Betrayed, I Rise novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: The Heron

Troy pulled the tarp off the Heron at seven the next morning.

Dust came up in a cloud and hung in the light from the shed door.

She was smaller than I remembered.

Twenty-two feet of mahogany, gone gray where the varnish had cracked.

A long bench seat in the stern. A wheel with a brass hub. A windshield with one pane missing.

Her name was painted on the transom in gold script, flaking at the edges.

I put my hand on her side.

The wood was warm from the tin roof.

"You okay?" Troy said.

"She used to smell like lemon oil," I said. "My mom polished her every Sunday."

The oldest man on the crew came in behind us with his coffee.

He stopped when he saw the boat.

Then he looked at me for a long time.

"You've got her nose," he said.

"Whose?"

"Your mother's. She came every spring when the Heron came in for work."

"Sat on that bucket right there and drew pictures on the old man's receipts."

He pointed with his mug toward the office.

"That's her in the photo. The yellow coat. She wouldn't face the camera. Said her smile was crooked."

Troy went very still beside me.

"You never told me," he said.

"You never asked," the old man said. "Your granddad knew. He liked her better than he liked most people."

I went into the office and took the photo off the wall.

I held it close.

The yellow sleeve. The mended pocket, the thread a shade off.

Her hair blowing across her cheek.

She was laughing at something outside the frame, and I knew what it was.

It was me.

I'd been four, and I'd fallen into a bucket of bilge water.

She'd told me that story a hundred times.

I just never knew where it happened.

We started that Saturday.

The crew split the week between the Heron and their paying jobs, and I took whatever they handed me.

I stripped old varnish with a heat gun until my forearms ached.

I sanded the gunwales with a block, the way the welder showed me, always with the grain.

I learned that a scraper held at the wrong angle takes out a chunk of wood you can never put back.

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