Read Online Three Women at the Water's Edge by Nancy Thayer - Free Book Online Page B

administrators, Carol and her position in the community, the bleakness of the Maine coast in the winter, the beauty of the Maine coast the rest of the year. It seemed to Dale that she agreed with Hank about everything, that everything he said was just and true. Finally, when they had finished their excellent meal and were sitting over coffee and cognac, their talk became more personal.
    “You’re from Iowa?” Hank said. “How in the world did you end up here?”
    “Because of Carol,” Dale said. “We met at Williams, and became close friends. The summer of my freshman year, instead of going home, I came up to stay with Carol and her family. And of course I got hooked. I worked as a waitress at the Blue Barn Inn in Rocheport, and that left me every afternoon free—they served only breakfast and dinner. So I spent my whole summer on the beach, or poking about the town, and I fell in love with it. Well, then I went to Europe for two years, but last spring Carol wrote me that they needed a teacher here, someone who could handle both biology and French, and so I came. You can see it’s all because of Carol. She brought me here that summer, and then she found me the job. But she knew how much I loved the area, especially the ocean. It’s funny, you know, how
at home
I feel here. I think I should miss Iowa, the rolling hills, the countryside, the sky, but I don’t. Or I
do
, but it’s all right, because of the ocean. It’s very—I don’t know how to say how I feel about the ocean, the water. I spend a lot of time there.”
    “I know,” Hank said. “That’s partly why I’m here, too. My family lives in Arlington, right outside of Boston, and they would have liked me to stay there. We used to spend every summer up here when I was growing up—for fifteen years we had a summer house right on the ocean. In fact, we still own it, but since my brother and I are gone, my parents don’t spend as much time up here as they used to. So we still own it, but they usually rent it out for most of the summer. They thought I was crazy to want to live here permanently, and sometimes—in February, for example—I think they’re right.”
    “But you have a farm, don’t you?” Dale asked, and even as she spoke she sensed Hank drawing back into himself.
    “Yes,” he said. “I do. That’s another reason they think I’m crazy. But it’s what I wanted to do, and I’m satisfied. How did you end up majoring in biology and in French?”
    The sudden switch back from him to her as a topic of conversation startled Dale, and she felt discontented for a moment, somehow cheated. Why wouldn’t he talk to her about his farm? But he was leaning toward her again, and he looked interested in what she would say.
    “I only have a minor in French,” Dale said. “But I picked up a lot in Europe over the past two years. So it’s good enough for high school students. My major was biology. Actually, all my life I thought I would become a doctor. My father is a physician, a general practitioner in Iowa, and he’s sort of a god back there. Everyone loves him. And they should, he’s really tremendous, he’s devoted his entire life to the town. Well, I always thought my older sister Daisy would grow up to be my mother—a pretty, organized, generous wife and mother. And I thought I would grow up to be my father. A wise and beloved physician. Well”—Dale smiled at herself then; she had come to the point in her life where she could smile about it now, where it did not hurt to say it—”I tried taking premed my freshman year in college, and I did just horribly. I’m still not sure why, because I always got straight A’s in biology and physics and chemistry in high school. I can’t tell you what a surprise it was to me to find the courses so difficult and the competition so tough. And the ones who were doing well in the courses were real grinds, they had no other life except their studies. So I decided at the end of my freshman year to