"For the love of God, jealous!" Loret exclaimed, slowing her step as I caught up. "You'd think be the God she was a sack of spuds, the way he tosses her around." She smiled as a charm went up from the rest of the youngsters as Josie wrestled the flatfish away from Jimmy and tore off along shore.

"They gets along well, don't they?" she said, watching Jimmy and Georgie tear off after her, threatening her with a rock to the head if she didn't give back the fish. "I heard somethin' of what you were askin' Josie, Kit. Words travel well over water, you know."

I glanced at her sideways to check how she was meaning her words. Her dark hair was pinned back, with dozens of tiny, windblown curls dancing free around her warm brown eyes. She smiled. "You can tell me to mind my own business, you know."

"You must think I'm silly," I said.

"It ain't silly to be curious about your mother. Do you think she understood any of it, I mean, havin' a baby and all?"

"Nan said she believes she was havin' bad cramps," I laughed. "I bet she watched what she ate after that day."

Loret draped her arm around my shoulders.

"Does it bother you much that she's your mother?"

"I can't think of her as my mother." I gave a small laugh. "I only remember Nan, and this big, gallopin' person who Nan had to protect me from, else she'd have trampled me to death."

Loret laughed and we both turned up into the yard after Fonse, who had started singing to the high heavens with Little Kitty fidgeting on his shoulder.

There was only one thing missing in this full life in Godfather's Cove with the Fords, and that was Sid. His cheques came regularly every month. There was never a return address, and they were never stamped from a fixed place. Halifax, Toronto, Boston, New York; I followed him on Fonse's globe. It seemed he was no sooner settled in a place than he was moving on again.

I cursed him his freedom to just keep running like that. Moving easily through my chores, and helping with the baby, I managed to keep a contented look. And so I was content. At least, with all those around me. But Sid felt like a shadow that grew longer as the year wore on, and beneath my quietness was a clatter of emotions more severe than ever the Fords could make over a Sunday morning breakfast. That the reverend had bedded my mother filled me with a revulsion that could never be outmatched, not even by Shine. That I was born out of such sin was as far removed from my order of things as was the idea to others that I appeared in the gully one day, with an offering in my mouth, the same as Pirate. And that Sid was my half-brother was as impossible to grasp as was the fact that the woman-child who thundered across the meadows, barking out laughter and jumping with glee, was my mother.

Yet, no matter how twisted with shame, disgust, despair my stomach became, I felt an emptiness that no amount of Mudder's pudding or Loret's hugs could fill. Sometimes I caught Loret watching me, and I knew that she wasn't without understanding. Nor was she without hoping that, in time, I would get over Sid. And I wasn't without knowing that she was hoping for a courtship between me and Bruddy.

From the first, I could tell he was taken with me, always passing me more bread at the supper table, and offering to help me with the weeding, or the stacking of Little Kitty's diapers. Mudder, Fudder and Fonse noted it also, and many was the time during that year Bruddy got more than his fair share of attention as everyone praised his good looks, his manners around the women, his way with youngsters, his laugh, his cowlick and whatever he happened to be doing, saying or thinking whenever I walked into the room. It got so he became more hesitant to set foot inside the door, from all of the blushing that he was doing from the constant praising. And while I loved the warmth of his chuckle and the softness of his eyes, it was Sid's eyes that I saw every single morning that I opened mine, and Sid's laugh that I heard every single night before I fell asleep. And while I wished upon wishing that the terrible aching in my heart would stop, I simply missed him more and more with each passing day.

Another year was almost gone by, and Little Kitty was just after taking her first step, when Loret first made mention of her thoughts. We were in Loret's room, with me folding up a stack of diapers on the bed, and Loret sitting in the rocking chair that Fonse had made for her out of a kitchen chair, trying to get Little Kitty down for her afternoon nap.

"Bruddy's thinkin' about clearin' off a piece of land and buildin' a house of his own this spring," she said easy enough, pulling up her sweater and poking a nipple into Kitty's groping mouth. "Might be he's thinkin' on gettin' married someday," she added when I never spoke.

I stacked another diaper onto the growing pile, and smiled down into Kitty's drooping eyes as she suckled noisily on her mother's tit.

"Might be that he got his eye on somebody," Loret mused. "Lord, Kit, ain't you even curious?"

"About what?" I asked. "She's drooling a lot. I think she's cuttin' another tooth."

"About who he might be interested in," Loret nailed out. "Unless, of course, you knows who the lucky girl is."

I shook my head.

"Bruddy's one of the best catches around," she went on. "All the girls are linin' up around him."

"Um humm."

"Kit, don't you think he's handsome?"

"Yes."

"Well then a "

"Well then what?"

"Well then," Loret sighed. "Well then, you might want to stand in line yourself," she all but snapped. "For Pete's sake, maid, have you never noticed the way he looks at you?"

"I don't think on Bruddy that way."

She plucked her nipple out of Kitty's mouth.

"You keep thinkin' he's comin' back, don't you?"

I pressed down hard on the stack of diapers.

"You've got to get past him, Kit. And if there's one sure way of doin' that, it's findin' someone else. You can trust me on that one. Lord, I thought I'd die when Joe Reid dropped me, and took up with the Widow Burton. But then, along come Fonse, and it felt like I'd seen the sun for the first time in my life. It'll be like that for you, too, if you'll let it."

"I could never love another man," I said quietly.

"Yes, you can and you will," Loret argued. "Just give Bruddy a chance."

"No! Sid is the only man I could ever love. Know that, Loret."

I cringed at her pitying look.

"I think I do know it," she whispered sadly. "God bless you, but I think I do know it."

We were both quiet for a while, her feeding the baby, and me slowly folding the last diaper.

"It's such a joy to hold your own child," she murmured, tracing Kitty's button of a nose with her finger. "I want that for you, Kit. You never had a mother. Perhaps I'm thinkin' if you were one, you might get back some of the love what's owed you."

"You've already given me more than what my heart could hold. I feel blessed."

Loret smiled sadly.

"It's a frightened little heart you have, Kit. No more than a bird's. Do you know that when a bird gets hurt, it mostly dies of a heart attack, and not from what hurt it in the first place? That's what you remind me of, a little bird that's been badly hurt and threatens to run off the second anyone tries to make it fly agin. Well, you ain't no brittle-boned bird, Kit. You're a full-blooded woman who deserves more than what you've gotten. And I won't watch you die!" This last was spoken with a note of such fierceness that Little Kitty startled awake. "Hey now, go to sleep," her mother soothed, stroking her cheek. "It's your Aunt Kit who ought to be quakin' in fear, not you, little sweet."

I left her there, rocking and cooing the baby to sleep. Pulling on a sweater, I walked down to the beach and around the cove, the aching in my heart more fierce than ever before. Not because I was wanting a baby to hold, for every time Kitty opened her mouth and started bawling, I gratefully passed her back to her mother, thanking the good Lord babies weren't something that jumped out of the grass and stuck to your breeches like burrs and came home with you. Nor was I caught up on likening myself to a bird, holding that uninteresting thought for Josie. It was the "brittleboned" part that caught me by surprise. And the "fullblooded woman."

I couldn't ever remember feeling like a girl, most certainly not brittle. Running up and down the gully every day, and back and forth to Haire's Hollow, and always keeping everything inside when Margaret Eveleigh, or Mr. Haynes, or even Josie or Nan was hollering things at me, I always felt like I could stand straight-faced through any kind of ill wind. And a woman was May Eveleigh, Mrs. Haynes, even Loret herself. Not even when I started menstruating had I felt much difference in how I saw things, and according to what Nan had said once, when a girl starts menstruating, that's when she becomes a woman. I guessed somewhere I had crossed a line without knowing it. Till Sid came along. And that's what was making my heart ache all the more, the knowing that I had become a woman somewhere, since the day he first strolled down the gully. And he was the reason for it. And now that I was growing into the best of me, he was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

MRS. ROPSON'S PLEA SENSING THAT SHE HAD CAUSED me some unrest, Loret was especially kind that evening. Warming up some milk and climbing up to the attic, she sat besides my bed, and we supped, quietly. When we had done, she kissed me on the forehead and went to her room. I lay there for long after, thinking on nothing special. I must've fallen asleep, for the sky was much darker when something woke me. "Kit!" It was Bruddy, whispering my name from half-ways up the ladder to the attic. I held my breath, thinking Loret must've said something to him. The ladder creaked. He was coming up. "What is it?" I whispered back loudly, hoping not to wake Josie. "There's someone come to see you." I sprang upwards. "Who is it?" "A woman."

A woman. Throwing back the covers, I pulled on my housecoat and crept down the ladder. A low murmur sounded from Fonse's and Loret's room as I passed by, and then Mudder's and Fudder's, and I sensed the entire household awake, listening to hear who was visiting me in the middle of the nighta"and why. Perhaps it was Aunt Drucie. Perhaps something had happened to Doctor Hodgins a Hurrying into the kitchen, I stopped and placed my hand to my heart. It was Mrs. Ropson.

My mouth dropped and I felt the blood leave my soul. Something had happened to Sid. And it was his dying wish that she come and tell me. I must've gone faint, for Bruddy quickly led me to a chair besides the table, where Mrs. Ropson was sitting. She was wearing a black cape, with the hood barely resting on the back of her head, and her black gloved hands clutched around each other in a claw-like grasp. Her eyes were sunken black holes in the gaunt light of the oil lamp, and the wrinkles on her face heavily shadowed. And if it weren't for the quivering of her mouth and the glistening of what could very well have been a tear trickling down her cheek, she would've far more resembled the jackdaw than the reverend had that time he made off with Josie.

Clutching my arms around myself, I gave a small nod and waited for her to speak. She tilted her head to look at Bruddy, and I saw the oldness around her eyes as the light from the lamp shone into them.

"Leave us, Bruddy," I said, and grasped my hands in my lap to keep them from shaking. Bruddy reluctantly walked out of the room. Her lips quivered as she watched him go, and it felt as if she was still wrestling with herself as to the wisdom of making such a journey, yet here she was suddenly in front of me, still not having come to a decision.

"Has something happened to Sid?" I finally asked.

"No." She lifted her eyes to mine and I was struck again by their oldnessa"weak, rheumy oldness. And as a hint of her old scorn towards me come creeping back, she hid them in shadow, not willing to gut this moment of forced humility. "Bring him home," she whispered, her sunken eyes reaching out to mine.

"I can't do that," I whispered.

"You're the only one who can."

"How?"

"I don't care how."

The silence was pregnant with sin, the reverend's, hers. Now mine?

"Go away," I said, rising from the table.

"No!"

"I can't do what you ask me."

"Why can't you?" she rasped. "Here." Clutching inside her cape, she hauled out a brown envelope and slid it across the table towards me. "Take it. And bring me back my boy."

I stared at the envelope.

"It's a sin he won't let me commit," I said.

"You're a woman! Make him!"

"What makes you think I'd bring him home to you?"

There was a silence as the withered old woman hiding beneath the hood came to realize that the prize wasn't there for collecting, simply because she had made the journey. She raised her head and stared at me.

"The reverend's dead. Yesterday. I sent Sidney a telegram, but there's been no word that he got it." Reaching out to me, she took hold of my hands. "I don't want to die without my son knowing it. Please! Bring him home."

"Go now," I said, pulling away from her grasp. And turning from her, I flew down the hallway and tapped on Bruddy's room door.

"See to her," I said, and ran back up over the stairs and up the ladder to the attic. I watched her through the window, a bent-over old figure, all wrapped in black, leaning on Bruddy's arm as she made her way down to the beach where a boat was tied up waiting for her.

The next morning Bruddy met me in the hallway on my way into the kitchen and handed me the brown envelope, taking care that no one saw the exchange between us.

"Thank you, Bruddy," I said, putting the envelope in my pocket.

"Are you all right?" he asked, a finger lightly touching my wrist. That he had been a part of last night's events had lent itself to an air around us, hinting to those subtly watching from the kitchen as they went about their morning chores of some sort of alliance between us.

"I'm fine," I said and, brushing past him, started helping Loret set the table for breakfast.

There was an unnatural hush over the meal, and everyone took longer than usual to feed themselves, listening for a dropped word or a significant look about the late-night visitor. Taking extra care not to look straight at me, they directed most of their concerns about the pending rain and the gate needing fixing to Bruddy, knowing that he'd be the one most likely to drop something if they kept him talking long enough. Bruddy spoke easily, tending to their concerns, yet the veiled glances he kept sending my way served to heighten Loret's and the others' speculating looks, and, no doubt, the new camaraderie that had sprung up between us was serving to fulfil a fancy of his as well, that of his silent calling for something more from me than what I was willing to give.

It was towards noon when Loret finally got on with it. Marching into the boys' room with Little Kitty clinging to her shoulder, she stood, one arm akimbo, and glared as I tucked in the sheets. "For God's sake, Kit, are you goin' to tell me what the old bat wanted?"

I frowned whilst plumping up the feather pillow.

"Old bat?"

"Yes, old bat! It didn't take much pryin' to crank open Bruddy's mouth, God bless him, and even less to figure out it was Sid's mother that come here in the middle of the night, bangin' on our door." Loret spat out the word "mother."

I pulled up the quilt and tucked it neatly around the pillows.

"Oohh!" Patting Kitty's back at a fired-up pace, she plopped down on the bed. "Damn it, Kit, you got the most frustratin' ways. It's only helpin' you that I'm thinkin' of. I don't trust why she come here, and I sure as hell don't trust you to put what she wanted straight."

I raised my brow and give the pillow one last good smack.

"Don't go huffin' on me now," she warned. "My words don't always sound right, but you knows what I'm sayin'."

"The reverend's dead. She thought I should know."

The hand stopped patting, and she fixed the fretting Kitty impatiently on her lap.

"So? Why would she bother comin' and tellin' you, when it's you she was most likely wishin' dead? And in the middle of the night like that!"

I shrugged again, and held out my arms to Kitty.

"Here, lemme rock her. Is it time for her nap?"

"You're not leavin' this room till my mind's clear."

"There's nothin' else to tell," I said, lifting the baby out of her arms.

"What about the envelope?"

"Money," I said, pacing up and down the room, soothing Kitty's soft cries. "I'm givin' it to Doctor Hodgins to take back the next time he comes."

"Money!" Loret scorned, following close on my heels. "You'll be givin' Doctor Hodgins more than her sin money to take back. You tell her from Loret Ford that God stopped tallyin' up her good deeds the day she tried to run a starvin' youngster out of her home and into a devil-run orphanage."

Kitty started to bawl.

"Sshh, it's O.K., it's O.K.," I murmured, jiggling her harder as I walked.

"It's not bloody O.K. then," Loret yelped. "She thinks she can come rappin' on our door any hour the day or night a "