This Heiress Doesn't Fight Anymore novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Nineteen an Hour

Seth refuses to hire a Wakefield until she sands a dinghy for free, and then a letter signed by Arabella says Wakefield Marine owns the yard's debt and can call it in September.

I had twenty-three dollars in cash and a phone at eleven percent.

The clerk let me use the bathroom out of pity.

Then I walked.

It was two miles from West Main Road to the cove, and I did it in wet sandals with my bag over my shoulder.

The shed was dark when I got there.

The hammock was still slung between the two pilings, swaying a little in the wind off the water.

I climbed in with Seth's sweatshirt pulled over my knees.

I meant to rest for a minute and think about what to do.

I didn't think about anything.

When I opened my eyes, the sun was up and a man was standing over me with two mugs of coffee.

"You know you're in my hammock."

"I know."

"I nap there at noon. Every day. On principle."

"It's not noon."

"It's the principle." He held out a mug. "How long have you been here?"

I looked at my phone.

It was dead, so I looked at the sun instead.

"I think I slept nine hours."

"You think?"

"I haven't slept nine hours since I was a kid. I don't know what it feels like."

He sat down on an upturned bucket and studied me over his coffee.

"I got fired this morning," he said.

"From the tender?"

"Your brother called the captain at six. The captain called me at six-oh-two. He was very sorry about it."

"I'm sorry too."

"Don't be. I hated those loafers." He drank. "So what happened? They lock you out?"

"Sort of. I gave them everything, and my father cut my cards before I got to the motel."

"Everything?"

"The house. The job. The fiancé, you saw."

"I saw."

I swung my legs out of the hammock.

"I need a job, Seth."

He laughed, then saw I meant it, and stopped.

"No."

"I can work."

"You're a Wakefield."

"Not since last night."

"Your family owns half the waterfront and the other half owes them money."

"If a Wakefield's working in my shed, I'd like to know why before I find out the hard way."

"That's fair," I said.

"Thank you."

"I'm still going to work."

I found Bess in the side shed, varnishing a mahogany rail with her tongue between her teeth.

"Bess. Is there something in here nobody needs done right now?"

She pointed her brush at a little dinghy turned upside down on two sawhorses.

"That pram needs her bottom faired. Nobody wants to. It's boring and it makes your arms fall off."

"Show me."

She showed me, talking the whole time.

How to wrap the paper around the block.

How to feel the hull with the flat of your hand instead of looking at it.

How her grandfather used to say a boat tells you where she's rough if you shut up.

"Then I'll be good at it," I said.

Bess laughed so hard she had to put the brush down.

I sanded that dinghy all morning.

My arms burned and my hair filled with gray dust, and I didn't once think about Hull 114.

At noon Seth came out, looked at me, and lay down in his hammock without a word.

At two he came out again.

"I'm not paying you for that."

"I didn't ask you to."

"You're doing it wrong. Short strokes, with the grain."

He took my hand and moved it on the block, once, along the curve of the hull.

His palm was rough and warm and very steady.

Then he let go and went back inside.

At four Gran came out with a sandwich, put it on the sawhorse and smacked the back of Seth's head on the way past.

"Hire the girl, you stubborn ass. She's better than you were at twelve."

"I was good at twelve."

"You were a menace at twelve."

At six the dinghy was smooth as an egg from bow to stern.

Seth came and ran his hand along it.

He went down one side and up the other.

He stopped once, where I'd gone over a seam twice, and I waited for him to say so.

He didn't.

"Nineteen an hour," he said. "Cash on Fridays. No overtime, because nobody here works overtime."

"Okay."

"There's a loft over the shed. It's got a bed and a window and a lot of spiders."

"You can have it until you figure out where you're going."

"I don't know where I'm going."

"Then you'll be here a while," Bess said from the doorway.

"And Charlie?" Seth said.

"Yes?"

"Noon is mine. Find your own hammock."

I slept in the loft that night with the window open and the water slapping the pilings under me.

Nine hours again.

On Monday morning a courier in a Wakefield Marine polo shirt came down the dock with an envelope.

He asked for the owner.

Gran wiped her hands on her apron and took it.

She read it standing in the sun, and the color went out of her face a line at a time.

Then she handed it to me without a word.

I knew the letterhead.

I'd signed a thousand letters on it.

This one said Wakefield Marine had bought the note on Tisdale's Boatyard from the bank in May.

Three hundred eighty thousand dollars.

It said the note could be called in full on Friday, September fourth.

It was signed in loopy blue ink.

Arabella Wakefield, Vice President of Operations.

My job.

She'd had it for less than two days.

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