His "Childhood Friend" Planned My Wedding? Cool, I Planned My Exit! novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Family Guest

The shop smelled of bait, rope and warm wood.

Kurt cleared a stool for me, put a bottle of water in my hand, and said nothing for a full minute.

I was grateful for that.

"You're sure?" I asked at last. "That he said Ohio?"

"He said Columbus." Kurt sat on an overturned bucket. "He said his older girl was the smartest person he knew and he was a coward for not telling her."

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.

"The older girl," I said. "That's me. So Lindy is..."

"The younger one. I figured you knew."

"I didn't know anything."

He got up, went behind the counter, and came back with a big green book wrapped in a rubber band.

"Guest ledger," he said. "Every room, every year. I keep the old ones. My mother used to say you never know who'll come asking."

He opened it flat across my knees.

The pages were soft with sea air. The handwriting changed from year to year, but one hand came back every July.

Big loops, a slant to the right, the crossbar of every t drawn long.

Frank Bellweather + Little Captain.

I had seen that handwriting on every birthday card I got until I was twenty-six.

I touched the ink with one finger.

"Six years," Kurt said quietly. "Then the last page."

He turned a leaf.

July, three years ago. The last entry in that hand was only a date, and the rest was in Lindy's writing, small and shaky.

Frank Bellweather. Checked out.

I put my hand over my mouth.

"The doctor said it was a heart attack," I said. "They said he went quickly."

"He did. He was at the end of the dock, with a rod in his hand." Kurt's mouth tightened. "Lindy was the one who found him. She sat there with him till the ambulance came."

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