She Jumped Into His Pool and Blamed Me, So I Left Him novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Dock at Eight
I called the Portland director back on Wednesday, and I took the job on Thursday.
I told Mitchell on Friday, at eight o'clock, on the end of his dock.
The sun was low and orange on the bay.
He sat beside me with his boots off and his feet over the edge, and he waited.
"I'm going," I said. "I start the second of October. It's the clinic I earned, with the desks and the parking lot Bennett sneered at."
"Good."
"That's it? Good?"
"You asked for the whole summer to be yours," he said. "I'm not going to put my name on the end of it."
I turned and looked at him.
His jaw was set, and his hands were gripping the dock board on either side of him.
"You said once you wanted to build on cold water," I said.
"I did."
"The Willamette's cold."
"It's a river."
"There are yards on it. I looked."
He didn't move.
"Valerie."
"I'm not asking you to follow me," I said. "I'm telling you where I'll be. You do what you want with that. If it's nothing, I'll still go, and I'll still be glad I met you."
His shoulders dropped.
"My mother gave me the deed to the yard on Tuesday," he said. "Shinnecock side. She cried, and I didn't know she could."
"What did you say?"
"I told her to sell it to someone who'd use it. I told her I'm taking the hull to Oregon on a trailer."
My throat closed.
"You already decided."
"I decided in the care home, when you took the phone from Lila and your hand didn't shake." He turned to me. "I'm not following you. I'm going to the same place. If you want me out of your clinic's parking lot, say so, and I'll get my own."
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