Dumped on His Wharf, I Married His Brother and Set Their Price novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Scale

Torsten's POV

My father was at the scale-house blackboard at nine on Saturday morning, copying the day's price in his square hand.

He wore a pressed shirt, even on a wharf, even with the first boats coming in.

Susannah stayed outside by the hoist, because I had asked her to.

"Dad."

He did not turn around. "You're in the middle of my morning."

"Twenty cents a pound," I said. "Over the harbor price. Every Monday since June."

The chalk stopped.

He wrote the last numeral, set the chalk in the tray, and faced me over his reading glasses.

He looked at me kindly.

He had looked at her kindly on the steps.

"Philbrook told you," he said.

"Across his own dinner table. He was proud of it."

"It was an honest arrangement," he said.

"You took money to sit across from her every Sunday."

"I took a better price for this wharf." He folded his arms. "Everybody has a price, son."

"I know," I said. "Yours was twenty cents."

I unclipped the ring from my belt, the one with the brass tag that said SHOP, and I laid it on the floor scale.

The needle swung and settled.

"Fifteen years of family wages," I said. "Weigh it."

"That's three pounds of keys."

"Then it's the most you ever paid me."

His face did not change. "You'll be back by Thursday. You have a wrench and a girl who works nights."

I nearly laughed.

"I have a wife," I said. "Her name is Susannah."

I went out and took her hand.

She looked at my face once, and she did not ask.

I walked her down the wharf to the boat shop and hauled the chain on the roll-up door.

It came down rattling over the cove and thumped the concrete.

The shop went dim and close, with one work light swinging over the old Detroit on its hoist.

I shot the bolt on the side door.

My hands were still shaking from the scale house, and I put them flat on the cold door behind me.

"Say it," Susannah said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you swallowed in there."

She stood in the cotton dress from last night, with her hair a mess from the ferry.

"Two years of Sundays," I said. "You sat at the end of that table, and you never once looked down it at me."

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