Chapter 24: Home Water

On the first Saturday of the next month, I woke up before the alarm.

The loft was full of light.

A man was singing, very quietly, under the floor.

I lay still and listened.

It was low and sweet, and it went up through the boards and into the bed and into me.

It was the song that had walked Garrick off a pier.

He sang it now over a teapot.

I went down the loft stairs in my socks.

Lachlan sat on the stone step in his work pants with the teapot on his knee.

One of his legs was in the water.

He saw me and stopped.

"I woke you."

"Don't you dare stop."

"It is the same song."

"I know."

"You are not afraid of it."

"I told you I wasn't." I sat down beside him and put my feet in the water. "Sing the rest."

He sang the rest.

When he finished, he put the teapot down and took my hand.

His eyes were wet, as they always were, and a tear slid down his cheek, and he let it fall.

It landed on my knee and became a pearl.

I picked it up.

"I'm getting too many of those."

"I am sorry."

"I'm not complaining."

"Aggie is selling them to a jeweler in Astoria," he said. "At an honest price. She says we could buy the boathouse twice."

"We're not selling the boathouse."

"No."

We sat there with the slip lapping at our ankles.

Garrick had pleaded guilty a week ago.

The judge gave him twenty-six years.

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