Page 59 of Adrift

“Can you ratchet your side a little more?” I ask Berty, wiping the sweat from my forehead as Murph closes the back of the trailer and drops the pins in place. The strap over the barrel goes a little more taut, and I nod and hold up a hand. “There.”

Berty straightens up and leans against the barrel. “Doug’s going to kill me when he sees this shirt in the laundry,” he laughs. All three of us are covered in dust, dirt, and oil, but Berty is the one who dressed up for the occasion.

Will, the owner of the orchards, came to oversee delivery of the last barrel of Sunrise Cider. That meant Berty wanted to be here to greet him, and he insisted on bringing Ladybird—the island’s only car, a classic red VW Bug.

He was right, I have to admit. It was a nice photo of Berty shaking hands with Will, me half-hiding behind the barrel, and Kieran standing proudly beside it.

But having Ladybird in the background made the photo instantly iconic for anyone who knows Sunrise Island.

Sunrise Cider really is back.

“God,” I stifle a yawn. “This has been the longest day on Earth.”

Will moored his boat at the dock today, so while we load up, Kieran’s walking him back along the beach.

“It sure has. Is that it here?” Berty asks me. “You won’t need a hand unloading?”

“Nah. I think we’ve got it. Murph, you happy?”

He steps back and folds his arms to walk around the trailer, checking all of our straps.

I still don’t have a golf cart of my own. Nothing has come up on the market—AKA the notice board posted in the ferry waiting room. And I know better than to borrow Frog, the beaten-up old loaner kept by the community group, which is more likely to break down than not.

For today, I’m borrowing Murph’s golf cart, which also happens to be one of the few powerful enough to tow a real trailer. Even so, we’ve had to take one barrel at a time. But slow and steady is about to win the race.

“Yep,” Murph finally grunts.

The three of us nod, clapping each other’s backs and shoulders to celebrate a job well done.

“Good work, son. Your great-grandparents would be proud, you know,” Berty tells me, putting a hand on my back. “And so would your grandma.”

I smile back, glancing past him to the darkened beach. “Thank you. But I didn’t do it alone. This all happened thanks to Kieran.”

“Mostly all,” Murph mumbles under his breath, and I grin.

He’s right. Kieran did forget about some of the practicalities. He thought the cheap runaround boat we borrowed from Berty and drove to Gabriola a few weeks ago would actually be able to handle the weight of a full barrel.

But that’s what I’m there for, to call up Murph. And Murph’s there to tell us when high tide is—in this case, ten o’clock at night.

I can’t wait to sleep for a year—or at least until dawn, when I’ll have to start getting ready for our long-awaited visitors.

Even though Kieran and my new orchard-owning friend are out of sight, I can still hear my boyfriend’s laughter as clear as day. It makes all of us trade looks of amusement.

“He’s a keeper,” Berty says and whistles at me, like I need any reminding.

“I know. What would I do without him?” I wipe the sweat from my forehead, plucking my damp shirt away from my chest as I roll up my sleeves to cool down.

All of a sudden, the normally-loud Berty murmurs sympathetically under his breath like I’ve just announced his death or something. “I don’t want to find another bartender, either. You two figure something out, you hear me?”

Berty points at me, joking yet half-serious, and I stare at him with a slow frown.

What the hell does he mean? Figure out whether he’ll quit the bar to work for the business? But he said “either”. Figure out our relationship?

Murph gives nothing away, but he loudly clears his throat.

Berty winces and hastily backtracks. “I mean, uh—don’t worry about that yet, kid. Just live in the moment. If things are meant to be, they’ll be. That’s what I told him the day you met.”

It’s like searching ancient texts for the answer to a riddle, only I haven’t actually found the whole riddle, either.

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