Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus novel · Chapter 20 of 40

Chapter 20: The V-Berth

We tied up at the Rockland float at ten past nine.

Nobody said a word on the way in.

The lights were still burning on every rail, red and green and white, and the plywood lobster in its Santa hat watched us come alongside.

One by one the Friday table climbed onto the float in their knit hats, with their empty cups, and did not look at us.

The petty officer set her flare gun gently on a piling.

Paulie hugged me hard, with her bell jingling, and said nothing, and her whole face was wet.

Gordie shook Eben's hand, then pulled him into a one-armed hug and thumped his back twice.

"You said it," Gordie said, gruffly. "I'm proud of you, man."

"I didn't say the right thing."

"You said a thing."

"Take her home," my mother said to Linwood, on the float. "I'll go with Bernadette."

"I'm going with Eben," I said.

My mother looked at me.

Something passed over her face, a long, assessing look.

"Fine," she said. "Take the heater. It's cold on the water."

She took Linwood's arm, and the two of them went up the ramp together in the glow of the Christmas lights.

Eben stood by the wheelhouse with the line in his hand.

"The boat's got to go back to Spruce Head," he said. "It's a half hour."

"I know where it lives."

"You don't have to come," he said.

"Cast off, Dyer."

He did.

We ran out of Rockland Harbor in the dark with the lights blazing and the engine low, past the breakwater, past the lighthouse, and into the open bay.

I stood beside him in the wheelhouse with my arms wrapped around myself.

Neither of us spoke.

There was nothing to say that hadn't gone out over the radio.

We came in to the Spruce Head wharf at half past ten.

The float was empty, the bait shed dark.

Linwood's kitchen window glowed far up the hill, where my mother's car sat in the drive.

Eben made the boat fast and shut down the engine.

The silence came down like a hand.

We stood on the deck among the coiled lines and the bait bins, under a thousand lights that didn't care what had happened.

"Three-ten," he said.

I closed my eyes.

"That's when it came. I looked at the screen. I read it three times."

"I know the minute I sent it," I said.

"Do you?"

"Three-oh-nine. I had to sit in the car for an hour afterward. I couldn't make the key turn," I said.

He was silent.

"I thought you'd call," I said. "I wanted you to. I sat in my car with the phone in my lap for two hours, and I wanted you to call and say, where are you, get up here."

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