Heart So Hungry Read Online Free PDF Page B

would have had to rush to the rail. As it was, she felt hollowed out by fear, a brittle shell about to collapse.
    Later that day the coast of Labrador appeared off to their left, a hazy adumbration. Mina stood at the rail with her Laddie, Wallace and George, a driving rain stinging their faces. The sea was a violent churning of opposing colours, of whitecaps smashing over black water. As for the rocky coast of Labrador glimpsed through the rain, it seemed to Mina the embodiment of bleakness, a line of sea-pounded, wind-scoured rocks, lifeless and black.
    Wallace said, “It appears brutally inhospitable, wouldn’t you agree?”
    Laddie laughed, revelling in the challenge, enjoying even the rain. “We’ll have a bully time of it, boys!”
    Mina gripped his arm. Don’t go, she thought.
    That night, her last aboard ship with her husband, she clung to him in their narrow bunk. She lay with her face pressed to his neck so that her every breath inhaled the scent of him. And for the first time, she hinted at her fear.
    “What Cabot said earlier,” she told him. “I have to admit that it worries me.”
    Laddie stroked her hair. “He’s never been to the interior, only up and down the coast.”
    “But isn’t the interior a harsher place than the coast? So perhaps his concerns are not so unwarranted after all.”
    “I’ve been advised to expect a plenitude of wild game,” he assured her. “Don’t be surprised if I gain a few pounds while I’m there.”
    “But what if—?”
    “Shhh,” Laddie told her. “Don’t worry, beloved. I am not a reckless man.”
    She slept little that night. Instead she watched her husband sleep. She listened to his breathing. She laid her hand upon his heart and felt its rhythm in her fingertips.
    She tried with all her might to will away the dawn, but a grey light eventually came seeping into the cabin, a light as sickly as she felt. Some time before six a.m. Laddie walked her onto the deck. Though the sea was calmer there in Battle Harbour, an icy drizzle was falling, making the deck even slicker—a good excuse for holding desperately to Laddie’s arm. In the weak light of morning, while her insides thrashed and heaved, Mina pulled off her gloves and wove her fingers between Laddie’s. She had so much to say but she choked down every word. She was determined not to cry, not to taint his departure with her misery.
    “Will you miss me, sweetheart?” he asked.
    What answer could possibly encompass the extent to which she would miss him? She could only lay her head against his chest and suggest, with the grip of her fingers, how mightily she would feel his absence.
    Then Captain Parsons was there beside them. Mina had thought him a somewhat nervous man throughout the trip, though rightfully so, responsible as he was for manoeuvring the
Virginia Lake
through a maze of icebergs, fog and frothing seas. He appeared much calmer now that the ship was at anchor, even merry as he raised a hand to point ashore.
    “If you look halfway up that hill there, Missus Hubbard, you can see the Grenfell Mission house. That there is where you’ll be staying till I come back down the coast to fetch you home.”
    Mina nodded, unable to respond, her throat constricted, eyes blurring.
    “Soon’s you’re in the jolly boat, ma’am, we can lower it down and set you ashore.”
    George was the first to bid her goodbye. He stepped up shyly, moved as if to reach for her hand, then thought better of it and drew back, clasped his hands at his waist. “Have a good trip home,” he told her. “I’m glad you was able to come along this far.”
    She gave him a look he understood well.
Please take care of him
, her eyes begged.
    Next came Dillon Wallace. “Don’t you worry now,” he said. “And try not to miss him too much. George and I will see that he doesn’t get into too much trouble.”
    “Only enough to make it interesting!” Laddie answered. And when Mina looked up at him she saw that his cheeks too