Chapter 13: The Second Thing

The kid turned the clipboard around so we could see it.

There it was, halfway down the sheet, in a big careless hand.

Archer Ellwood. Out 12:05. In 2:30.

Seth looked at me over the pump hose.

"I can call the harbor police from here," he said.

I thought about it while the pump coughed water out of my grandmother's boat.

Police meant statements, and lawyers, and the society site, and a summer of answering the phone.

"Could you keep that page?" I asked the kid. "Just keep it somewhere."

He shrugged, tore it off, folded it in four and put it in the cash drawer under the register.

We towed her home on the flood tide, with me bailing and Seth steering and neither of us talking.

Gran was waiting on the end of the railway with a blanket and a thermos.

She looked at the catboat, then at my feet, then at Seth's split lip.

"Well," she said. "Somebody had a night."

It took us four evenings to fix her.

Wind Rose got the days. The catboat got the evenings, under the work lights on the railway.

Seth cut the split plank out with a saw so thin it sang.

Then he handed me the saw.

"You cut the new one."

"You said you could fix one plank in your sleep."

"I can. You're going to do it awake."

I cut it too long the first time, and too short the second.

The third one I steamed and bent and fitted against her ribs.

Seth held the light and said nothing at all, which was the nicest thing he could have said.

On the fourth night we put her back in the water.

She floated level.

She didn't leak a drop.

I sat on the end of the railway with my feet in the cove and watched her swing.

Seth sat down next to me.

He'd brought two beers and a bag of Gran's oatmeal cookies, which was how this family said most things.

Keep reading free with an account. Start This Heiress Doesn't Fight Anymore from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.