The Season of Open Water by Dawn Tripp Page A

the last of the beans off her plate with a piece of brown bread. She wipes her mouth with the edge of her napkin. Then her hand stops. Cora senses her pause. She glances up. Bridge is looking across the room, and Cora follows her gaze. It is a man she is looking at. A stranger. He is young, fair, well dressed. He is sitting beside Alpha Russell, his head bent toward her. The older woman is speaking to him, and he is listening. Then he looks up directly at Bridge, and Cora can sense something electric, something understood pass between them. Bridge’s eyes snap around. She glares at her mother.
    â€œWhat?” she says, her voice sharp.
    â€œNothing,” Cora answers softly. She shakes her head and looks away. “Nothing.”
    Bridge breaks off another piece of bread. She finds her knife and cuts a slice of butter off the pound.
    He has cleared his plate. He lets Alpha fill it for him again. The food is fresh and good, and he finds that he is hungry.
    â€œDo you always eat so much in heaven?” she teases, dishing out another serving of beans. Her pale eyes sparkle. She has deep lines through her cheeks, and he notices how they gather when she smiles. “You remind me of my oldest boy,” she says.
    He could tell her that whatever she has seen in him tonight is not his everyday character. He could tell her that tonight, for the first time in years, he can feel something stirring in him, some old smooth river waking up.
    â€œDo you know what sort of poetry they’ll have later in the evening?” he asks her.
    She shakes her head. “Arthur and I only come for the food.”
    He smiles and looks away again. His eyes search the room for Bridge. She is still at the table. She has turned toward the woman seated next to her. She says something, then glances at him across the room. When she sees he is watching her, she looks away sharply. He smiles to himself. He will find her when the meal is cleared. He will go up to her and introduce himself. He will say nothing about the incident at Shorrock’s store. He will ask if she has an interest in poetry. He will ask if he might call on her sometime. He eats a bit more of the food, and then he is full. He lays his knife and fork down on his plate. He looks up again across the room to the table where Bridge was sitting, but she is gone.
    She steps outside into the darkness. The cold is sharp. It burns her throat, and the burning soothes her. It had unnerved her, the way he was looking at her, all of it had unnerved her, him being there, watching her that way, he had no right to be there, in her world. And every time she had glanced at him—sometimes without intending to do it—but every time her eyes had strayed to his face he seemed to sense it, and he would look up and catch her watching him. She shivers and pulls her coat more tightly around her as she walks. She shovels her hands deep into the pockets of her coat. It will be a long walk home. She thinks of him often, more often than she would like, as she walks down the steep of Handy Hill toward Hix Bridge. She thinks of him less once she has crossed the river. She begins to climb the hill on the other side. Her breath is white in the moonlight. Her head aches with the cold. But when she hears the rough sound of the car engine behind her, far off, but growing nearer, she knows who it is. She does not turn around. The sound fades as the car dips over the first rise, then grows louder, approaching. Her first instinct is to disappear, behind a shed, into the trees, to let him drive by. But she keeps walking, her body suddenly flushed with heat, and she senses, without knowing for sure, that he has come looking for her. Her shoes sound loud against the oiled dirt. The headlamps play ahead of her, casting her shadow tall and long on the road. The car slows down.
    Henry Vonniker leans over and unrolls the window. “Can I give you a ride?”
    â€œOh, no thanks,” she answers, but