I Tried to Evict My Three Tenants, So They Moved Into My Bed novel · Chapter 7 of 24
Chapter 7: The Transom
Jussi's POV
On Tuesday morning at six-thirty I stood on the dock and watched Mari paint my boat.
I was the happiest man on the Columbia River.
It was cold and clear.
The tide was out, and the Ingrid Marie sat low against the pilings with her stern toward the pier.
Mari stood on a ladder at the transom with a brush in one hand and a long wooden stick in the other.
She rested the stick against the hull and steadied her painting hand on it.
I had watched her do it for an hour, and I still did not understand how.
The letters came out of her brush in dark blue, one after another, and every one was exactly where it belonged.
I.
N.
G.
"Your face is doing something," she said, without turning around.
"It's the paint fumes."
"It's not the paint fumes."
"It's a little bit the paint fumes," I said.
She laughed.
She had a streak of blue on her cheekbone, and her braid had come loose.
A gull sat on the piling beside her and watched the brush.
I wanted to spend my life on that dock.
I also had a secret, and it sat in my chest all morning.
Last night I had lain awake on the third floor and thought about the number.
Four hundred and twelve thousand dollars.
She had set it on the table, and nobody could lift it.
Gunnar had offered, and she had refused him in front of all of us.
So I had not offered.
I had read the lender's envelope on the hall table, which was addressed to Mari, which was not mine to read.
I had copied the account number onto my wrist.
At five this morning I had sat in my truck and wired eighteen thousand dollars to a stranger.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Tried to Evict My Three Tenants, So They Moved Into My Bed are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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