Catch of the Year Read Online Free PDF

area at the edge of the water. Birch and pine trees glistened in the morning sunlight, forming a leafy canopy over the picnic table. The lake itself lay quiet and still, the surface mirror-like. There was just the slightest swampy smell in the air.
    The women settled into waiting lawn chairs. For a while they kept silent, sipping their hot drinks and watching a cormorant fly low over the lake.
    Jade swallowed a mouthful of coffee and read the message on her mug with a baleful eye. Not true. Love was not enough. A person also needed a means of livelihood and shelter in order to survive. Pity her mother hadn’t given her a glass cup like the one she was drinking from. Except, looking at the color of Marigold’s ginger tea reminded Jade of Paul’s bedroom eyes. She bit her lip. This morning she didn’t need or want reminding of him.
    Marigold set down her empty mug and reached into the pocket of her loose, crinkly cotton dress.
    â€œSo tell me, what’s troubling you, Dipity? Didn’t you sleep well last night? Was it too hot? Were you worrying about work? Or was it the full moon?”
    Jade gave a small shake of her head. That was modern life for you, overburdened with choices.
    â€œCould have been the moon. I don’t know. It was more … I had this vivid dream and can’t shake it off.”
    â€œReally?” Her mom took a paper, sprinkled on tobacco and rolled herself a cigarette. She moistened the edge as if licking a stamp and pressed it down to form a wobbly, uneven cylinder.
    Jade explained about meeting Paul.
    â€œI recognized him as soon as I slowed. There’s no mistaking him. He’s about six feet tall, with dark hair, a longish face, strong chin and a dimple.”
    â€œSounds to me like you’ve got an eye for the guy.”
    Jade ignored the remark. “I felt bad about leaving him stranded, but what could I do? I never imagined we’d both be stuck in Tobermory, waiting for the ferry, and meet up there. Then, in my dreams, I was all involved with him.”
    Marigold turned her head, regarding Jade through locks of her brown hair. She wore it long, with bright ribbons braided into random strands. Jade sometimes thought, with a kind of amused affection, that if it weren’t for the fact that all things Boho were in style again, she’d look like a throwback to the era of her youth.
    â€œSo he’s very significant to you?”
    She widened her eyes at her mom. “He works with me. Of course he is.”
    â€œTell me, have you ever thought perhaps you’ve known him before?”
    Jade pretended to misunderstand. “No. We met when he joined the agency almost a year ago.”
    She’d never thought of Paul as being at all spooky, but he’d sure haunted her dreams last night. This morning she was really very disgruntled and annoyed with the man.
    â€œYou know what this means, don’t you?” Marigold could be tenacious.
    â€œDoesn’t mean a thing. Or if it does, it’s telling me I made a poor choice of pizza toppings last night.”
    Her mother brushed that off. “Trust me, it does. You and this Paul must have a strong karmic connection.”
    Jade drank her last mouthful of coffee and tucked the empty mug under her chair, where she wouldn’t have to look at it. “You know I don’t believe in reincarnation.”
    Marigold lifted her chin. She said, “So working with him, passing him on the road, bumping into him because he’s catching the same ferry as you — this is just random, totally arbitrary?” She turned her head away and spat out a loose bit of tobacco. “No. You have to be connected to him on a deeper, unconscious level. Perhaps you lived, loved, and fought in a previous life, and now you’ve got something more to achieve or work through together.” She struck a match and held it to the end of the cigarette. After taking a draw, she blew a long stream of