Just One Kiss novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Better

Gail made pancakes.

She didn't say a word about the night before.

She set a plate in front of Ansel and a plate in front of me.

She put a bottle of syrup between us.

"Eat," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," said Ansel.

He had come up the outside stairs at six-fifty with grease on his hands.

He looked like a man walking into a courtroom.

"It's Gail."

"Yes, Gail."

"You're taking the dock this afternoon," she told him. "Slip nine's pump is out. Lottie, bait counter."

"Okay."

"Okay." She sipped her coffee. "I'm glad it's you, you know."

Ansel put his fork down very carefully.

My mother kept her eyes on her coffee.

"I like things to be handled in my own house," she said. "That's all."

I have never loved her more.

We worked all day with our shoulders bumping every time we passed.

He fixed slip nine's pump.

I sold minnows to a man who was teaching his grandson to fish.

Every time I looked up, I found Ansel looking at me over somebody's bow.

By eight o'clock the lot was empty, and the sun was a red stripe over the water.

"Come on," I said, and took his hand.

The marina has an old charter boat at the far end of the long dock.

She's called the Dolly, thirty-two feet of white fiberglass that hasn't left her slip in two summers.

Gail keeps the key under a coffee can.

Below deck there's a cabin with a V-shaped bunk and a round window.

When the sun goes down, the lake slides past it in blue.

"Is this allowed?" Ansel said, ducking his head on the way in.

"It's my mother's boat."

"Your mother's boat."

"She said she likes things handled in her own house."

"This isn't her house."

"It's her dock."

He laughed, helpless, and I pulled him down onto the bunk.

It was nothing like last night.

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