The old man stopped reminiscing for a moment to gaze at the cemetery at the other end of the cove. He could still make out the grave markers, even in the gathering darkness. Some of these he knew had been there for more than  two hundred years. There his parents and grandparents were buried and there too he had buried Emily beside their two children who had died in infancy and Peter who had drowned while swimming in Beaver  pond when he was eleven. He was to be buried there too, in a plot beside Emily but now he wondered if it would ever happen. He cursed on all politicians and on the slick talking young man that the government had sent to the outports to convince people to leave the inlands with promises of cash to help them resettle and of jobs at a, as yet to be built, paper mill. His children had promised that he would be brought back to Furbey’s Cove, there to be buried beside their mother, but Michael still felt unsure. If the weather was stormy, would they really be able to wait for it to improve? It would be so much easier to bury him in Cartersville with the excuse that they could visit his grave often. He wiped a tear from his eye, his last repose he knew, must be beside his beloved Emily. Tomorrow, he would make his last trip to her graveside and then that long dreaded and hotly opposed, journey to Cartersville. He had been living alone in Furbey’s Cove but building another house in Cartersville wasn’t an option, so he would be living with his daughter Sophie and son-in-law Harold, their youngest son having left for University two weeks earlier. Already most of the families had left and the final three would bid farewell to the cove tomorrow. With a heavy heart Michael returned to his house and his last night in the place he had always called home.

TO BE CONTINUED