Adrift Read Online Free PDF Page B

tourists seem to like my pieces just fine.”  She shrugged eloquently.
    “I can imagine,” I said, remembering the room I had slept in.
    “So,” She said, briskly, grabbing up her basket of wool and hitching it up to her hip.  “How about we get started on some nice old-fashioned weeding?”
     
    Mud is the inescapable reality of weeding gardens.  For me, it seems to go from just the dirt under the fingernails category to mud from head to toe.  I pulled my shoes off so as not to damage Maura’s perfect garden beds, and soon I was mud up to my knees and elbows.
    Maura laughed, her own mess contained at her wrists, as she collected her weeds and gathered them up in a bucket for her compost.
    Maura whistled or hummed as she worked, pausing now and then as she regarded her young plants, some hardly more than seedlings.  She would gently brush some of them with her finger, murmuring under her breath some words of encouragement.
    “Now then,” she muttered to a little tomato plant, which looked rather crestfallen with its leaves drooping.  “You chin up and get some sunlight.  You’ll be big in no time.”
    I wiped the sweat from my face with the back of my hand and set to routing out one particularly tenacious weed that was threatening Maura’s rhubarb patch.
    “Halloo the house.”
    The voice was near enough that it startled me out of my reverie. 
    Devin leaned against the wall of the house, with a stalk of grass hanging out of his mouth.  The image of a mischievous leprechaun flashed through my head and I lifted a muddy hand to wave at him.
    “And we’re just finishing!” Maura exclaimed.
    “Don’t you think I was counting on that?” Devin replied, putting an arm around her shoulders and pecking her cheek.
    Maura swatted at him, a fond look on her face.  I felt awkward, out of place, an outsider looking on at their comfortable intimacy.
    Maura glanced at me, and pushed her son away playfully.  “You’ll be needing to talk to this young lady, I’m thinking.”  She gave him a significant glance. “It’s not my place.”
    Devin grimaced.  “Yes, I must,” he said.
    I raised my hands.  “Am I in trouble?” I laughed.  “Have I broken some unspoken Trinity law?”
    Instead of laughing, Maura and Devin just regarded me seriously.
    “Go feed the horses and have a chat,” Maura suggested.  “I’ll make up some lunch.”  She stood up and brushed off her hands, bundling up her pile of weeds.
    Devin looked at me uneasily. He cocked an eyebrow.
    “What?”  I demanded.
    “It’s hard to take you seriously when you have mud all over your face,” he said, the tiniest touch of a smile twitching his lips.
    I felt my face flush and my hands automatically reached towards my face before I remembered that they were also covered with mud.  I stared down at my feet, wondering to myself if there was any mud left in the garden, or if I was wearing all of it.
    “Come on,” Devin said, as he took in my chagrin.  “I’ll hose you off.  I wouldn’t want you to terrify the horses before their breakfast.”
    “Terrifying them after breakfast is permitted?” I muttered, following him to the side of the house, where a hose lay coiled.
    The water was bitterly cold, and I quickly scrubbed my feet and hands off.  Without a mirror, I didn’t even know how to go about fixing my face.
    “Here,” Devin said.  He leaned forward and wiped his hand across my cheek, then down my nose.  “I think I got it all.”
    I felt myself blushing again, and tried to hide my burning face, busying myself with my socks and shoes.
    The horses were pastured a short walk from Maura’s little orchard. Here the grass grew long and untamed, dotted with sparks of color where wildflowers bloomed. Grasshoppers swarmed before us with every step we took, an odd entourage for our small procession of two humans and a dog.
    Kip snapped at a grasshopper, promptly dropping it when he actually caught it. I smiled to myself at his