One Year in Coal Harbor Read Free

ever would.
    It is a terrible thing to have pockets of emptiness where something or someone should be. I felt it when my parents were missing. Now that I saw them every night, that pocket was filled, but after-school time could be a bit barren. The house was empty in a particularly echoey way after school. My mother used to always be there, except for the year when she was on a deserted island. Since being rescued, my parents had found themselves short of cash. My mom needed a job. Luckily that was when Miss Clarice arrived in Coal Harbor all the way from Duncan, opened her B and B and hired my mom. Jobs in Coal Harbor are hard to come by and my mom probably couldn’t have found one if Miss Clarice hadn’t opened her B and B. I was happy for her but it meant I camehome to an empty house. Miss Clarice told my mother there would be no set hours for her, which at first made my mother feel it would all be relaxed and informal and charming, but it turned out what Miss Clarice meant was that she would pay my mother a set fee, for which she would work her as much as she needed, which turned out to be always. My mother didn’t feel she could complain. They both knew there were a lot of people in town who would be more than happy to take her job.
    Sometimes after school I got lonely, and then usually I either went to Evie and Bert’s or helped Miss Bowzer out at The Girl on the Red Swing. She was teaching me how to cook and I was trying to move the romance along between her and my uncle Jack.
    When my parents had returned from being lost at sea it had looked as if a full-scale romance was about to blossom between Miss Bowzer and Uncle Jack but instead they had just drifted along as usual. He, coming in and making remarks about her menu, which he thought she should spruce up for the new element moving into his town houses; and she, studying him with the same detached disdain she reserved for people who didn’t quite live up to her standards. I knew she didn’t like his line of work. He was a developer in a town that didn’t particularly want developing, but other than that he was a fine man. I wanted to tell her she shouldn’t be so picky, people’s professions don’t say
everything
about them. Iwanted to tell him that maybe he should shut up about the menu. He was usually the soul of tact but I think he enjoyed tweaking Miss Bowzer and watching her reaction and didn’t seem to notice that it wasn’t making her like him any better. Nevertheless I could see why he did it. She was really lovely when angry. It made her green eyes flash. It was as if you could see in that flash the storm within her. As if her eyes, like lightning beneath a thunderhead, became the jewel-like advertisement for the power of the storm. I didn’t give either of them any helpful behavioral hints, of course. Even I recognize what someone else might think is none of my business. Once in a state of despair at some offhanded insult Uncle Jack had just made, I did mention when I got him alone that if you’re courting someone, insulting them is probably not a good place to start. I tried to make this sound like a general observation and nothing I had noticed anyone I was related to doing lately, but he seemed to see through this and looked startled. Then he said, “I’m not courting her. Courtship implies marriage and I’m not the marrying kind, Primrose. And clearly neither is Miss Bowzer. Some folks are and some aren’t.”
    This kind of took the wind out of my sails, and anyhow I disagreed. If anyone was the marrying sort, it seemed to me it was Uncle Jack. And as for Miss Bowzer, she was the type who would never marry just because it was expected but if she did fall in love, would do so headover heels and stay married until the end of time. She once told me she was waiting for the type of marriage my parents had, where my mother had followed my father out into the storm, looking for his boat, forsaking all else. That was true love, she said, and