Driftwood Point Read Online Free PDF

cooler.
    â€œI’m sorry, Gigi.” Lis joined her and started to empty the crates to restock the cooler. “I just meant that you’ve worked hard for a long enough time that you earned some rest.”
    â€œI will take it when I’m good and ready.” Ruby slit the top of the first box with the Swiss Army knife she pulled out of the pocket of her blue and white apron. “Not before.”
    Lis knew better than to respond, so she watched in silence for a moment, wondering how to offer to shelve the contents of the box without offending Ruby.
    â€œWell, maybe you could stack these cereal boxes there on that top shelf when you’re done there,” Ruby said, as if she’d read Lis’s mind. “It’s a bit troublesome, reaching up.”
    Lis suspected Ruby was having problems with her left shoulder again, but since she seemed a bit touchy, Lis tucked the thought away to ask later. She emptied the last crate, then restacked them by the door for the distributors to pick up and refill. Next she dragged the box Ruby had opened to the shelves where dry cereals were kept.
    Ruby acknowledged the gesture with a “Hmmph.”
    â€œIt’s nice that you still get deliveries here on the island,” Lis said cautiously. When Ruby was feeling touchy, just about anything could set her off.
    â€œTom Parsons been delivering to me over forty-five years, his daddy before him.” Ruby slashed the top of the next carton and left it for Lis to empty and find space on the shelves for its contents. “I been a steady customer all those years, expect this place be around another forty-five.” She glanced at Lis and added, “At least that many.”
    Lis wasn’t about to step into that trap.
    â€œSo you still stock mostly dry stuff, I see. Cereals, canned and paper goods, baking stuff,” Lis said.
    â€œDoesn’t pay to carry perishables. The market over to St. Dennis is bigger, got the room for the big coolers and what all,” Ruby told her. “Got the basics here, newspapers every morning ’cept Sunday. Most folks want a Sunday paper, they pick one up over to the mainland when they go to church.”
    â€œWho goes to St. Dennis for church?” Back whenshe was growing up on the island, that would have been unheard of.
    â€œEveryone who has a mind to church, that’s who.” Ruby looked up from her task of opening another box. “Been no preacher here for . . . four, five years or so.”
    â€œWhat happened to Reverend Foster?”
    â€œRetired to someplace warm. I hear he passed not long after.”
    Lis knew what was coming next, so she turned back to the shelf lest Ruby see her smile.
    â€œFolks need to know where they belong.” Ruby delivered the anticipated pronouncement. “Some don’t know when they’re well off. Some move on when they should stay put.”
    Lis knew that her great-grandmother was talking about Lis and her mother, her brother, Owen, and everyone else who ever moved off the island.
    â€œI think for some, the prospects are just better somewhere else,” Lis said. “There are some things that you have to leave home to do.”
    â€œAnd what might that be?”
    â€œArt school for me, to start.”
    â€œArt school be done. Seems to me you can paint anywhere.”
    â€œCan’t find a husband here.” Lis tried to add some levity to the conversation.
    â€œYou’d be surprised what you might find hereabouts these days.”
    â€œGigi, there hasn’t been a man under fifty living on this island for at least fifteen years.” Lis paused. “Except maybe a few of the guys I went to schoolwith when they came back to see their parents. And most of the parents have left as well. Last time I was here, I noticed more than a few of the old cottages were boarded up.”
    â€œSome boards go up, some might have come down since then.” Ruby stood up