Chapter 7: The Storm

The storm came in on Tuesday night.

Lowell's warning had followed me through two shifts: "Don't do anything before the anniversary."

I had asked Ford twice what it meant, and twice he had said, "Later."

I got home from a twelve-hour shift at nine, soaked from the dock to the skin.

Ford was on the roof deck of the boat with a flashlight in his teeth.

"Get inside," he shouted.

The wind was coming straight down the lake.

Waves slapped the hull and the dock lines groaned.

"What do you need?"

"Nothing. Inside."

"Ford."

"The stern line's chafing," he said around the flashlight. "I'm doubling it."

I dropped my bag in the galley and climbed up the ladder in my scrubs and clogs.

He swore when he saw me.

He tied a life vest around me himself, hard, and pushed a coil of rope into my hands.

"Hold this," he said. "Don't let go of it. If I say pull, pull."

"I've lifted a two-hundred-pound man off a floor."

"You've never done this."

"Then show me."

He showed me.

For ten minutes we worked in the dark with the rain coming sideways.

I held the line while he passed a second one around the cleat and hauled it tight.

I liked it.

I liked being useful beside him, and I liked how he said "good" when I did it right, short and low.

Then the boat lurched on a wave.

My clog slid on the wet planking, and my feet went out from under me.

I went down on one knee, and then over the side rail, and the rope in my hand burned through my palm.

"Dessa!"

I hung there by my wrists with the black water under my feet.