Sarah's Choice Read Online Free Page A

you’d be cared for in your son’s house and wouldn’t have the responsibility for caring for Sarah’s three active children.”
    Tears welled in Maria’s eyes. “I…I love those kids, and I couldn’t move away and leave Sarah alone with no one to watch them. Who would take care of things while she’s outside tending the lock?”
    “I’ll manage somehow,” Sarah said with a catch in her voice.
    “Maybe I can come over to help out when things aren’t real busy at the store,” Kelly volunteered.
    “Better yet, I can come over here to help out.” Betsy looked at Maria. “Would you be willing to move back to Easton if I did that?”
    Before Maria could reply, the low moan of a conch shell floated through the door that Kelly had left open.
    Sarah stood. “A boat’s coming through, and I need to go out and open the lock. We’ll have to finish this discussion when I come back.”

Chapter 5

    A
s soon as Sarah ran out the front door, she realized there was more than one boat waiting to come through the lock. In fact, there were three.
    “Oh great,” she moaned. “It’ll take me forever to get back inside.”
    Lifting the edge of her long gray skirt, she hurried to open the first set of gates. Once the boat was completely in, she closed the gates and opened the wickets in the lower set of gates so that water flowed out of the lock, allowing the boat to drop slowly. Then the next set of gates was opened, allowing the mules to pull the boat on down the canal.
    As the second boat came through the lock, Sarah’s face contorted. The captain of the boat was Bart Jarmon, a tall burly man with thick black hair and a full, wooly-looking beard to match. Bart’s foul mouth and overbearing ways were bad enough to deal with, but ever since Sam had died, Bart had often made suggestive remarks whenever he saw Sarah. Once, he’d even been so bold as to suggest that the two of them should get hitched, saying she could quit her job as lock tender and spend her days on his boat, cooking, cleaning, and washing his dirty clothes.
    This canal would have to freeze over solid in the middle of summer before I’d ever consider marrying someone like Bart
. Sarah gritted her teeth.
And what kind of stepfather would he make for my kids?
    She thought about the time, before Betsy married Pastor William, when Bart had gone to Betsy’s place to pick up some clothes she’d washed for him. She could still see the look of disgust on Betsy’s face when she’d later confided that after Bart had boldly kissed her, she’d thrown his wet shirt at him and told him never to come back.
    Bart would be a lot wetter than he was then if he tried something like that with me
, Sarah thought.
I’d push him into the muddy canal if he even looked like he was going to kiss me!
    Much to Sarah’s relief, Bart wasn’t steering the boat. His helper, Clem Smith, an elderly man with several missing teeth, was at the tiller. Sarah figured Bart was probably below on his bunk, sleeping off the effects from the whiskey he’d likely had the night before.
    Sarah exchanged only a few words with Clem and kept her mind on the business at hand. She knew how dangerous it could be for a lock tender who didn’t pay close attention to what they were doing. Some lock tenders had gotten knocked over when they tried to get the pin in the wicket with one hand while they cranked with the other. If Sarah said more than a few words to any of the boatmen, it was usually after she’d finished the dangerous details of opening and closing the lock.
    After Bart’s boat passed through the lock, the next one came in, steered by Elias Brooks, the new boatman Sarah had met on his last trip through.
    “My helper said you might have some bread to sell,” Elias called to her.
    She gave a quick nod. “There’s some in the house.”
    “I’d like to buy a couple of loaves if you have any to spare.” Elias pulled his fingers through his thick reddish-blond hair, cut just below his