From Secret Desire for My Stepbrother to Reality novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Ferry

Jem drove me to Colman Dock in the van.

We didn't talk on the way.

At the curb he put it in park and kept his hands on the wheel.

"I'll be here when you come back," he said.

"It's two hours there and back."

"I'll be here."

I got out.

I didn't kiss him.

I wanted to, and I didn't, and I walked up the ramp feeling both.

The boat was half empty on a Wednesday morning.

I climbed to the upper deck and walked out the back door into the wind.

She was alone at the stern rail.

Sixties, silver hair cut very short, a camel coat, no jewelry but a man's wristwatch.

She was eating a bag of ferry popcorn.

"You came," she said.

"You said alone. I came alone."

"Your locksmith is parked at the curb. I watched him drop you off."

"He's not on the boat."

"No," she said. "He's not."

She held out the popcorn.

I took some, because Pete always says you never refuse food on a ferry.

The city slid away behind us, all glass and cranes.

"I'll be quick," she said. "Two years ago Tom brought the board a feature he called a retention hold. A short fraud review on new matches. Twenty-four hours, he said. To stop bots."

"It's not twenty-four hours."

"I know that now. I watched a hundred and fifty-two people cancel and get their match inside a minute."

She looked at the water.

"I voted for it," she said. "I'd like you to know I know that."

"Why am I on this boat?"

"Because I can't take a livestream into a boardroom. Four of the seven seats belong to Tom's investors. They'll say the test was staged. They'll say you're a jilted ex with a grudge."

"I'm not jilted. He's the one who..."

I stopped.

She waited.

"It doesn't matter," I said.

"It matters to them. What I need is proof they can't wave away. Something from inside. In his words."

She let that sit.

"You still know people in that building," she said. "You know how the logs are kept. You wrote half of them."

So that was it.

I set the popcorn down on the rail.

"You want me to steal it for you."

"I didn't say steal."

"You didn't have to. If I take one file out of that building, it's his. All of it. The test, the couples, Tacoma. He'll stand on a stage and say the girl who wanted her stepbrother is a thief too. And he'll be right."

"So you won't."

"I won't."

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she smiled for the first time.

"Good," she said. "I'd have voted against you if you'd said yes."

"Was that a test?"

"Everything's a test, Ms. Hartigan. You of all people know that."

The horn blew for Bainbridge.

She folded the top of her popcorn bag down very neatly.

"Then make it public," she said. "Whatever you do next, do it where the board can't call it a stunt. In daylight. Where they can watch every step."

"Every step of what?"

"You'll know," she said. "You're the one who builds things."

She walked off the boat at Bainbridge and didn't look back.

I rode the same boat home.

Jem was at the curb, exactly where he'd said, with two coffees going cold in the cup holders.

I got in.

"Well?" he said.

"She wanted me to steal something for her."

"Did you?"

"No."

He nodded like that was the only answer he'd expected.

He handed me the colder coffee.

"I got this one an hour ago," he said. "I got the other one ten minutes ago. In case."

I drank the cold one.

Then I leaned across the gearshift and kissed him in the loading zone, while a ferry worker whistled at us to move.

That night Kath went to Shoreline.

My mother had decided to teach her pot roast.

"It's a three-hour lesson," Kath said at the door, holding a canvas bag. "She's making me sleep over. I think she's adopting me."

"She is."

"I've never been adopted. I'm going to be so good at it."

She left.

Jem flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED at six.

The apprentice went home.

The old key-cutter took his apron off, hung it on its nail, looked at the two of us, and said, "Lock up properly," and went.

Then it was just us, and the shop, and the lamp over the grinder.

I walked back into the workshop.

The workbench had been wiped down.

The pegboard above it looked different.

It took me a second.

The wedding photo was gone.

"Where's my mother?"

"Front counter," Jem said from the doorway. "By the lollipops. Facing the street."

"You moved her."

"I moved her this morning. Before the paper."

I laughed, and it felt like the first real breath since the sidewalk.

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