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“Al right, we can check in, however I doubt Samantha needs or wants us. She's doing a fine job on her own, and remember, I have to leave straight from the picnic.”

Pix remembered. She went to thank Rebecca and say goodbye to everyone. Ursula was going to the picnic with the Fraziers.

“Go home with your husband and help him pack, Pix,"

her mother said with a very amused look in her eye.

Saying good-bye to Sam had been hard. He would try to get up again for a long weekend, but the likelihood was that they wouldn't see each other until August. She didn't want to think about it. They'd checked in with Samantha at the games and the kids were not as upset as Pix had feared, especial y since the judges had awarded them the prize for Best Walking Group. Everyone was studiously ignoring the incident, except for some of the younger campers who were stil giggling. Samantha's sidekicks, Susannah and Geoff, were among the worst. They would get in control, glance at each other, and burst out laughing again. Pix watched in amusement herself at her daughter's struggles to be firm with the two. Samantha had told her that their initial homesickness had quickly given way to a friendship based mainly on a mutual love of corny "Knock, Knock" jokes and mischief.

Jim and Valerie were overseeing the three-legged races, laughing just the right amount as they partnered unlikely combinations--fifteen-year-olds with five-year-olds.

Everyone seemed to be having fun. Duncan was nowhere in sight. Samantha's camp duties ended after the Odd Fel ows Lobster Picnic and she told her mother not to worry, which Pix correctly interpreted as meaning mother would not see daughter until midnight. She was tempted to extend Samantha's curfew—it was a holiday—yet the girl was stil looking pale, quite unlike her usual hale and hearty self. Pix wondered whether anything was wrong—unrelated to health. Samantha had seemed preoccupied for the last few days. Of course with everything that was happening, this was a reasonable response. But Pix's motherly intuition was picking up more, her antennae were twitching. She'd try to talk to her daughter later. Maybe the two of them would drive to El sworth for dinner and a movie tomorrow night. She needed to get her in the car for a good long drive.

Pix spread her blanket out on a choice spot on the library hil overlooking Sanpere Harbor and waited to see who would join her for the fireworks. They were due to start at 9:00 P.M. and it was 8:30 now. You had to arrive early to grab a good place. Her mother had decided to forgo the fireworks this year, as she had for the last two years. The first summer she'd declared she was going to bed early and had seen enough fireworks to last the rest of her life had Pix ready to check her mother into Blue Hil Hospital for a thorough examination. Ursula loved fireworks—or so she had always claimed. "It's the beginning of the end," Pix had told Sam mournful y. "First fireworks, then she'l stop going out of the house altogether." Sam had reacted less dramatical y. "Just because your mother doesn't want to sit on the damp ground with hundreds of people chanting ooh and aah while they get cricks in their necks plus kids running around throwing firecrackers, waving sparklers in everyone's faces, doesn't mean she's cashing in her chips."

And of course he'd been right. But Pix didn't like things to change.

Wel , her mother had made it both to the Lobster Picnic and the Fish and Fritter Fry. Few Rowes would miss the chance to eat lobster, dripping melted butter and lobster juice al over themselves and their neighbors at the picnic tables the Odd Fel ows erected especial y for the occasion in the bal field each year. Some of the older people always reminisced about the days when lobster was so cheap and plentiful that they would beg for something else. Ken Layton, Sanpere's resident historian, would remind everyone that around the time of the Civil War, lobsters, regardless of weight, were two cents apiece—and they pul ed in bigger lobsters then. It had al happened again this year and Sam had managed to eat two lobsters, since he was going to miss the Fish and Fritter Fry, but Pix had stopped at one to save room.

She lay back on the rough wool blanket, an old army blanket of her father's, and gazed up at the sky. You never saw so many stars in Aleford and certainly not even a quarter in Boston! She felt as if she were peering into a big overturned bowl and the milky white constel ations were tumbling out above her. The fireworks would have some competition.

Just as she was beginning to feel a bit sorry for herself, no kith nor kin by her side, Jil came and sat down. "Do you have enough room for me?"

“I have enough room for ten or twelve of you," Pix said, sitting up. "Sam had to go back early and Samantha's off with her friends."

“What a day! Business hasn't been this good in years."

Jil was clearly excited. "People stuck around after the parade and I even sold the lobster-pot lamp that one of the Sanfords made. It's been sitting in the store for years”

Pix knew the lamp wel . She had threatened to give it to Faith more than once and vice versa. Not only had the resourceful craftsman wired the pot buoy but he had attached netting, cork floats, and, as the pièce de résistance, a whole lobster that glowed when the lamp was turned on. The plain white shade had been lavishly painted with yet more bright red crustaceans.

“That's great, especial y about the lamp." Pix laughed.

“Don't worry," Jil said, "you can stil have one. He's bringing another one up tomorrow! If I'd known, I might have been able to sel them as a pair!"

“I doubt it. When you buy such an object, you like to think it's one of a kind."

“The only thing about being so busy was that I didn't close for lunch or dinner. I missed the picnic and the fry." Jil sounded very disappointed.

“I think I ate enough for both of us," Pix said. "And everyone at the parade and in your shop must have gone down to Granvil e for both. I've never seen so many people!

Mabel Hamilton told me they went through three hundred pounds of potatoes, a hundred and sixty pounds of fish, twelve gal ons of clams, fifty pounds of onions, and goodness knows how much else for the fry!"

“That's wonderful. Al the profits go to the scholarship fund for kids from fishing families, which real y helps the island. Those women are amazing. Think of al that peeling.”

But Pix was not thinking of peeling potatoes or any other vegetables. She was thinking of what Earl would say.

Seth Marshal was standing next to them, obviously waiting for an invitation. Jil gave it.

“You said there was room, didn't you, Pix? Why don't you sit down, Seth." The woman actual y patted the blanket.

It wasn't that Pix disliked Seth. It was just not the way things were supposed to be. And come to think of it, Seth wasn't exactly flavor of the month.

He appeared to realize this and eyed his hostess a bit warily as he sat down.

“You do know we're pouring tomorrow," Seth said.

"Yes, Earl told me this morning. I'l be there at seven. That about right?"

“You don't real y need to be, unless of course you want to," Seth added hastily.

With the start in sight, Pix was feeling generous. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hang around al the time. I just want to see the foundation go in and cal Faith." It was the least she could do.

“No problem," Seth replied.

Pix sighed. She had the feeling she'd be hearing this phrase often in the weeks to come. And Seth was also sitting awful y close to Jil . In the moonlight, his resemblance to one of Captain Kidd's mates was even more pronounced. Maybe Jil found him romantic. Pix thought him hirsute—and suspect. She started to think what he could possibly gain from Mitchel Pierce's demise—she'd never been happy with Seth's explanation for being at the site—

when a long shadow fel across the blanket.