Chapter 24: Hello

The second boat went into the water on the last Saturday in August.

She was twenty-six feet of cedar and white oak, with a short mast and a small cuddy cabin.

Her varnished tiller was the color of honey.

The whole harbor came.

The harbormaster brought a washtub of pasties, and the crew wore clean shirts, which they considered a sacrifice.

Joanne drove up the night before in the dented Subaru and was already crying by the time she reached the gate.

"I'm not crying," she said. "It's pollen."

"It's August," I said.

"It's a lot of pollen."

I had come down to the shop at dawn, before anyone else.

The boat sat on her cradle with the sun on her flank, and the mast lay on trestles beside her, waiting.

I took a small white box from my bag.

Inside lay two tiny white baby shoes, the ones I'd carried to the party in my clutch and kept in a drawer for most of a year.

I had never put them on a shelf, or in a box with a ribbon, or anywhere I might have to look at them.

I held them in my palm.

Builders used to put a coin under the mast, for luck, where nobody would ever see it.

I climbed down into the cuddy and knelt on the new floorboards.

The mast step was a block of oak, drilled and waiting.

I set the shoes inside it, side by side.

I touched them once.

Then I fitted the cap over the hole and drove the last two bronze screws myself.

"Hello," I said, to nobody, and my voice shook a little.

When I climbed out, Ben was standing in the shop door.

He had been there for a while.

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