Chapter 15: Cash on Delivery

I got my car across the yard's gate with about ten feet to spare.

The flatbed stopped with its bumper nearly touching my door.

The air brakes hissed, and then the engine settled to an idle.

Nobody moved.

I got out and stood in front of my own hood.

Kenzie and Libby came running down the slope from the garage, and Kenzie had the clipboard held against her chest with both arms.

Behind the truck, Carl stopped walking.

"Susannah," he said. "Move the car."

"No."

"This is private property."

"So I've been told, by your wife, on my own porch."

A dozen people had come out of the sheds by then.

They stood in a loose half circle, men in stained coveralls and one woman with a pencil behind her ear, and none of them looked at the truck.

They looked at Carl.

"Carl," said the woman with the pencil. "What's going on?"

"Nothing's going on. Go back to the office."

"There's a woman standing in front of the boat."

"She's leaving."

"I'm not," I said.

The truck driver, a stranger with a ball cap, leaned out the window.

"I was told this was cash on delivery," he said. "I've got a buyer in Portland waiting."

"Which buyer?" Kenzie asked.

He looked at her, startled.

"Ma'am?"

"What's his name?"

"I don't give out customer names."

"Then tell me what's on the tag."

She walked up beside the flatbed and pulled the tarp back by the corner.

Under it was a thirty-eight-foot boat with a yellow bank sticker on the cabin door and SOLD written across it in marker.

She held up the clipboard so the whole circle could see.

"This one's on the list," she said. "Seventy-two thousand dollars, sold yesterday."

She didn't shake.

I remembered her crying in my kitchen two days before, and thought how quickly a person grows up when she has to.

A man in coveralls spoke slowly.

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