Page 4 of Unforgiven in Cheshire Bay

“Well, Sylvia’s going to be thrilled as always. Do you want anything before it’s all gone?” She stood a few feet away with her hands on her hips and tipped her double-braided head to the side. Although she was younger than me by a dozen years at least, she gave me a motherly look.

“I’m fine. I’m just not sure I want to do business with that guy.”

“That cute one? The one who wants a huge centerpiece?”

“That’s the guy.”

“Why on earth not?” She held up a nibbled fingertip in a one-second pose and leapt back to assist the customer.

I surveyed the crowd, watching as the people mingled about, with the occasional person lifting and admiring my work. They liked to watch my handiwork as well, so I pushed the gouger through the wood.

Sometimes I let the work show itself, and most of the time, it became something beautiful. Other times, I had to force it and manipulate it into what I knew it could be – and those pieces, they were usually the last ones to be purchased. Go figure.

Putting on my serious, dedicated expression of furrowed brows and rolling my shoulders forward, I pushed the tool through the chunk of red cedar wood and picked up the spoon knife to carve things out. Yep, this had all the makings of a little bunny, especially as his long ears came into shape.

Libby popped back over to my table, standing still, yet keeping an eye on things. “So why can’t you commission a piece for Mr. Tall and Good-looking?”

“Because years ago he screwed me over.” My focus stayed firmly locked onto the wood.

“What? How?”

I turned the bunny to face the opposite direction and with one gentle push, the ear popped out nicely, and with my spoon knife, I hollowed out his inner ear.

“Nicely done.” Libby hunkered down to meet me eye-to-eye. “But you’re ignoring my question.”

I sighed and put the tools on the leather holder. “When I was pregnant with Vera, I ate at his little restaurant, and I got food poisoning.”

Standing, she shrugged. “Big deal.”

“You’re right, normally, not a huge deal at all. For most. However, I became so violently ill, like for days, and I missed work. I’d called in sick, but because I’d missed too many shifts, they let me go.”

She scrunched up her face. “I don’t think they can do that. Sounds like a human rights violation or something.”

“That place, The Blue Fish diner, they weren’t exactly on the up and up to begin with. They paid me in cash each week, and I can’t say for certain, since they never provided me with tax documentation, but I assume I wasn’t actually on payroll.” At least, these were things I figured out not too long ago, not almost seven years ago when I was pregnant and desperate for a job to pay the bills.

“Where is this place?”

Heart hammering from the vivid memory, I channeled that energy into carving out a back leg on my bunny. “No surprise, they’ve since shut down, but they were not too far from here in Stewart Surf.”

“Sucky.” She hopped back over to her table to serve another customer.

A lady in front of my table stopped and checked out the items. “You make all these?”

“Every single one.” I beamed and wiped my hands on the towel I’d set on my lap, rising to a standing position.

“Wow.” She fingered the last whale tail I had, one stained in a shade of espresso. “I just went on a tour.”

“Did you see anything?”

Apparently, it depended on the company, so I heard. One made sure they sawsomethingwhereas a couple of others were more than happy to take the money, and hope for the best, but it really was a matter of luck on Mother Nature’s part to have them swim on by.

She lit up like a plugged-in Christmas tree. “We did. A whole pod of them.”

“That’s a fantastic memory. Did it look like this?” Gently, I ran my finger across the trailing edge of the fluke.

“We saw grey whales. Is that a grey whale?”

Honestly, I didn’t know and hoped she wasn’t a marine biologist or something. “Yes, it is.”

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