By the second mile she'd slowed down enough to become miserably aware of her physical state. Damp denim chafed her thighs and her bra strap cut into the flesh beneath her arms. A residue of seawater tickled her sinuses and made her sneeze. Her skin was sticky, her shirt stuck to her back, her hair was falling out of its braid and, worst of all, her shoes squished. Above any other physical discomfort, Kate hated getting her feet wet.

By the beginning of the third mile she could see the Meanys' cabin, and spent the next twenty minutes preparing to ignore with dignity any comment that might come her way. Her worst fears were realized; the two kids, Dani and Frank, were sitting on the beach, heads together, talking earnestly. They broke off as she approached, their expressions at first hostile, then incredulous and finally delighted. They had the same eyes and the same chin; there wasn't a lot of difference in their broad grins, either.

"Been wading?" Dani inquired in a bland voice as Kate stumped grimly by.

"You're supposed to take your clothes off before you get in the water," Frank added helpfully.

Another time, Kate might have been relieved to see that Frank could smile and joke; now, all she could feel was the red creeping up the back of her neck. She marched on.

It was another mile to Amartuq Creek. By then Kate was wet, tired and humiliated, and her defenses were down for the count.

She had been rude to Old Sam. She had been even ruder to Anne Flanaganrude hell, actively offensive, deliberately so. Further, Old Sam was correct when he said that Kate's experiences at Chistona had colored her perception of Anne Flanagan from the moment she had been made aware that the woman shared a profession with the Right Reverend Simon Seabolt. Her grief for Daniel Seabolt had left scars, deeper ones than she had realized. Kate had never been one to agonize over past failures; nevertheless, under even the most superficial self-examination it was obvious that the events of the previous June had been nagging at her like an unhealed wound ever since.

And poor Anne Flanagan, her mere existence a prod at the open sore, bore the brunt of an accumulated frustration Kate hadn't even known she was carrying around.

She had deserved the dunking for being rude to Sam, who had told her nothing less than the truth, and she had deserved the long walk in wet clothes for being rude to the Right Reverend Anne Flanagan, who had done nothing but offer Kate tea, cookies and her other cheek.

And here at long last was the creek, its sandy mouth stretching wide, the incoming tide hiding the sandbar bisecting its channel, salmon making V-shaped ripples as they struggled upstream against the current. She halted at the water's edge. And there was Old Sam's skiff, beached on the other side of the creek. With the tide coming in, the channel was full of water. There would be no skipping across the sandbar that guarded the channel, which meant her shoes would get soaked again, and they had yet to dry out from their first dunking as it was.