Married to My Ex's Uncle novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Clear Eyes

Greta drove back to the yard first.

She took the ring off the office windowsill and put it in her jacket pocket.

She woke the dog.

It looked at her, then at the truck keys, and got off the couch.

The shore road was empty all the way up.

There was a light on in the boathouse.

It was ten past three in the morning.

She parked beside his pickup and sat for a second with the engine off.

The dog didn't wait.

It shoved its nose at the door handle until she let it out.

It ran to the boathouse and barked once at the side door.

The door opened.

Lukas stood there in a flannel shirt and jeans and socks, with a block plane in his hand.

The dog went past his legs.

He looked at Greta across the gravel.

"I couldn't sleep," he said.

"I can see that."

"I've planed the same strake four times. It's paper now."

She walked up to the door.

He stepped back to let her in.

The shop smelled like cedar and coffee and the cold stove.

The half-planked hull sat on its sawhorses, and there was a drift of shavings under it.

The Miss Margit's corner was dark.

The dog climbed the ladder to the loft, slowly, one rung at a time, and they heard it flop down on her mattress.

"I didn't come to make up," Greta said.

"All right."

"I came to fight. Properly. Not on a dock in front of the bait shop guy."

He set the plane down on the bench.

"All right," he said again. "Fight."

She took a breath.

"Kristi texted me at two," she said. "I went. She told me things. I'm not going to tell you what, because she asked me not to, and I'm figuring out tonight that I can keep a promise too."

His face changed.

"Greta."

"I'm not done."

"Sorry."

"I'm not angry about the seal," she said. "I thought I was. I sat on that dock and waited to be, and I wasn't. I know what a priest is. If you'd told me that first day there was a thing you'd never say, I'd have married you anyway. For the boat."

"I know."

"So it's not that."

She came around the bow of the hull.

He didn't move.

"It's that you let me fall in love with you," she said. "And the whole time you were carrying that, and I didn't even know there was anything to carry."

His eyes were wet.

He didn't wipe them.

"You're right," he said.

"I know I'm right."

"I'd do every one of those things again."

"I know that too. That's the problem."

She was close now.

Close enough to see the shavings in his beard.

"Say it," she said.

"Say what?"

"The thing you haven't said. You've told me you wanted me. You've told me you'd never lie to me. You never said the other thing."

He looked at her for a long moment.

"I love you," Lukas said. "I've loved you since before I had any right to. I'll love you if you drive out of here in ten minutes and file in Sturgeon Bay on Monday. That one isn't under any seal."

Greta's breath went out of her.

"Okay," she said. "Here's what I can live with."

He waited.

"You keep the door shut. I'll never ask you to open it. Not once, not if they put Nils on a stand and me next to him. I'll find it all myself."

"Greta."

But if I ever ask you a question and the answer's behind that door, you don't go quiet on me. You say door, so I know where the wall is and I don't walk into it in front of the whole town.

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