Written on My Heart Read Free

driven the prows of those boats into the roughshod sea day after day. If nothing else, we were resilient.
    Bud was about six months older than Dottie and me. He lived through part of a fall and a whole winter before I barged onto the scene. “As soon as you could run,” his mother, Ida, had told me a short time before the baby shower, “your little legs carried you down the road to our house. You used to play in the driveway with Bud until one of you made the other one mad, and then we would walk you back up the hill.”
    â€œDid I just run loose? Where was Carlie?” I asked Ida. I called my mother Carlie because she had wanted to be called by her first name. “Mama sounds weird to me,” she told me when I asked. I didn’t care what she wanted to be called. I knew who she was to me.
    â€œYour mother was right with you,” Ida said. “You think she’d let you run down the road alone?”
    â€œI don’t remember,” I said. Carlie had taken with her any stories she might have told me. “But I remember playing with Bud.”
    Something about him, even then, made me feel strong and protected. He was a calm little boy who had grown into a quiet and easygoing man, unless something really riled him up.
    He was the leader of the four of us. Besides Dottie, Bud, and me, our little gang included Glen Clemmons, who was also our age. Glen’s father, Ray, ran the general store, close to the road that led to Long Reach. When we got together as a foursome, each of us contributed to whatever mischief we might decide to get into. Glen had the bad ideas, Dottie complained but went along, I thought Glen’s ideas were fun, and Bud was the voice of reason that no one ever listened to until it was too late.
    I might not have tuned in on his advice, but I heard his heart in my heart, always. His presence took root in me. I looked for him, even when we were with other people. Four years after Carlie went missing, I lost Grand to a stroke. My life took a header even as Glen, Dottie, and Bud found ways to get along in the world. Bud hooked up with a pretty, popular girl named Susan. I quit high school and took up with Andy Barrington, the son of rich summer people. At seventeen, I gave my virginity to him and learned how to smoke pot. I also almost died when Andy and I got into a bad car accident.
    Bud’s was a welcome presence as I healed. Armed at this point with a real understanding of how short life could be and how fast things could change, I fought for his love, and his own restless heart chose mine.
    When I was eighteen, my father died of a heart attack on his lobster boat, the
Florine
, on a beautiful July day. Bud moved in with me a few days after his funeral. He took a job as a mechanic at Fred’s garage, up on the road to Long Reach. He wasn’t a great cook and he left his dirty clothes on the bedroom floor, but he saved my sanity. He held me close when the dark tried to slink into my soul through the cracks in my heart, and he brought me back into the land of the living.
    We lived together for a year. We loved sex, so we shouldn’t have been surprised when we made a baby in the early fall of 1970. When I told him, Bud blinked a few times, shrugged, and said, “Well, we’ll manage.”
    We were both only nineteen at the time, but we were made of sturdy stock. It helped that Grand’s house was paid for. Bud and I managed to take care of the taxes and, so far, the day-to-monthly bills, but a new baby would up our spending in a big way. To help with finances, I struck a deal with Ray at the general store and he started to carry more of the bread that I baked from Grand’s recipes. Ray also took orders for my knitting and crocheting, and for Christmas wreaths. Only a few years back, I’d considered all of this a chore. Grand had been determined to make me useful, and I had found it a pain in the butt. But after her death, I began to