Far Harbor by Joann Ross

I’ve been sewing damn fabric bark onto a leotard all morning. Thank God it’s supposed to be a bare tree. If I had to face leaves, I’d have no choice but to throw myself into the sound.”
    Despite the concern that had brought her here, Savannah laughed. “Do you have any idea how fortunate you are?”
    Raine’s scowl instantly turned to a slow, satisfied grin. “Absolutely. Would you like some coffee? It’ll just take me a minute to brew it.”
    “No, thanks. I already inhaled about a pot while I was steaming wallpaper while waiting for the curtain delivery.”
    “In that outfit?”
    Savannah glanced down at her khaki shorts and black, tan, and white striped bateau-neck knit shirt. “What’s wrong with it?”
    “It’s clean. Neat.” Raine skimmed a fingernail down the crease of the shorts. “Starched.” She shook her head. “You look as if you just walked off the summer fashion issue of Vogue . What the hell do you do, spray yourself with Teflon each morning before you leave the house?”
    “I wear an apron.”
    “An apron,” Raine repeated, looking skeptical.
    “It’s actually more of a smock. To keep the paint and dust off.”
    “Honey, in order to look half as good as you do right now, the rest of us would have to wear a hazardous waste team incubation suit.”
    She shook her head in amused disbelief again. “Of course I’m happy to see you, but what’s so important that it brought you out to the boonies this afternoon?”
    On the long drive to the farm, Savannah had tried to tell herself that she was overreacting. The problem was, she hadn’t quite been able to make herself believe that.
    “Where’s Amy?” She belatedly realized that she hadn’t been hit with a ball of blond energy the moment she walked in the front door—which just proved how distracted she was. Normally, she loved any opportunity to see her new niece.
    “In Seattle with Lilith. They’re having a girls’ day on the town. They’re shopping at Nordstrom’s, having lunch at Pike Place Market, then capping the day off with a trip to the Aquarium.”
    “Sounds like Mom’s really getting into being a grandmother.”
    “She adores it.” Raine took a longer, more probing look at Savannah. “Whatever’s bothering you can’t be all that bad.”
    Savannah sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. “John and I took off early today and went out for ice cream and stopped by Vada Hawthorne’s house on the way. You remember her, she was town librarian.”
    “Of course I remember Mrs. Hawthorne.” Raine sat across the fabric-strewn table. “She always used to save the new Nancy Drew books for me.”
    “She introduced me to the Little House books. And Little Women .” After reading that novel, Savannah had decided that the solidarity she and Raine shared was just like the March sisters’. Needless to say, she’d viewed Raine as the always adventurous Jo, herself as the more settled, domestic Meg. “Did you know she’s got Alzheimer’s?”
    “I heard something about that. How’s she doing?”
    “Not well.” Savannah told Raine about the elderly woman asking Dan for the divorce, then described the garden.
    “That was a lovely idea of Dan’s.”
    “John told me later that he’d thought of it after they’d gone to the cemetery to put flowers on Karyn and her husband’s grave and they saw all the plastic flowers other people had left on family gravesites.
    “I hate thinking of Gram ending up like Mrs. Hawthorne.” Savannah took a deep breath. She decided that she’d stalled long enough. “Do you think Gram’s got Alzheimer’s?”
    Instead of immediately denying the suggestion, or laughing it off, Raine folded her hands atop the brown cloth. “I don’t know. The thought’s occurred to me since I’ve been back. But I’ve always managed to convince myself that I’m imagining things—making mush out of a molehill, as our grandmother would say.” Raine’s attempt at a smile fell flat. “I told you