Dumped on His Wharf, I Married His Brother and Set Their Price novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Table
Five men in oilskins sat around our kitchen table at midnight with their caps on their knees.
The pot of coffee Torsten had made was gone in ten minutes.
I stood in the doorway in his green flannel shirt, with my bare legs and my hair wild.
Nobody looked at me for long.
The man who had knocked sat nearest the stove.
He turned his mug around in his hands.
"I'll say it plain, since we haul in four hours," he said. "Ned tells us the price is the price."
"He does," Torsten said.
"A Philbrook driver sat on my tailgate Thursday. He's a talker."
The skipper looked at the floor.
"He told me what the company pays Ned per pound. It's twenty cents over the number Ned chalks on the board."
Nobody at the table spoke.
I held on to the doorframe.
My father's money was sitting in my kitchen with its cap in its hands, and I said nothing.
"Since June," said the oldest man there, who had a gray beard to his chest. "Twenty cents on every pound we landed."
"Ned keeps it," said the youngest, a boy in a Red Sox cap. "That's my truck payment."
"It's a lot more than that," the gray beard said.
Torsten leaned back in his chair.
He was quiet, and I watched his jaw.
"Why come to me?" he said.
"Because you rebuilt every engine we own," the first man said. "And you never charged us for a part you didn't put in."
"Dad's wharf is Dad's wharf."
"It's the only place we land." The gray beard leaned forward. "Thirty-one boats. We talked. We want you to run it."
"Not me," Torsten said.
"Why not?"
"Because he's my father," Torsten said.
"He sold us for twenty cents."
"He did." Torsten rubbed his beard. "I'm not going behind his back to take what he has."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Dumped on His Wharf, I Married His Brother and Set Their Price are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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