OCR Text |
Show Moon - 75 separate places and pressed them into a circle around the fire. Lee hardly fretted at all. Caleb stayed near her, as silent as ever, but at least not alone in his room. People in a cold house could not fight, could not go to bed alone if there was someone around to help warm the icy sheets. When James was away, she kept Lee with her, curled up close as she had once curled up to Joy. And when James was home, he sat up late with her, even read books, so he wouldn't have to go alone to a cold bed. It had been a silly idea, staying in the cottage while they waited for his overseas orders, but it was the best time they'd had together. She was not at all sure she was suited for the life ahead -living in another country, making a new home. She was terribly sick. It was not simply seasickness, she was certain. The toilet whirled around and she hung onto it grimly, waiting for it to settle so she could vomit. Something else was wrong with her, but James laughed as if to say she was ashamed to admit to mere seasickness. And maybe he was right. She had a funny pride about these things. She could hardly bear Joy's visits. Her daughter bounced into the stateroom, her cheeks pink, her eyes alight, spilling over with stories about the rainbows in the spray and dolphins leaping and a huge white bird that had followed the ship for three days. Anne did not understand where this child of hers had come from, with her incredible enthusiams, her unfathomable obsession with religion and her easy, wrenching griefs. Her daughter had wept at leaving behind her rock collection and her board of butterflies, which they simply did not have room for; later she'd cried even harder at the thought of the doomed moths whose cocoons she had forgotten to take out of the jars. And endlessly she talked of |