Chapter 5: Lights on the Gull Rock

"Then we'll marry on the water," Theo said.

We were sitting in his truck at the end of the ferry dock.

The engine was off, and the harbor lay black in front of us.

Dad's taillights had long since gone up the hill.

"The water," I said.

"The Gull Rock holds sixty passengers," he said. "The lighthouse landing has a flat lawn and a view of the whole bay."

He looked at me.

"Nobody owns it but the town. Nobody can lock a door on it."

I started laughing, and it turned into something else, and he waited.

"We have no church, no pastor, no florist, and I've got a funeral at eleven," I said.

"We have a boat."

"Theo."

"I'll call the old pastor who baptized you." He shrugged. "He retired to Rockland. He'd love it."

"It's nine o'clock at night."

"Then he's up."

He was.

By ten, the phone in Theo's cottage had rung without stopping.

I have never seen a town move so fast.

My mother had sold paint, lumber and nails to half of Port Alder for thirty years.

The people who owed her something showed up on the dock in the dark, holding casserole dishes and strings of lights.

The woman from the bakery brought a cake the size of a hatbox.

"It's lemon," she said, and pressed it into my arms.

"Ruth ordered one every March. She told me it was for her future son-in-law."

I had to put it down on a piling.

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