Page 38 of Stranded

ALPH

“So, just to make sure…”Ronan giggles. “You’re saying itwasn’tyou and your band of Sunrise Brothers who stole that scarecrow.” He points at the raggedy old thing still planted in the soil at an increasingly unstable angle.

“Correct.”

“And you don’t know who dressed it in a bikini and put it in the top of the old lighthouse.”

I grin at him. “I couldn’t possibly tell you.”

“Where it was seen by everyone passing by, and a whole tour group of historians from the provincial archives, untilsomeonefigured out how to open the window from the outside and get it back out again.”

“Which was obviously how the culprits got it in there in the first place. And,” I add, holding up a finger, “those are all original glass panes, so they were very careful. You might even say…” I pause for emphasis, “they took great pains.” Then I grin at him. “Panes? Pains?”

“I am not acknowledging that,” Ronan says. “Hey, are those apple trees? It’s like a jungle in here.”

“Yeah.” I’m still proud of myself for that joke, whatever he says. “This is the old cider orchard. It got planted when the firstpeople moved here. Sunrise cider was a big thing, like, fifty years ago? Sixty?” I shrug. “There even used to be a festival. By the time I was a kid… it just looked like this.”

“That’s so sad,” Ronan murmurs, brushing his hand along a tree trunk. “Someone should look after it. Just for history’s sake, you know?”

The wistful look on his face makes my heart squeeze gently. I like knowing that he feels the same way I do about this stuff. “As it happens, I heard that some young guy’s bought it,” I tell him. “He wants to restore the orchard and sell Sunrise cider again.”

Ronan beams at me. “Really? Wait. Should we be walking here, then?”

“Oh, we’re fine,” I laugh. “Nobody’s going to stop using the shortcut down to the beach. The real estate agents warn mainlanders about that stuff now. We had an incident a few years back. A mainlander moved here, and there was a trail through the corner of their land. They fenced it off one day without warning.”

“Oooh,” Ronan breathes out. “What happened?”

“Well, you can walk around, but it takes another five minutes. A lot of people missed their ferries. There was a real appetite for revenge. The next weekend was the pie auction, and…” I shake my head. “He got shunned. So badly, in fact, that he bought his own pie for twice the going rate, and then he took down the fence that night. By the next day, he’d turned it into a bench.”

Ronan bursts out laughing as he clambers over the biggest stones at the edge of the beach. “Shunned at the pie auction? Thepieauction? Is this real life?”

“I told you about the pie auction, didn’t I?” I scramble after him, awkwardly swinging my legs over and sliding so I don’t shake up the contents of our picnic.

“I might have missed it, among all the other events. Like the ‘golf cart parade’,” Ronan air-quotes, “and the ‘bathtub race’—”

“They’re real! Stay here long enough and you’ll see.”

We’re finally on the smaller stones, where it will be easier to walk to the spot I’ve got in mind for our picnic… the perfect way to finish the perfect day.

I’ve never talked so much in the span of a few hours, but Ronan has been the best audience. He laughs at all the right moments. When he asks questions, it makes my heartreallywarm and fuzzy, because I think he’s starting to care about this place the way I do.

And then maybe hewillstay… until he graduates? Or longer?

I can only hope.

“Maybe I will,” Ronan says at last, and then he chuckles. “If you still want me around. I know I’m getting a good deal?—”

“Oh, man,” I shake my head. “Trust me, I’m getting a better deal. Every time I thought about renting out the upstairs unit to someone I didn’t know…” I puff a sigh through my lips. “I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Ronan nods. “Downstairs doesn’t have as many memories, does it? Why not switch around?”

“I thought about it, but I felt like I wasn’t the right person to live there, either.”

Ronan shakes his head. “You’ve looked after it so carefully. You care about it. Why not?” He’s looking at me like he’s not talking about just the house, but I can’t figure out why.

“If it’s a gallery… I’m the custodian,” I tell him. “Not the artist.” Then I stumble to a halt and stare at him. “Oh.”

“Hi,” Ronan waves at me with a mischievous little grin. “I’m an artist.”

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