Kermit gratefully stepped into the cool dimness of his apt from the unseasonably hot June afternoon. He tossed his keys onto the hall table and hit the blinking button on his answering machine, smiling as his sister's voice spoke to him.

"Hi, big brother! This house is wonderful! The kids are having the summer of their lives, and they've adopted our nearest neighbor so that I hardly ever see them. When I do see them, their only question is 'when is Uncle Kermit coming?' So get your butt in gear! Love you!!! Bye!" Marilyn sounded more relaxed than she had in years.

The private little beach community in Stonington, Connecticut was quiet without being isolated and when she had approached him about joining forces for a summer vacation, it had sounded like the ideal spot. Of course, he had thought Jewel would be going with him, that it would be a nice way for she and Marilyn to get acquainted. Jewel, however, had other plans.

"I'm way too busy right now, sweetie" she'd told him last night, "and it's not going to let up. You go out to CT and I'll run to New York to see the boys like I always do in summer when I have a few days free. I'll see you in September, ok?" and she had hummed a few bars of an old fifties song until he kissed her goodbye. Now his paperwork was caught up, Blake was instructed in the exact amount of access he could have before Kermit's computer would munch his harddrive into next week. Kermit loaded his single bag into the Corvair's trunk and headed for I95. Next stop, the historical old whaling village of Stonington, Connecticut.

The community of Captains Cove consisted mainly of two and three hundred year old houses, the majority of which had been built by the mariners giving the cove it's name. The charming, uniquely New England upper porch known as a 'widow's walk' was a popular addition to most top stories. His sister's house was a weathered pale green, way down at the end of the "arm" of the cove, with only one house between it and the edge of the land. He pulled into the drive and was greeted by a flurry of white curtains at the window, and a pretty woman in her late thirties running to meet him. Marilyn grabbed him in a fierce hug and he swung her around, pushing up his glasses to get a good look at his only sister. She had a healthy apricot glow, not quite a tan, that told him about long afternoons spent looking for shells and reading out in the small garden attached to the house. His arms tightened around her and she hugged him again, the bonds of affection between the two surviving Griffins as strong as ever.

*****

"So, where are the brats?" he asked and she laughed.

"Oh, do I have children?" She lead him through the sliding glass door she had left open. "They're probably next door with Miss Sarah."

"Miss Sarah?"

"That's what the kids call her. I saw them out wading a little while ago with her." Marilyn walked through the spacious, airy living room to the back doors, stepping out onto the deck and striking a tarnished little gong hanging between two weatherbeaten stakes. "Four times is our code for you, Kermit. As for Miss Sarah, she's a nice young girl waiting for her fiancé to finish a sailing job and come back in time for their wedding. Jason and Mitch both adore her. In fact, this was her gong. She says she grew up here in Stonington, spent summers at her great aunt's house next door, and this is how they were always called in for meals."

"Well, that sounds wholesome." Kermit dead panned as the faint shrieks of young voices came running up the path ahead of his niece and nephew. Mitch flew up the steps and into his arms while Jason, burdened by a large ceramic dish, lagged behind. He unceremoniously handed it to his mother and joined his sister in tackling Kermit. His uncle gently flipped him to the ground, dumping Mitch on top of him, and the free for all was on, under Mom's watchful eye.

Marilyn moved back a few steps from the earnest combatants, remembering as she did so when Kermit had first come home from war. His friend Paul had been there to explain when Kermit attacked their younger brother for trying to embrace him, and she had felt her older brother forcing himself to endure her hugs. He had come so far since then, even with his years as a mercenary, to be able to get on the ground and play with her kids, his only restraint that of an adult rough-housing with children. She realized that the white covered dish she held was, not uncomfortably, warm and lifted the lid for a peek. A crisp looking apple pie rested inside, all golden brown pastry and cinnamon flecked juices at the vents. The smell made her stomach growl and she reached out to nudge Jason with her sneaker shod toe.

"Hey, wrestle maniac, where did you get this pie?"

The boy ducked under his uncle's arm and looked up, brushed his hair out of his eyes with a dusty forearm, and squinted as if trying to remember ancient runes. "Oh, yeah, the pie. Miss Sarah sent it because Uncle Kermit was coming and it was a special occasion. She thought you would like it."

Marilyn was touched by the old fashioned neighborly deed. She hardly spoke to her neighbors at home, and was pretty sure that they wouldn't lend a cup of sugar, never mind a lovely gesture like this. She decided to invite the young woman for Sunday dinner when she returned the plate tomorrow. There was no doubt it would be empty, she had said the word "pie" and her brood had cease-fired and were gathering around her, sniffing.

*****

It was Kermit who returned the pie plate early the next afternoon. Jason and Mitch were in the middle of Book Hour, a sacred time set aside for reading by their mother, who didn't believe that summertime was an adequate reason for letting their brains idle for three months. So she gave the kids a reading list and set a time aside each day for working on it, then discussing what they had read. She did it too, and it had become a special part of their summer. Kermit walked down the sandy path to the beach Marilyn shared with the house next door. He was out of his uniform dark suit, and the freedom of old jeans and a loose, faded oxford shirt made him uneasy. He spotted a person on hands and knees inside the fenced garden, and headed that way. The woman heard him coming and stood up, brushing soil from the knees of her rolled up overalls and waved in his direction. She met him at the gate, holding it open in invitation.

"You must be Uncle Kermit." the young woman said, with a twinkle in her gray eyes.

"Miss Sarah, I presume?" he held out the pie plate and she smiled.

"It's easier than asking the children to call me Miss Tidewell. Will you bring that to the house for me, Uncle Kermit? I've got the basket to go up too, so it would be a help." She lifted a long flat basket full of the sea lavender and beach roses she had been clipping and led the way up a crushed shell path to the house. Sarah Tidewell was a tall woman, browned by sun and salt breezes, her pale blonde hair was habitually pulled back in a knot and she moved comfortably in her faded men's overalls and oversized work shirt. She had no fear of the stranger at her gate, and no thought that he might not follow, for she never looked back to see if he was there. But Kermit, bemused by this old time Yankee, had indeed followed.

She brought him into a kitchen much like his sister's, cool and dim, the window overgrown with greenery, filtering the summer sun. "Thank you so much" she said, taking the plate from him. "Can I offer you some lemonade, maybe a piece of pie?"

Kermit could taste the apple pie he'd wolfed the night before, beating Jason's grab for a third piece. "That was excellent pie" he complimented her, "but could I get a glass of milk instead of lemonade?"

Sarah looked up from setting the basket of flowers on the counter. "Of course you can, Uncle Kermit." She smiled as she waved him to a chair at the kitchen table. "Sit a spell, be company."

"You could call this company Kermit, seeing as we're not related Miss Sarah."

"Only if you'll call me Sarah without the Miss. I feel like I'm in some old southern novel when a grown up calls me that." She poured a glass of milk from a pitcher, sliced pie onto a china saucer, then added a wedge of sharp white cheddar and placed it in front of him. Sarah laughed at his expression. "Never had New England apple pie, did you , Kermit? Dull as dishwater without a fine sharp bite of cheese along with it. Give her a try, see what you think." She reclipped the flowers, arranging them in vases and bowls for her home, and only glanced in her guest's direction when he made a sound something like a moan. "You'd be tasting the cheese then." she commented, and kindly didn't laugh again.

Poor man, eating apple pie without cheddar all his life. Imagine...well, her fiancé needn't worry about such deprivations. She knew how to care for a man's appetite. This man didn't look too deprived, a little sad when no one was looking maybe. The children talked about their uncle so much, he obviously was loved. Kermit looked up when another piece of pie was set before him, with more cheese and milk. Sarah had sliced some for herself as well, and was sitting down, her flowers distributed. "Could you eat a little more, Kermit? You'll need your strength, I've got that vase of beach roses for Marilyn and this, if you think she'd enjoy it. The children say she's been trying to learn about the history in this area."

She handed him a slim, leather bound book, obviously old. He handled it gently, opening it to find faded fine handwriting on paper yellowed from age. "Found the prettiest bolt of silk at Mann's Dry Goods today, just the thing for my wedding gown. It may have come all the way from China, imagine! I can't believe my John is willing to give up the long voyages for me and our Life together, but he is. The Nathaniel B Palmer left harbour yesterday and when it returns, his long months at sea are over. It all seems a wonderful dream! By summer's end I shall be a Wife, no longer Sarah Tidewell, but Sarah Killian."

He glanced at his hostess who craned her neck to see what he had just read. "The first Sarah Tidewell. She'd be my great great great…I don't know how many greats she's to me. The family has never been without a Sarah since her days. This is her journal, I found it in the attic last year, and I thought maybe Marilyn would like the loan of it. Tells a lot about the times and the area back then." She looked at herself in his dark green glasses and smiled shyly. "Must seem a bit odd, with me here waiting to marry too. This is my last summer of being a girl, so I wanted to spend it where I was most happy when I was little."

"I'm sure my sister will love it. She asked me to invite you to dinner tomorrow, around one." Kermit was touched with her little story, and spoke casually to hide it.

"That would be wonderful! Will you all be at church in the morning, then?" Her smile was innocent and beaming, but her question surprised him. He didn't attend church, having the secret belief that God had abandoned him long ago in a far off jungle, and he hadn't known that Marilyn brought the kids.

"No, I won't, but I'll see you at dinner. I'd better be getting back. Thanks for the pie."

"Anytime, Kermit. I was going to take the children sailing this week, I hope you and Marilyn will join us?"

"I'll ask her. Bye."

"Afternoon" she said, to the closing door. A nice fellow, but an odd one. Sarah shook her head as she cleared the dishes. Men were difficult to understand anyway, but one not born and bred in New London County was just too foreign for her to puzzle out.

*****

To Kermit's surprise, Marilyn and the kids did go to church the next morning. Jason and Mitch accepted it as a matter of course, drinking their juice carefully so as to not splash the one set of dress clothes they had to wear. "We've needed something" Marilyn explained privately to her brother, "and here, in this quiet place, it just seems like the thing to do. The whole town turns out, it's almost a social event, and I like the kids getting involved with other children at church."

He had tried to understand, but didn't try so hard as to actually accompany them. Kermit agreed to turn the oven on, baste the chicken, and scrub potatoes for lunch. He was honour bound not to touch the tempting angel food cake, frosted with whipped cream, filled and studded with strawberries, that his sister had decreed was the perfect Sunday dinner dessert .In order to avoid temptation, he headed out to the sun porch for a nap and found the journal, right where Marilyn had left it. Idly, for it wasn't his usual reading material, he picked the old book up and leafed through it. Bits of two hundred year old gossip, the costs of sewing an eighteenth century chic wardrobe, the monies accrued from selling butter and eggs. Sarah Tidewell the first, he decided, had been a little too anal for his taste, she recorded EVERYTHING and everything, he discovered, soon let him drift off...

*A mist shrouded the beach, letting him only glimpse Sarah walking there, long skirts and cloak whipped like sails by the brisk wind that swirled the fog around her. Faintly, he heard singing, an unfamiliar song, a voice he didn't know. A man's voice, one that made the shadowy Sarah stop and stare out to sea, motionless for long minutes, hours, days, years...*

Then he was awake, and his family was back from church and ready for dinner. Mitch and Jason were overjoyed that their friend was coming. They loved their uncle but he was family. Miss Sarah was company, their company, since they met her first. Mitch had picked a water glass bouquet of pansies to put by Sarah's plate, and Jason had stationed himself at the bottom of the beach path to escort her to the house.

*****

Marilyn had finished her dinner preparations and was now nervously watching her brother whip up "Potatoes Kermit", which involved a seemingly random handful of spices and much theatrical stirring. She was afraid to look away, just in case they also involved green food colouring. She leaned against the counter, crunching a carrot curl and observing Kermit as he worked. It seemed to her that his flashing grin had lost some of it's habitual bitterness and she was glad to see it. She worried about the burdens he carried, even though she seldom was allowed more than a glimpse. He tried so hard to keep that part of himself away from her, from the kids that loved him so much. Now, it appeared to a caring sister's eye that those burdens were eased, if only a tiny bit.

"So, tell me about her." she said as he slipped the potatoes into a warming bowl and peeked over his shades at her.

"About who, sister mine?"

"Her, the FBI woman you wanted to bring out here with you."

"Oh, Jewel.."

Marilyn sputtered. "Excuse me? Jewel? What is she, a stripper? Who has a name like 'Jewel', Kermit?"

"She's NOT a stripper, it's short for Julia. She used to do consulting work for the FBI, she now is in private investigations and she had too much work to come visit, ok??"

Marilyn grinned at his belligerent tone. "Okay. So, what is she like, this non-stripper?"

Her brother's smile actually softened, in a way usually reserved for Jason and Mitch. "Like? She's stubborn, completely convinced that she is always right. Tends to be overly dramatic, has some odd religious leanings.."

"And?" she prompted.

"And, I trust her enough to leave her alone in my apartment."

He turned back to his cooking and Marilyn nodded silently. He wouldn't give her the details she wanted, but he had given her the answer she needed. He loved this woman. Marilyn just hoped she was worth it.

Mitch shrieked "They're coming!!" from outside and her mother moved to greet their guest, laying a quick warm hand on them Kermit had poised to reach under his linen jacket when he heard his niece cry out. She squeezed it without comment, love hadn't healed his wounds, only perhaps made them more bearable. He quickly hugged her tight, then they went outside together.

Sarah wore her pale gray church dress and her light hair was gathered high on her head. One browned hand rested formally on her escort's arm, the other carried a damp white earthenware jug in a net. This, she presented to her hostess on the deck. "Thank you for asking me to dinner, Marilyn. I didn't know what to bring, until I thought of the raspberry swatches. An old hill country drink" she said in low tones, "and not fermented, of course, but very light and thirst quenching "

"You didn't need to bring anything but yourself, Sarah, after all you've done for the children and I this summer." Marilyn took the jug and squeezed Sarah's hand, drawing her into the house, "Now, we have dinner all ready, so you just have a seat and enjoy."

The younger woman smiled shyly at her, obediently taking her seat and exclaiming over the lovely flowers Mitch had placed there. She greeted Kermit with a smile over the children's heads, then sat listening to two rapid fire conversations all through the meal, apparently understanding every word and enjoying herself immensely. They decided to have dessert on the deck, the adults on the chairs, the kids on the steps. "Hey, Miss Sarah, I heard your house is haunted!" Jason shouted, "This guy at church said so!"

She smiled. "Poor Sarah the First. I've heard that too. She never married, you know."

"I read that the other night, his ship didn't return, something about a storm." Marilyn added and Sarah nodded.

"Yes, that's what they think happened, the Nathanial B. Palmer wasn't found, but there had been horrific storms in their path. The crew was given a memorial service, and Sarah the First lived the rest of her life in that house. In the journal, it says that she wore her wedding gown once, the day she was to have been married. She went to the church and vowed that she would wait for John until he came for her, as she had promised him she would. I think that's where the haunting rumours come from, Jason."

"Aren't you afraid of bad luck, waiting for your boyfriend in the same house?" Mitch asked and her brother nudged her. "Hey!"

"You're going to make her scared, stupid!"

The adults laughed and Sarah shook her head. "Maybe it's more like finishing a cycle, Mitch. It was meant to be, and now, with Jack and I, it will be. If Sarah the First is haunting the house, maybe that will let her rest." The young girl came over and hugged her.

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