Chapter 15: Nobody Minds

I walked down the dock at Charlestown with Lark's hand in mine and my head up.

It was a clear evening, and the lamps along the pier had just come on.

A man on the next boat was coiling a rope, and he lifted two fingers at us.

Lark lifted two back.

For the first time, I did not check behind me.

Second Wind rocked against her fenders, blue and small and exactly where she had been the week before.

The bucket named Sheila sat in the corner of the cabin, empty.

"It didn't rain," I said.

"I fixed the leak."

"Both leaks?"

"One. I'm an optimist."

She lit the string of lights under the hatch, and the little cabin went amber.

I stood in the middle of it with my coat still on, and I felt something let go in my shoulders.

No flashlight in the dark, no tote bag with a box in it, no Cass at the window.

Just a woman in a salt-stained sweater, and a bunk with a quilt, and the whole night.

"You're quiet," Lark said.

"I don't know what to do with my hands."

"I do."

She took my coat off me and hung it on the hook where the yellow raincoat had hung.

Then she took my hands and held them, palms up, between hers.

They were rough from the oven, with a burn mark on the left thumb.

"Sit," she said.

"I hate it when people tell me to sit."

"I know. Sit anyway."

I sat on the edge of the bunk.

She knelt and unlaced my boots, one and then the other, and set them side by side on the floor.

Nobody had done that for me since I was small.

My throat went tight.

"Lie back," Lark said.

"Lark."

"You've been in charge of everyone for two weeks. The cake, the cousins, the whole story. Tonight you're not."

I opened my mouth to argue.

She bent and put her mouth on the inside of my wrist, right where the pulse is, and the argument went out of me.

I lay back.

The quilt smelled like cedar and salt and her.

She took her time with the buttons of my shirt, one at a time, and she looked at me while she did it.

"Keep your eyes on me," she said.

I held her gaze while she peeled my shirt open and tugged my trousers and underwear down my legs.

The boat swayed on the water, a long slow roll, and the lamps hummed against the hatch.

Her hands moved over my ribs and my hips, light, then firmer, before parting my thighs.

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