Chapter 4: Cedar and Green Paint

In June, forty people stood on the Marquette harbor dock to watch a boat I had drawn go into the water.

She was twenty-four feet of cedar strip, painted a deep green, with a varnished tiller.

The name Gran was on her stern in gold leaf.

I had named her for my grandmother.

I had not slept the night before, and I'd cut my thumb twice on a scraper just to have something to do.

Russell's voicemail from October was still on my phone, with Camille's voice behind him asking about his tea.

Joanne had found out in a week that he never put her out at all.

I had not called him back, and I had stopped listening for him to call.

"Stop looking at her like she might sink," Ben said.

He stood beside me in a clean shirt, which for him was a formal occasion.

"Might she?"

"Not on my watch."

"It's not your watch. It's my boat."

"It's your name on the drawing," he said. "The hull is mine."

He was grinning, which he rarely did in public.

The harbormaster had a gray braid and no first name that I'd ever heard.

She pressed a bottle of beer into my hand and told me to break it on the bow.

"It's not champagne," I said.

"It's Marquette," she said. "Break it."

The travel lift hummed and the slings lowered her to the water, and the whole dock leaned over to watch.

A reporter from the local paper held up her phone to film it.

I swung the bottle.

It burst against the green hull with a bang and a cloud of foam, and the dock cheered.

I cried a little, quickly, and wiped it away with the back of my wrist.

Eight months.

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