A muffled sound of tires crunching over gravel. A car or a truck was moving slowly down the lane, as quietly as it could, a sleepy vehicle at daybreak. I tossed back the covers and went to the window. I found my cardigan on a chair and put it on. The floorboards were cold underneath my feet. Outside, there was a field of gray, that half hour of lightening before the sun would rise. I watched the black truck roll along the sand to the dinghy. A man got out. It was the same man as yesterday, although I could see only the yellow slicker clearly through the field of gray; his features were indistinct. The water was still and flat, and when he sculled out to his boat, there was a perfect rippled wake behind his oar. The rumble of the motor was a complaint, a boat disturbed too early and grumbling under her skipper. I saw flashes of the yellow slicker on the bow, in the wheelhouse, then moving in the boat in its graceful arc out to where the sun would rise. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched the boat disappear.
