I Nannied for a Widower Who Plays a Voicemail Meant for Me novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Name on the Hull
In April the lilacs came out on Munjoy Hill, and the boat came out of the yard with a new name.
It was a clear cold morning with a high blue sky, and the whole wharf had come down to see.
Iris stood on the dock in her barn coat with her arms folded and her chin up.
The deckhand held a paint can.
Two old men from the next slip leaned on a piling with their coffee.
The Callie M. had gone into the yard in February, and she came out in new white paint with a dark blue hull.
Across the stern, in tall cream letters, it said POSY & BRIDIE.
I stood at the end of the dock and looked at it for a long time.
My name was painted on the back of a boat.
"You don't mind?" Jude said beside me.
"About her name coming off."
"It didn't come off."
I pointed.
The old stern board hung in the wheelhouse window, varnished, with CALLIE M. carved in it in Jude's father's hand.
He had hung it there himself, last night, with a screwdriver and a very steady face.
"She stays on the boat," I said.
"She stays in the wheelhouse."
"She'd like that," he said.
"I think so."
"I think she'd have liked you," he said.
"I think she'd have called you on the phone and said, who the hell are you, and you'd have said, who the hell are you, and you'd have been friends by Friday."
"I think she'd have won."
"She would have won," Jude said, grinning.
Posy came up the gangway in her yellow slicker and boots, with her rabbit stuffed in the front.
"Can I drive?" she asked.
"You can steer," Jude said.
"Not drive."
He lifted her to the wheel.
She stood on an upturned bucket in the wheelhouse with both hands on the spokes and her face fierce, and Jude stood behind her with his hands an inch over hers.
The deckhand cast off the lines.
Iris called, "Go slow, you two."
We went out of the harbor at the speed of a walk, with the gulls following, and Posy, six now, steering Casco Bay with her tongue between her teeth.
Off Cushing Island, in the lee of the point, Jude cut the engine.
The boat slid to a stop on the quiet water.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Nannied for a Widower Who Plays a Voicemail Meant for Me are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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