Coastliners

That was over now. I’d loved him; I’d hated him. I’d never really seen him. Now I did, a sad, silent old man at a table. What fools love makes of us. What savages.
My mistake was thinking it has to be earned. Deserved. That’s the island in me talking, of course; the idea that everything costs, everything has to be paid for. But merit has nothing to do with it. Otherwise we would only ever love saints. And it’s a mistake I’ve made so many times. With GrosJean. With my mother. With Flynn. Even, perhaps, with Adrienne. Most of all with myself, working so hard to deserve, to be loved, to earn my place in the sun, my fistful of earth, that I overlooked what mattered most.

For years we had deplored Les Salants’ lack of modern facilities, jealously watching La Houssinière with its hotel, its gaming arcade, and cinema. For the first time, we saw how our apparent weakness could be turned to good profit. All we needed was some initiative, and a little investment.

No one voiced their hopes too loudly. To an outsider Les Salants would have seemed quite unchanged. But Capucine got a card from her daughter on the mainland; Angélo began to repaint his bar; Omer and Charlotte salvaged the winter potatoes; and Désirée Bastonnet went to La Houssinière and spent over an hour on the phone long-distance to her son Philippe in Marseille.
None of it was of great significance. But there was something in the air: a sense of possibility, the beginnings of momentum.

Capucine smiled. “Well, it’s doing you good,” she declared. “Think of yourself, for a change. Stop carrying the whole world on your shoulders. The tide turns without your permission.”