Traded for Nine Boats, I Walked In Pregnant and Ran Their House novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Nine Boats
Ari's father signs her over for his boat notes, and she stands and tells both families she carries the Stavrou heir, then sits on their side of the table.
My father signed me away at ten past nine on a Saturday morning, in the back office of our fuel dock.
He used a pen the other family's lawyer had handed him.
Nine boat notes lay stacked on the table, and my name was typed on the page underneath them.
I was ten weeks pregnant, and the man sitting across from me was the father.
He did not know that.
Nobody in the room did.
Rain drummed on the tin roof, and the office smelled of diesel and wet rope.
The rival family had hated mine for eleven years, over a pier lease that neither side would give back.
This morning they had come south to end it.
The lawyer read the paragraph aloud in his flat voice.
"The daughter of the house of Vlachos shall sit at the rival table all winter."
"When the winter ends, the nine notes are torn up and the lease is shared."
I stood at the back wall with my arms folded.
At breakfast I had told my father no.
He had told me the nine boats went to auction on Monday, and my mother's boat went with them.
Then he had put on his good jacket and said nothing else.
The man who held the notes sat at the center of the table in a charcoal coat.
Alex Stavrou was thirty-five, with close-cut dark hair and gray eyes that had not looked at me once since he walked in.
He had looked at me plenty eight weeks ago, on the night the storm shut the causeway.
He sat very straight and read the page through once, slowly.
Beside him sat his grandmother, a small woman in black with her silver hair pinned up and a ring of iron keys at her belt.
She watched my father and did not blink.
The contract said winter, and in Greek families winter ends at Pascha, our Easter, five months away.
Her name was Marigo, and her family's name on the page was Stavrou.
"The girl is quiet," she said.
"She's a good girl," my father said.
"She goes where she's told."
He laughed, and nobody laughed with him.
"Mr. Stelios Vlachos," the lawyer said. "Sign here."
He put the pen to the line.
I looked at his hand, which had taught me to tie a bowline when I was six.
Then I looked at the stack of paper that was my mother's boat, and I made up my mind.
"Papa, wait."
He did not look up.
"Ari, not now."
"Before anyone signs," I said, loudly enough for the lawyer to stop reading, "you should know what the Stavrou house is actually being handed."
The rain seemed louder.
My father's pen stayed on the page.
"I'm ten weeks pregnant," I said.
Nobody moved.
The lawyer put down his folder.
My father's chair scraped back.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying the daughter of the house of Vlachos is carrying a child," I said.
"I'm saying you can't trade me for a winter at their table when I'm already bringing them something they want."
The old woman in black put both of her hands flat on the table.
"By whom?" she asked.
Her voice was thin and carried to every corner of the room.
I looked across the table at him for the first time that morning.
Gray eyes, a steel watch, a jaw set hard.
"By him," I said.
My father swore in Greek.
The lawyer coughed into his fist.
Alex Stavrou lifted his head.
He looked at me and did not look away.
I waited for the question every man in my life would ask.
Is it mine?
Prove it.
"It's mine," Alex said.
He said it flatly, and he said it before anyone else could open a mouth.
He did not ask me one thing.
I had braced for a fight, and I had no idea what to do with a yes.
His grandmother turned her head and looked at him, long and hard.
Her lips moved, and I thought she was praying.
My father had stopped shouting.
I watched his face change.
The anger went out of it and something quicker and greedier came in behind.
"Well," he said, wiping his mustache, "then it's family now, isn't it?"
He turned to the old woman with the pen still in his fingers.
"So we should talk about the boats again, Kyria Marigo.
"A Stavrou grandchild would want her grandfather's fleet left alone."
I felt sick, and it was not the baby.
He had not asked if I was all right.
He had not asked what I wanted.
He had looked at my stomach and seen nine boats.
I unfolded my arms.
I walked the length of the room, past the lawyer and the stack of notes and my father's out-held pen.
I did not go to the Vlachos side of the table.
I went around it.
Alex stood up as I came.
He pulled out the empty chair beside his grandmother without a word.
When I sat, his knuckles brushed the small of my back as he pushed it in.
His hand stayed on the chair for one second more than it needed to.
I felt it through my sweater, warm and steady.
My father stared at me from the far side of the table, alone with his pen.
I laid my palm flat on my stomach where every person in the room could see it.
"Now," I said, "we write the terms again."
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