Chapter 24: Take It Down

The boat at the dock belonged to the resort, and the man in it had a cooler and a clipboard.

"Casey Bellweather?" he asked. "Sign here."

Behind him, under a tarp, sat two dozen white boxes.

He lifted the lid on the nearest one.

Roses. A hundred of them, long-stemmed and white, with the cold of a florist's fridge still on the petals.

"The desk said the staff voted," he said. "They'd like you to have them. There's a note."

It was a hotel card, in the handwriting of the woman who had stamped my first cancellation.

The staff says thank you, but the roses belong to the bride who paid for them. The arch has been taken down. I kept your copy.

Under the card was a folded sheet in a plastic sleeve.

My form. The first one, from the day I started packing boxes. It had a blue stamp across the bottom, and one word in capitals.

CANCELED.

Kurt read it over my shoulder.

"I know where that's going," he said.

"Where?"

"The wall. Next to the ledger."

His mother came out to the dock with a hammer and a nail.

"Over the register," she said. "Where people can see it."

"What will you tell them it is?"

"That it's a receipt for a good decision."

She drove the nail in with three hits and hung the plastic sleeve on it.

It looked just right there, between a tide chart and a photo of my father in his bucket hat.

By evening the whole bay was golden and still.

I had booked the glow tour for my own party, eight people, paid in full.

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