The Boss Said My Father Drowned His Brother, So He Took Me to Stand in the Water novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Ice-Out
The ice went out of the bay on the last Thursday in April.
It did not go all at once.
For three days the long gray sheets had broken at the edges and drifted, grinding against the breakwater, and the fish houses had been towed off in a line behind the trucks.
On Thursday morning the wind turned south, and by noon there was open water from the Lift Bridge to Park Point.
The lake had come back.
The family held the memorial on the Lakewalk at four.
There was no body, so there was no casket and no graveside blessing.
The pastor had said the church would do whatever the family asked, and Stellan had said, "A bench, and the water."
They had set a plain granite bench on the Lakewalk above the harbor, with a small brass plate screwed into the back.
LAURI JUHANI KIVELA. HE COULDN'T LIE.
Two hundred people came.
I stood at the back in my navy peacoat with a paper cup of coffee and watched them gather on the boards.
The old men from the supper club came, and the church women, and the boys who ran the trucks.
The families from the ore docks stood together in their winter coats with their children by the hand.
Joel was there.
He stood at the edge of the crowd, far back, with his wife, and he did not come forward.
Stellan stood beside the bench in a gray coat.
He had a sheet of paper in his hand, and he did not look at it.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Boss Said My Father Drowned His Brother, So He Took Me to Stand in the Water are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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