That Makes Two of Us novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: The Boathouse
The boathouse stood at the end of a gravel lane on a creek off the Chesapeake, with a tin roof and one yellow light.
I parked behind a tree and walked the last hundred yards.
Slip fourteen held a white wooden cabin boat with her paint peeling and her name on the stern.
"Second Wind," it said, in curling gold letters.
I had the brass key in my hand and no idea what lock it fit.
"I thought you were gone."
I turned.
Colton was sitting on an overturned crate in the dark at the end of the dock with a bottle beside him.
It was beer, unopened.
He looked like he had been sitting there for hours.
"I thought you'd be home," I said.
"Home is where the cameras are." He stood up. "This is the one place Valerie hasn't thought to look. My grandfather bought it in cash, under a company that doesn't exist anymore."
"Marsha sent me."
"Marsha."
"She said to use this."
I held up the key.
He took it, turned it over, and his mouth twisted.
"That's the cabin lock. Grandpa never let anyone aboard but me." He looked up. "Why would she send you?"
"I don't know."
It was a lie, and I felt it land.
He didn't push.
He unlocked the little cabin door, switched on a lamp, and we ducked inside.
There was a bunk, a table, and a wooden locker under the seat that I had never seen.
The key fit that, too.
Inside lay a photograph in a cracked frame.
Two young men stood side by side on a dock in 1968, laughing, with cigars and bad haircuts.
I knew one of them at once.
The other had Colton's chin.
On the back, in faded ink: "The two fools."
Colton took it from me and looked at it for a long time.
"That's him," he said hoarsely. "That's Grandpa at twenty-five. I never knew who the other man was."
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