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Back The Nest
Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Copyright page
  3. Introduction by Will Errickson
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. TREMORS
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. SUSPICIONS
  13. 1
  14. 2
  15. 3
  16. 4
  17. 5
  18. DREAD
  19. 1
  20. 2
  21. 3
  22. 4
  23. 5
  24. 6
  25. WITNESS
  26. 1
  27. 2
  28. 3
  29. ALERT
  30. 1
  31. 2
  32. 3
  33. 4
  34. 5
  35. ENCOUNTER
  36. 1
  37. 2
  38. 3
  39. 4
  40. 5
  41. 6
  42. HAVOC
  43. 1
  44. 2
  45. 3
  46. 4
  47. 5
  48. 6
  49. SEARCH
  50. 1
  51. 2
  52. 3
  53. 4
  54. 5
  55. CLASH
  56. 1
  57. 2
  58. 3
  59. 4
  60. 5
  61. 6
  62. 7
  63. COUNTERATTACK
  64. 1
  65. 2
  66. 3
  67. 4
  68. 5
  69. 6
  70. 7
  71. VICTORY
  72. 1
  73. 2
  74. 3
  75. 4
  76. 5
  77. 6
  78. 7
  79. 8
  80. 9
  81. EPILOGUE
  82. About the Author

Elizabeth had never felt more set up than as she waved brightly to the man she loved among the men who had been her friends since girlhood. But she was glad the truck did not stop; it was still a time to be alone with her thoughts. She struck out in the opposite direction toward the Cannon place, knowing what she wanted to do there. It would be time enough to join Peter when the fire truck returned on its reverse patrol.

A smile brightened the woman’s lips. She would join Peter on the front seat of the engine, and it would be like the annual Fourth of July parade in town. She might even clang the bell as she had done when she was a girl. It was forbidden usually, but her grandfather had been the chief then, and no one on Yarkie Island to tell a Johnson nay.

The brightness faded when Elizabeth came to the Cannons’ fence. Before her stood the solid house with its hand-­split shingles, reflecting in its elegance and charm what the island people called “snug fortune.” But Hildie was gone, and her girls. So horribly gone. There had been no “snug fortune” for them against Nature’s capricious perfidy. Well, many Cannons had been lost in other natural disasters, Elizabeth told herself. Maybe it would help all the living to think of the Yarkie roaches as a natural calamity—a hurricane that swamped boats, drowned men, and tumbled trees. That is what the roaches had been—elemental havoc. She thanked God again that they were gone!

Elizabeth proceeded into the Cannon graveyard—what old Cape Codders called the “eternity acres.”

Her great grandmother had been a Cannon. Delilah Cannon Johnson. To a five-­year-­old girl, the then-­ninety-­year-­old lady had been a fairy queen.

Meandering among the family gravestones, Elizabeth was struck again by how many infants had died of diseases that could now be easily treated. The world had made some “progress,” after all, she thought. But nothing would have helped the young men lost at sea. It always amazed Elizabeth that so many had been full masters of vessels on long voyages at the early ages of twenty-­one and younger, as the markers told laconically.

Elizabeth Carr bowed her head at the gravestones of Delilah Cannon Johnson and Ezekial Scott Johnson. She wanted these two good people of her girlhood to know she was entering a new stage of life, and that she would take her marriage to Peter Hubbard as sacredly as they had taken theirs. She would enjoy modern freedoms in other ways, but in this she would hold with them.

7

SEVEN

Standing in the “eternity acres,” the woman suddenly became aware that birds were no longer singing. In the unnatural silence, there began a soft susurration from the high grass around the stones. Elizabeth’s head came up. Her eyes blinked with disbelief.