The Man My Sister Left Behind novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Scarf
I looked at the scarf for a long time.
Sleet ticked on the wheelhouse roof, and the Marigold rocked gently on her new water.
My father had darned that end in the winter I was nine, because I had snagged it on a trap and cried.
He had said a scarf is never ruined, only mended.
"Say something," said Ansel.
"I'm thinking."
"You can think out loud."
"Get up."
He was kneeling on the wet deck.
I hadn't noticed him go down.
He stood, and his knees cracked, and he looked about seventy.
"Here's what I want," I said. "And these are terms."
"I'll take them."
"You haven't heard them."
"I'll take them."
"First, I keep my job."
"Of course you keep your job."
"Two seasons a year in Anchorage. I'm a nurse, and I'm good at it."
"I won't be a wharf owner's wife who volunteers at the church fair."
"Done."
"Second, you ask me again."
"I just did."
"You asked a woman in a parka on a dock in sleet, with her sister listening and Gus eavesdropping behind a crate."
He glanced up the pier.
A yellow slicker vanished behind a stack of pallets.
"Third, you ask in Kettle Cove, on the water, where it started."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Man My Sister Left Behind are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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