Chapter 8: Take It

They came down the street to the dock.

Mom hugged me before I could step back.

She smelled like the same perfume she'd worn my whole life.

"Look at you," she said. "You're so thin. Are they feeding you up here?"

"Very well," Bo's mom said behind me, not friendly.

Mom didn't look at her.

She pushed a grocery bag into my arms instead. Lemon bars, in the tin with the dented lid. My gray sweater folded on top.

She'd remembered the sweater. She'd remembered I'd left it on the hook.

That was how she did it. She remembered the small things, and then she asked for the big one.

Dad looked at the bait sign, the fuel pump, the little lighthouse, and laughed through his nose.

"This is where you ran to? A gas station?"

"It's a fuel dock," Bo said.

Dad looked him up and down. "And who are you?"

"The alibi."

Dad's smile went away.

Then it came back, bigger, and he stuck out his hand.

"Good for you, son. Loyalty. I sell it for a living and never see it."

Bo looked at the hand and didn't take it.

"We need to talk to our daughter," Mom said. "Privately."

"No," I said. "If you came nine hundred miles, you can say it in front of people."

So they said it at dinner.

The Annex dining room was full.

The cook stood at the pass with a dish towel over her shoulder.

The captain sat at the end of the long table in his reading glasses.

Dad told the cook her chowder smelled like his mother's. He asked the captain about the boat's engines.

By the time the plates came, two of the crew were nodding at him.

That's what he does in the lot. He makes you feel chosen.

Mom and Dad sat across from me and didn't touch their food.

Bo sat at my right. He didn't eat either.

Mom folded her hands on the table.

"Emery, Amelie has a future," she said. "A man from a record label was at the final. He wants her demo."

"Then she should make one."

"She can't make one from jail."

Nobody at the table was chewing anymore.

"The police have that bottle," Mom said. "They say it was her pills. They're going to charge somebody."

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