May: Daughters of the Sea #2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

still here. But Captain Haskell and Alfred, the first mate, done took the dead man into Bar Harbor and plan to sail back with a doctor for these three. He felt they were too sick to move right now. It’s still cold out there, and sleeting.”
    “Yes, yes, of course.” May had busied herself reheating a pot of leftover oatmeal.
    “May!” a voice cawed.
    May flinched. “It’s my mother. I have to fetch her medicines.”
    “What’s wrong with her?” Rudd asked.
    Somehow these four words struck May as terribly funny. She almost began to laugh but turned to him with an odd smile that broadened until it seemed to illuminate her entire face. “She’s sick,” and then barely concealing a chuckle she added, “rather
she
would say so.”
    Rudd nodded and smiled, right into her smile. “Oh, I know the kind. I got an aunt like that and an older sister.” For the first time May felt relaxed with him.
    “You understand? You know what I am talking about?” He nodded. He did not smile. His face was serious. “Does it run in your family?” she asked. But to herself she was thinking,
I am not the only one.
It seemed almost miraculous to her that another person, this weathered sailor, had been bullied by another’s illness.
    He hesitated before speaking. “I think it runs up and down the coast of Maine and maybe all across New England for all I know. Women are fragile. They have complaints, weak constitutions, maybe.”
    “I’m not fragile,” May replied, dumping a ladleful of oatmeal into a bowl.
    “No. I can see that.” His voice was taut. There was a sudden flickering in his eyes, not the flirtatious twinkle she had seen the previous night but a bright glitter that May found slightly unnerving.

4
THE CLOSET
     
    H ER MOTHER WAS PROPPED UP IN BED when May came with a tray covered with tablet boxes and tall glasses of water. On the small table beside the bed was another glass of water in which Hepzibah’s false teeth floated eerily. For May they had a kind of animate life of their own, independent of her mother, as if on sudden provocation they could actually begin scolding May for some minor infraction.
    “Good. You brought the smaller spoon.” Hepzibah nodded at her daughter. “You can’t really get these powders to properly mix with a big spoon. Hand me my specs, will you?”
    “Yes, Ma.” May set down the tray and walked to the dresser to fetch her mother’s spectacles. Zeebathen set about mixing up the powders. Her face was suffused with an almost beatific look.
    “I remember doing this so well for my mother and my grandmother. Powders were much coarser back then. Took longer to dissolve. But I learned, and oh, in that final illness of my mother’s … oh, how she suffered! I never left her side.”
    May had heard the final illness stories of both women many times. Finally, when the powders had dissolved sufficiently, her mother looked up. “Have they left yet?” May bristled at the callousness of Zeeba’s question.
    “Three of the men, the ones that didn’t die, are too sick to move right now.”
    Her mother’s lips twitched and a grimace scored her face. “What are we running, then, a hospital instead of a lighthouse?”
    “But, Ma. They’re too sick. So the doctor’s coming here.”
    The dark hole through which Hepzibah normally poked her words opened as her lips pulled back to reveal purple gums. She was smiling. A toothlesssmile. “The new doctor! Now, isn’t that a bit of luck. The storm’s done brought him to us!” She looked down and pressed her lips together.
    Luck! Two men dead, another three nearly drowned! A tiny needle of malice pricked any patience May had left. “I hope the new doctor will be able to help Pa.”
    A darkness like storm clouds gathered in Hepzibah’s face. “All he has to do is not touch that bottle,” she snapped.
    “He cut his hand and he did something to his hip. He can’t walk.”
    Hepzibah made a sound halfway between a grunt and a snort. “Pass