Safe Harbor Read Online Free PDF Page A

motivation had probably been to
shake her up, but she’d been tough and courageous. She’d squatted
down and stared the corpse straight in its lidless black eyes. No
doubt Kip had been testing her, trying to find out whether she was
a sissy. He’d found out she wasn’t.
    But here she was, falling apart, blubbering,
her courage gone and her emotions overblown. Here she was, leaning
on him and acting like a dumb girl.
    “I’m sorry I cried like that. I’m scared, Kip.
I know there’s no reason to be, but—”
    “Maybe there is a reason to be,” he countered,
twirling his fingers through her hair. She understood that he
didn’t mean to alarm her, but rather wanted to reassure her that
her reaction wasn’t as dopey as she seemed to think it
was.
    “If my parents get a divorce I’ll die,” she
declared.
    “No you won’t.”
    “But I love them both.”
    “Well, maybe...maybe that’s not it at all.
Maybe your dad just has some problems to work out, and he wants to
work them out by himself.”
    “Yeah—or with another woman.”
    “Maybe he just wants some time alone. I
mean--every guy needs a little time to himself now and
then.”
    “He has time to himself all week long,” she
reminded Kip. “We’re here. He’s all alone in Westport.”
    “But he’s at work most of the time.”
    “Whose side are you on, anyway?” she
snapped.
    Kip groaned and socked her gently in the arm.
“Girls,” he grunted, an all-encompassing complaint. “Of course I’m
on your side, Shelley. I’m just trying to explain...”
    “Explain what?”
    “He’s a guy. There’s no way you can understand
everything that’s going on in his head.”
    “You are taking his side,”
she accused, supremely annoyed.
    “I’m trying to talk you down,
Shell.”
    “You’re a creep. And I can too understand
everything that’s going on in his head. Same as your head. They’re
both empty. What’s going on inside them is zilch.”
    Kip laughed. So did Shelley. Arguing with him
felt good; they both knew where they stood and what the situation
was. It wasn’t like arguing with her parents, where so much
remained unspoken, unacknowledged.
    From four stories below came the wind-borne
drone of a moped engine. Shelley and Kip scrambled to their knees
in time to see a two-seater bounce up the driveway to the front
porch. The engine died and the two passengers—Diana and a strapping
young man with black hair and a thick mustache—climbed
off.
    “That’s him?” Shelley whispered.
    “The love of her life,” Kip whispered
back.
    Her personal woes momentarily forgotten,
Shelley slipped into her spying mode. Spying on Diana was a summer
tradition for Shelley and Kip, although this summer Shelley found
herself spying on Diana less out of mischief than out of
admiration. Diana was so pretty, so sophisticated. In her tank top
and shorts, with her hair cut in an expertly styled shag and her
eyes enhanced with tinted contacts and a subtle touch of make-up,
with a narrow strap of braided leather circling one bare, slender
ankle, she looked awfully cool.
    In less than two months she would be heading
off to Middlebury College. Maybe she was moody and sulky and she
took forever to get ready. But she knew things Shelley longed to
know, things that had to do with life and love and being a woman.
Spying on her with Kip was entertaining, but sometimes Shelley
wished she could spend a little time at Diana’s feet, learning
important things.
    “I think he’s kind of cute,” she assessed
Diana’s boyfriend.
    Kip made a face. “He’s a nerd.”
    “He’s got a mustache. He must be
old.”
    “I could grow a mustache if I wanted,” Kip
said.
    Shelley glanced at him and wrinkled her nose.
“Nah. It wouldn’t suit you. You’re too clean-cut.”
    He gave her
another playful sock in the arm. “ You’re a nerd.”
    “Shh.” She rose on her knees to watch as Diana
and her date paused before the porch steps. He wrapped his arms
around Diana’s