An Anonymous Confession Game Ruined My Wedding novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: What She Never Said
Dalton drove back to the motel with his phone in a plastic bag on the seat beside him.
Hattie went with him to copy the voicemail onto her laptop and three other places.
She came back for one hour, hugged me twice, and left again to sleep in the motel room beside his, with the door chained.
By nine the yard was empty.
I found Ingrid at the end of the east dock, sitting on the bollard with her boots over the water.
She had a bottle of whiskey between her feet and no glass.
"You walked out of the shop," I said.
"I walked out of my own life for a minute. It's allowed."
I sat down on the planks next to her and did not say anything.
The harbor lights swung on the water.
"Thirty-eight thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars and seven cents," she said at last.
"That's the number on the check."
"That's the number on the bank's last letter. My ex took out a loan against this yard two winters ago. He told me it was for a new lift. I signed where he showed me."
"You trusted him."
"I was busy. My father had been dead two years, and I had a hull on the hard that wasn't paid for."
She picked up the bottle and set it down again without drinking.
"He bought a boat, Finbar. A different boat, with a different woman, in a different state. Then he left in February, and I found out in March when the first letter came."
"And you never told anyone."
"If the town knows the yard is going under, every captain takes his boat to Hovland by Friday. My father spent forty years getting those men to trust him. I wasn't going to lose it in a week."
"So you kept the yard open."
"I stayed," she said. "That's all it is. Everybody else left and I stayed."
She said it flatly, looking at the water, and I understood that she had never said it out loud before.
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