Some on the island, white and black, attacked her sculpture, she knew, especially since she'd got the government commission to sculpt for the town's main square.

To many she was a Radcliffe princess, a goof-off, using art as her excuse to avoid the kaffeeklatsch. They thought her welding was a refuge from more tedious housewifely things.

They were wrong. It was filthy, brutal work. Her current source of steel was a wrecked Cuban fishing boat on the sun-baked southern end of the island. She had cut it there, heaved it into Mike's trailer, and hauled it home behind the jeep.

There was always grinding dust in her golden hair. Her eyes when she looked at the arc too long—felt like sandpapered green marbles.

Her forearms had come to rival Martina Navratilova's, from the pig iron she lifted all day long, but welding was not tennis, it was work.

She had to sculpt, and not for art alone. Her sales in a Nassau art boutique paid half the rent. If the Fisheries Ministry didn't kick through with another grant for the Conch Project, she would end up supporting Thea, Mike, Jake, and their deckhands, Clarence and William, with the point of her welding arc.

She pulled off her gloves, tossed her leather apron on a chair, covered her work, and wandered out of the studio and back to the house. Ellen was sweeping the glass with long, furious strokes of a squeegee. She was strong, and the effort might help her find her way back to the land of the living. Still, every time she stopped, she seemed dazed.

Anyway, removing the salt spray from the windows added a fourth dimension to the view. "Ellen, if I'd known that you did windows, we'd have had you down months ago."

Wrong. Patronizing, and it brought up Sean's death somehow.

Ellen turned and smiled faintly. "You should see the dirt on mine in Amity."

Ellen's hair was tied back, and she looked better, as if she'd slept the night before. They smiled at each other, each unsure of where to take the conversation next.

"I'm so damn grateful, Ellen. I mean it."

"I'm grateful to be here. Besides, you're busy," Ellen said. "You have a deadline. I can't just baby-sit." She put down the squeegee and looked into Carla's eyes. "Carla, I'm a klutz about art. But I just have to ask you."

"Go ahead."

Ellen's cheeks turned pink. "Carla, what is it?"

"The statue?" Carla's laughter pealed across the yard. She squeezed Ellen closely. "Do you know you're the first one with the guts to ask, outside of Thea?"

"Then what? What is it, please?"

Carla shrugged. "It's like a baby in the womb. So far I just don't know. And the time grows nigh. I hardly get to talk to Michael anymore. There's just so much to do. And he's diving all day long."

"Does his diving bother you?" Ellen asked suddenly. "Spending so much time on the bottom?"