C4 antho - Chamber Four

The Next Thing on Benefit ~241~
feet. Then she and Munro, following Patrick, walked toward
the trees. Behind them, the pilot had climbed back aboard
the helicopter and started the engine, and before they had
left the beach, he had lifted off.
Duncan Munro had stopped when the helicopter took off.
He had turned to watch it rise, pause, and make off the way
they had come. He had watched it out of sight. Then he turned
and caught up with Sharon. He took her around the waist.
“Now, then,” said Duncan Munro.
* * * *
Sometime the next day it occurred to Sharon that Duncan
Munro was not a visitor to the island where they were
staying, but its owner. She had slept fitfully. The house they
were in was barely a house at all. It was low, made of some
soft stone, with deep verandas, screened windows, and louvered
doors. The wind blew through the house all night, stirring
the curtains, hurrying through the rooms. Sharon
started awake, then slept, then started again. Beside her
Munro slept deeply. She put her arm around him and lay
close along his back. Then she slept for a time, but soon the
many sounds the wind made woke her again, and she turned
from him and tried to settle herself another way. In the
morning when she woke, the wind was gone and so was
Munro. She was alone in the bed.
Sharon got out of bed, put on a robe, and left the house
by French doors in the bedroom that let out onto a courtyard
in the rear of the building: quarters like theirs on three sides
with a gallery all around, enclosing a kind of rock garden that
had a fountain in the center, a dry fountain. On the open side
of the courtyard, a sandy path went out of sight into the trees
and low growth.