Back With Baby, Ex Regrets Deeply novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: Fifty Years

The tent on the Odell pier glowed against the dark water.

Two hundred people under strings of lights.

Tug captains in borrowed blazers. Deckhands with their wives. Port men, insurance men, the bank's table up front with white flowers on it.

A big photo of my grandfather stood on an easel by the stage, squinting from the wheelhouse of his first tug.

"ODELL MARINE. 50 YEARS. ONE FAMILY."

I'd put my mother's pearl earrings in before I left the hotel.

Alistair was beside me in a dark suit.

He'd asked me once in the car what I wanted done.

I'd said, "Nothing. Stand at the back."

So he stood at the back, by the tent pole, with his hands in his pockets, and every banker in the place turned around to look at him.

My father was on the stage with a microphone and a glass of champagne.

He hadn't seen me yet.

"Fifty years ago," he was saying, "my father bought a secondhand tug with money he borrowed from his brother. People told him he was crazy. People have been telling Odells they're crazy ever since."

Laughter.

"We've had hard years. You all know that. Some of you have stuck with me through every one of them, and I won't forget it." He lifted his glass toward a table of crew. "Because that's what this company is. It's not boats. It's family. And in this family, we look after our own."

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