I Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Deckhand

I unfolded Roxana's note in the pantry, with the door shut.

It held a phone number and four words in pencil.

Not yet. Don't text.

I put it in the pocket of the sweatpants and told no one.

Bennett's bag arrived at the kitchen door an hour later, handed over by a delivery kid who had been paid to run.

My phone was in it, dead.

My wallet was there, with every card cut in half.

Rhoda held up one of the pieces and said the word again.

"Don't," I said. "I'll order new ones."

"With what money?"

"With my own."

I had nine hundred dollars in a savings account that Bennett had never known about.

I had opened it at nineteen, and it was the only thing I had never told him.

On Monday morning I sat at Rhoda's kitchen table, charged my phone and saw that the clip was past five million.

I turned the phone face down.

"You can't stay in this kitchen," Rhoda said. "You'll go crazy."

"I can help you with the inn."

"I have the inn. Go outside."

She wasn't wrong.

I had spent two days indoors, flinching at every car that stopped outside.

I walked down to the harbor with my hood up and my cheek still taped.

Cliff was on the dock hosing down a white charter boat with a green stripe.

The name on the stern was GRAYLING.

He turned off the hose when he saw me.

"How's the face?"

"It's a face."

"You want a job?"

I stared at him.

"I run a charter," he said. "Three fishing trips a day through September, six passengers each. My deckhand quit last Tuesday. I need someone to bait hooks and coil lines, and do the books I've been avoiding since spring."

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