tree limb he’d been working on and switched off the motor that he realized he had company.
“What are you doing here?” he called down, obviously surprised.
She held up the plate with the sandwich. “I brought you something to eat.”
He didn’t seem to know what to do—whether to get down or tell her to leave it.
“I can put it inside the house, if you want,” she said, gesturing at the front door.
“No. Don’t go inside,” he said. “It’s not safe.”
She indicated the hood of his truck. “I can set it here, but you can’t leave it there for too long or it’ll get soggy in spite of the plastic.”
“I’ll eat it before then.”
“So...youarehungry?”
“A little,” he admitted, and she guessed she’d been right when she’d assumed he hadn’t taken the time to eat.
She continued to squint up at him, sheltering her eyes against the rain. “You won’t be able to finish that today, anyway. With these storm clouds moving in again, it’s already growing dark. Why not come down, eat, and get warm?”
When he glanced up at the sky, she could tell he already understood he was racing the clock. “The sooner I chop this tree up the better,” he called down.
