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"Don't 'But Sophie' me. To have Amy agree to me even being in the same country with
you is enough for me. I don't want to meet her, I couldn't face her. And I doubt--"

"You're getting upset for--"

"--that she really wants to meet me."

He couldn't budge me. He finally had to accept it. That's the way it stayed for the next
five months.

David visited every day. Amy sent books for me to read, though I wasn't much of a
reader. Once in a while she sent soup and bread, which I ate because David saw to it that I did.
He and I went for walks when the weather wasn't too stormy, me all bundled up like a
mummy.

I was uncomfortable outdoors. Amy had the advantage of being able to see me, to watch
me through that telescope. David insisted she wasn't watching me, but I knew she could if she
wanted to. I would have.

The first month being alone wasn't so bad. October, a wonderful month along the coast.
But as winter set in, and dragged on--oh, the loneliness. It got terrible. The rain wasn't too bad, at
least it was something to watch, but the everlastin' fog beat me.

It curled up and settled around the cabin, at first like a cozy blanket. After a while it
became like a prison. Nothing but gray everwhich way I looked. The continual roaring of the
winter ocean got on my nerves. When the big storms came, the waves smacked against each
other with a loud
CRACK!
then thundered down on the sand. It was exhilarating when
there was someone to share it with; alone it frightened me. Even with no storm there was always
that noise of the water moving. I began to understand why Amy didn't go down anymore.

When David was with me I didn't hear the ocean and it didn't matter what the weather
was. He came for lunch every day, bringing groceries and newspapers and gossip from town.
The two hours he stayed became the only part of the day worth getting up for.

The thing that saved my sanity, I'm sure, was the company of Punkin Sue Tiger, a
golden kitten David gave me for Halloween. He came late one afternoon, near evening, his hands
behind his back. "Close your eyes and put out your hands," he said.

I didn't feel comfortable doing that since one of my brothers handed me a snake once.
After he promised I would like the surprise, I yielded, as I did in so many things to him.

The moment David put a little warm bundle of fur into my hands, my eyes snapped
open. It was the cutest thing--a furry kitten, about six weeks old. He squeaked when I lifted him
up close, then started purring when I laid him on my shoulder. The more I petted him the louder
his purrs got. Like David's grin, Punkin Sue Tiger's purring captured my heart.

After David left, the kitten followed me around the cabin. I warmed up a bit of milk and
put it in front of him but he only drank a little before, with tiny mews, he was exploring the cabin
again.

I named him Punkin Sue Tiger because of his color and the fact we didn't know what
sex he was. We thought he was a she, thus Sue, after a particularly catty woman I knew up
home.

In the evening I sat in the chair looking out the window at the ocean. Punkin Sue Tiger
came up and began playing at my bare toes, trying to grab them as I rocked. He made more
happy little mews as I picked him up to avoid the rocker's legs, he settled right down on my lap
as I stroked his golden fur. Mixed in with the pumpkin color were a few darker, tiger stripes. His
little body just vibrated while I petted him.

I pulled lightly on his tail, he turned around and looked at me in such a way that I
stopped, but then I just couldn't help myself, I did it again. This time that little thing growled at
me. Like most guys he didn't much like me to laugh at him, but he wasn't serious enough about it
to get off my lap.

When I went to bed I put him in a box padded with rags, but after a couple of meows I
got up and put him on the cover beside me, the top quilt edge turned back over him to keep him
warm.

When I woke up he was still beside me, but snuggled under the covers, his whiskers
tickling at my chin. His bright eyes were staring at me, his little mouth was open, crying at me to
get up. He was too small to get off the bed without falling. I took him outside with me for his
morning walk and he seemed as happy to get back in the warm house as I was.

He delighted me. He was something to talk to, and play with, and care about. And he
gave me no complicated arguments.

I did spoil him terrible so that he crawled up the chair and hung around my neck like a
fox fur when I was sewing, or once in a great while, when I was reading a paper. The rattle of the
paper teased him like a mouse and he'd swipe at it with his tiny claws. Later, he got to be a real
nuisance with the embroidery thread but no matter what he did, he kept me from suffering
more.

Without the boys to do for I had a lot of time on my hands. I took over their room for
sleeping, turned mine into a sewing place and took back up with the quilt.

David helped with more drawings of patterns for the rocks. He had strong ideas about
the colors I should use. Even wanted to bring me some blue material Amy had that he said would
be just right for the water where it met the sky, but I wasn't having any of her material in my
quilt. It was our quilt, I didn't want any of her in it.

From a sheet Willie had left behind, I made a new bag into which I would put all the
material to go into
Beach
. I lugged my old bag of rags into the front room, where the
fire warmed me and the light from the window brightened my dark mood. Bringing out all the
old materials brought up the past, everything seemed so simple then, now my life was a tangle.
The ocean moved slowly in large swells. Sometimes I would just sit and stare at it, watching the
birds flying in and out of the thin fog, then I'd go back to sorting material.

I usually made pieced quilts,
Beach
was an appliqué, you know, small
pieces sewn onto to a larger piece to make a design. It was the first one I ever did that way. Even
with David's help, I still frustrated myself over the colors. There were the brown and gray
leftovers from Zack's quilt, and some blue. More of Zack ended up in
Beach
than I
planned, but as I worked on the quilt I forgot the bad things and only remembered that first night
when he went poetic on us. So what had been a bad memory eased into pleasant.

I used large chunks of gray from a wool army blanket that he'd got from somebody who
brought it back from the war. It was darker than I liked, but what the heck. The Army hadn't
asked me before dyeing their blankets. It would do well for the frame around the frontpiece.

I separated out the rich light blue of a cotton blanket I'd used for Zack's border and as a
runner between the squares. I loved the color, which reminded me of the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Of course it didn't have the see-through quality of a cat's eye, but it was a lovely shade of blue.
There was a lot of it. I'd only cut from the sides leaving me about half a blanket, good for the
deeper ocean behind the rocks. I'd have liked more. Greedy? I made do with what I had. There
was even some left over that I used in the Name Quilt.

The leftovers from Willie were fewer and smaller, but that was okay, because so much
of
Beach
was drab grays and deeper blues. The little spots of color stood out and
brightened it in a way that a fully-colored design wouldn't have.

For the lighthouse I found an especially clear emerald green, perfect for the sea around
the base. I think it was left over from the collar of a cousin's flower girl dress. Yellow came from
a piece I'd bought special for a quilted pillow I made for Mandy's wedding present--it fit for the
lighthouse beam--just a tiny spot but a memory of comfort for me every time I saw it.

So many other bits of color I'd scavenged from aprons I'd made for Christmas presents
for Mom and my sisters over the years. Tiring of pulling them out piece by piece, I upended the
bag onto the floor. I didn't have much money but I was rich in material. Calicos and stripes and
prints along with plain blacks, blues, and greens. Not much extra yellow because I used it so
much in my quilts. Every bit of fabric took me back to what now seemed like an easier time.

I pulled out a bright orangish-yellow from the skirt I'd made for Mandy when she was
pregnant with one of the first kids. She never liked it, so was happy to donate it to my quilt bag
when I'd packed to go to the beach with the boys. That seemed so long ago. The orange was
perfect for the starfish clinging to the rocks at the base of Haystack.

I smoothed the orange material flat, my heart filling with a bittersweet feeling. I'd used
that color in every one of the stars in Willie's quilt, with a narrow band of it around the outside
for a frame. It was so cheerful. It had taken a lot of piecing because I'd cut it sparingly, not
wasting one scrap.

The pieces laid in a heap while I stared out at the ocean, seeing the tide line and the little
birds skittering along the edge picking up broken bits of clam or tiny bits of fish. If I was close
up I would hear their little cheeps sounding like baby chicks calling to their mother.

I got on with the job, tossing back into the old bag the patterned material leaving only
the plain for the front of the quilt.

Every day I pulled the
Beach
bag into the front room and settled myself into the
chair between the table and the window. It took days to get the pieces cut just right. And more
weeks to get them pinned onto the large curtain piece David bought new from Puffin, a large
plain piece of cotton but of substantial strength to hold the appliqué.

The day he brought it he also carried with him a letter. I saw it poking out from his
jacket but was excited about the cloth, and planning how I'd dye it a pale blue as backdrop for
the sea and sky. I didn't know the letter was for me. I made us tea while we talked about how to
use the cloth when suddenly he slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.

"Oh, I forgot. When I picked up the material today from Puffin he gave me this letter for
you."

He handed it to me and I was staring at my name written in Mandy's big scrawly
handwriting on the front. I felt the letter and held it up to the light from the window and rubbed it
and flattened it. It was pretty thin.

"Guess she doesn't have much to say," I said and put the envelope on the table.

"Aren't you going to open it?"

"Well, sure. But I thought we could drink our tea first."

"Sophie. How long has it been since you heard from your family?"

"Well, that's kind of just it. Maybe I don't want to. Maybe Zack or Willie told them
something about, well, you know. Us. Maybe my brothers told my mother about you and me.
Maybe Mama has figured out that I'm not just staying as a housekeeper for the neighbors."

"If you don't open it you'll never know."

"Maybe I'd rather not know." He was always pushing at me.

"Okay, Sophie. I've got to get back to the house. I'd sure be interested to know what
your sister has to say, when you finally read it. You will open it, won't you?"

"Uh huh." I picked up the cotton material and started folding it.

He left and I messed around with the pieces that I'd cut out with David's design, opening
the curtain material back up and trying pieces on it to see how'd they look. I'd still have to wash
and iron it, and dye it, but I needed to try it out first. I pinned Haystack Rock just to the left of
center, a bit below the halfway mark so there'd be room for the tide pools. Haystack was a
perfect reddish brown, like it is when the sunset turns the sky red. The two thumbs out of the
same cloth went to either side. At the place of the tide pools I pinned on the smaller rocks and
attached some of the starfish and anemones and pieces of tide pool plants. David had found a
sand-colored piece onto which he'd drawn the little birds that skittered over the sand in that way
they had that I loved. On another piece he'd drawn seagulls.

The letter sat on the end of the table where I'd pushed it to make room for the pieces. I
forgot, almost, that it was there, until it started getting too dark for the close work I had to do.
When I went to fold up the cloth to put it away the letter got knocked to the floor. I left it there
while I put everything back in the sewing chest where Punkin Sue Tiger couldn't get at it.

I made another cup of tea and put another piece of wood in the stove and stirred the
beans I was cooking for dinner. All the while thinking about every possible thing that Mandy
could have to say, going back and forth from things the boys could have told her, to telling
myself that the letter wouldn't have anything to do with me, to worrying that maybe something
had happened to somebody in the family. Mama or Daddy? I finally sat down at the table with
the letter and used my pocketknife to open it.

She didn't have the best handwriting but what she said was clear. She wanted to bring
the kids down to the ocean. Would I have room for them in the cabin? She didn't have money to
spare to rent a cabin but would bring enough of her canned food to help out while she was there
and she'd thought from what I'd said in the letter I'd sent several months back that we could get
clams and fish enough from the ocean that we'd all have enough to eat. Maybe we could make
clam chowder?

Here? She was going to come here? I could barely breathe as I thought about it. I'll tell
you, Annie, I never wrote a letter back to someone so fast in my life.

Of course most of it was a lie. It had to be. I couldn't tell her the truth.

I ate some beans and bread while I thought about what to say. Before I went to bed I'd
written my letter, telling her that I was now living in the house with the Smither's family 'cause
the wife needed me in the house. The cabin was rented out to another family and as much as I'd
love to see them, this spring just wasn't going to be a good time because the wife would be
having a baby sometime around then. I was going to be very busy and not able to visit. Maybe
another time?