The Seasons Hereafter by Elisabeth Ogilvie

Kestrel out of the harbor, unless he was allowing thoughts of his wife to spoil his pleasure. If he does he’s a fool, she thought.
    When Kestrel disappeared around the breakwater she watched other boats leave the harbor in the cloudy sunrise. She wondered which one belonged to Owen Bennett, and as she thought his name she raw the tiger again, free now, the muscles flowing under his coat as he padded through the light and shade in a jungle that proliferated richly within the walls of this house.
    The clouds outside were dissolved by a northwest breeze and the sun was strong and warm. She took a sandwich and a book and got away before Dandelion-Head could catch her, or the fat florid object that had rapped and beckoned so horribly yesterday. You don’t really have to build a better mousetrap, she thought. You find a child in a puddle and pick him out. Then you lose all your rights as a private person.
    Eventually, lulled by the sun’s warmth and the soporific swash of water a little way out of sight, she became absorbed in her book. After a time she was aroused by a penetrating chill; she was surrounded by complete shadow, and a freshening wind was blowing through the spruce boughs. It was late and she hadn’t known time was passing . . . she hadn’t even eaten her sandwich. She saw that she hadn’t read much of her book and realized that she must have slept part of the time, and this gave her a small twinge of fright.
    She broke up her sandwich for the crows and walked home. When she came into the house, it was well after six, and Barry had been in and gone out again. His dinner box was on the table and his rubber boots stood against the wall. He had cooked some lobsters and eaten a couple; the shells were in the sink. She put two still-warm lobsters on a tray and carried them into the sunporch to eat by the windows, breaking them open with quick professional twists of her hands and getting the meat out in big pink-and-white chunks.
    The wind died out as the sun dropped toward the horizon, and the western sky turned a clear lemon-green color that cast a strange light over the grass and trees, and filled the house; it was silence with its own color, or color that carried its own silence—an element in which she could immerse herself, like water. She seemed to be floating in it when the experience was violently ended by three loud knocks at the back door.
    At first she refused to go, then she was too angry not to. She ran out to the entry, but the door opened before she reached it and a man stood there, a solid dark shape against the unique light beyond. “Barry home?” he said.
    â€œNo, he isn’t! And—” And what? She stepped back, and as the man came into the kitchen she could see him. “I don’t know where he is,” she said, out of breath as if she’d been running.
    â€œI’m getting my crew together to stop off the harbor,” he said. “It’s full of herring. I’m a man short, and Barry could fill-in if he’s of a mind to.”
    She heard his words without answering, he didn’t repeat them, and the silence between them took on the curious quality of the light that surrounded them. Unsmiling and unspeaking they looked at each other, and her suspense composed of terror and delight was familiar; she knew at once that the tiger was here.
    â€œI’m Owen Bennett,” he said finally.
    â€œYes.”
    He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the cupboards. His black eyes didn’t move away from her, and she felt that her blouse must be moving with the beat of her heart. She said tonelessly, “I don’t know where Barry is.”
    â€œAnd he doesn’t ever know where you are, does he?”
    â€œWhat does that mean?” She tried for insolence. “Is that what they say about me already?”
    â€œI don’t know what they say.” He straightened up and moved toward the door, still watching