Chapter 6: The Dock

"Em," Brock said, rubbing his arm like Emmett had been the one to grab it. "Whose side are you on?"

"The side of her arm," Emmett said.

It sounded so dumb that it almost sounded smart.

"Go home, Brock."

"This is my fiancee's brunch."

"Then go sit with her."

Brock's mother crossed the room and took her younger son by the sleeve, the way she must have done when he was six.

Shayla had locked herself in the lodge bathroom, and there was a line of women outside it, waiting to be sympathetic and not sure how.

Dolly finished the last piece of bacon and wiped her fingers on a napkin.

"Rule five," she said. "Nobody gets to touch the guest."

【Pete: I have been running this pool for eleven years and I did not see that coming.】

【Helen: I think I'm having a feeling.】

【Sue: Helen, take your feelings outside, we're at capacity.】

I walked out into the parking lot with my pulse still going.

The sky over the lake had gone a bruised green-gray, and the wind was turning the flags on the marina sign sideways.

Emmett stood by his truck with his cap back on.

"Storm's coming in by dark," he said. "Your pontoon's in slip twelve with one line on the bow. That's not going to hold."

"Gram's boat."

"Yeah."

I looked back at the lodge, where forty-one phones were typing about me at once.

Then I looked at his truck.

"I'll meet you at the dock," I said.

The Dettmer marina is a long spread of wooden finger piers and slips.

A boathouse sits at the end of it, and it smells like gasoline and old rope.

By the time I got there, the first fat drops had started to hit the water.

Slip twelve held a white pontoon with a rust stain down one side and Gram's name on the stern in blue paint.