The Bay of Love and Sorrows by David Adams Richards

Tom’s cold behaviour, and feigned needing to come to Michael for advice. Yet though she and Michael pretended it wasn’t, it was very much a predicament that both of them knew would not exist unless they themselves willed it.
    At first Karrie wanted to believe that Michael’s and her relationship revolved around the principal idea of getting Tom to reconcile with his friend. Later, when she saw how hurt Michael was, Karrie felt sorry for him, and angered by Tom’s stubborn meanness. Yet behind all this, there was a subtle but marked game being played between her and Michael, that both of them knew.
    She thought, as she walked, that Michael would not let her go back to Tom ever again, even if Tom did get violent. There would be some kind of confrontation, but she did not know how that would turn out — only that Michael by the power of his voice and his brave eyes would finally win.
    Why did she suddenly think of court? Perhaps something would happen — she would have to go to court — then Michael’s father, the judge, would come — everything would be solved. The judge would put his hands on her shoulder, calling her his daughter (or something — that part was still vague.) Then, in her mind, years passed. They would be in a large brownstone house. Trees, children.
    Her own father seemed to think of some injury against her, and so did her stepmother. Karrie was silent in the house. And for the first time she felt very powerful, and sensed that they were both in awe and perhaps a little afraid of her.
    “Well, it’s a shame,” her stepmother had said, a week ago, a slight smile playing at the corner of her lips, where tiny black hair could be seen. “I don’t like to see anyone hurt.”
    She remembered how outside of their house the bay was black and steely, and far away a buoy-light could be seen, Down the road was Oyster River corner.
    Her father had sat licking the filter of his cigarette and frowning at some memory, with grey suit-pants high up on his waist, and counting the money he kept in a tin can beside him. This was the money her father and her stepmother were saving for their retirement. They kept it locked behind the bookshelf in the den. It was money that came from rigged gas pumps — especially the diesel pump, which the local trucking companies used. It was not that they had rigged these pumps themselves. The calibration had been set wrong by the previous owner five years ago, and only Dora was astute enough to notice this. When Emmett went to telephone the company to report the mistake, she rushed in and stopped him.
    “Don’t be a godalmighty fool — we are not the thieves — they did it. We’re going to make an extra seventy cents on a tank of gas.” And her face turned beet-red and she looked over quickly and suspiciously at her stepdaughter. “You keep your little Smith mouth shut up tight, Karrie,” she advised.
    As long as they were careful about this they felt they would not be caught. It would only be a problem to explain if it were found out they had kept extra profit for themselves. And though Emmett felt guilty and though Karrie was at times burdened, they maintained complete silence. And Emmett and his wife would smile at each other at times across the table late at night.
    As Karrie walked away from Tom she thought about this. And then thought about the night before, her twentieth birthday.
    She had not meant to meet Michael, but it was destiny. This is what she told herself. It was what her stepmother had told her the week before.
    “It’s just destiny, dear. Don’t fight it.”
    “But I feel some bad about it,” Karrie said, at that particular moment not feeling bad at all. “We were s’posed to start our instruction at the church” And she blessed herself.
    But Dora snapped her fingers quickly in front of Karrie’s eyes, startling her. “Think for once of what you want. People like you and me never think of ourselves, dear — think of yer own self-” And she