"Call her Aunt." That was how my ex-fiancé found out I married his uncle. novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: The Heron
On Friday afternoon a retired man in a Panthers cap walked down the dock with an envelope under his arm.
I was sitting on the Heron's stern with a mug of coffee gone cold.
Ford stood on the dock with his hands in his back pockets.
He had called six people on Wednesday and four on Thursday.
Nobody on Lake Norman had a slip, and nobody had a spare week.
The man in the cap had come by the yard in August and asked what the Heron would cost.
Ford had said she wasn't for sale.
"Fifty-two thousand," the man said now, and put the envelope in Ford's hand. "That's what I said in August. I'm not going to try you for less."
"She's worth more."
"I know it." The man looked along the green hull, the brass rail, the varnish on the cabin top. "I'll keep her in my slip at Cornelius. I'll get her out on the water every weekend."
"She needs her bilge pumped Sundays."
"I'll write it down."
He did, on the back of a receipt, and Ford watched him do it.
I did not know a man's face could hold that much and show so little.
When the title was signed, the man in the cap shook his hand and then, after a moment, took his hand in both of his.
"Take as long as you need to clear her," he said. "Monday's fine."
He walked back up the dock.
I got off the stern.
"You didn't tell me today was the day," I said.
"You'd have said no."
"I would have said no."
Ford opened the envelope, counted out a stack of bills by the dock light, and put it in my hand.
It was thick and held together with a rubber band.
"Thirty-eight thousand four hundred," he said. "That's the lodge, the caterer, and the band."
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