Chapter 24: Out

Garner brought Poppy back at noon, exactly on time.

He walked her down the dock in her yellow boots, the rabbit under one arm and the stitched lamb under the other.

Elliot was already at the shed doors with the Kestrel on her trailer behind him.

He had polished the brass, and he had bent a new cotton sail onto the mast.

"What's that?" Poppy asked.

"That is your grandmother's boat," I said.

Her eyes went huge.

"It's real?"

"It's very real."

"Can I steer?"

"You can hold the rope," Elliot said. "I'll steer."

"Can Daddy come?"

Garner stood at the end of the ramp with his hands in his pockets.

He looked at me, and at Elliot, and I understood he was asking permission and nothing else.

"Not this time," I said gently. "Next time, if Poppy wants."

"Of course."

"You'll be on the dock when we come back?"

"I'll be on the dock," Garner said.

He knelt to Poppy and fixed the strap of her life jacket, and she let him.

Then he stood and put out his hand to Elliot.

They shook, and neither of them said a word, and that was all right.

The yard men rolled the trailer down the ramp.

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