Chapter 13: Hi, Partner

I didn't answer her.

I took a screenshot of it and sent it to my lawyer.

On Monday Cullen bolted a camera to the gate post.

"For the next person who wants a picture of us," he said, up on the ladder.

"You think it was somebody Jarrod sent?"

"I think somebody stood at this gate in the rain with a phone, and it wasn't your dad. He doesn't know where the camera is on his."

The camera sent pictures to his phone and mine.

By Tuesday it had caught two raccoons and a heron.

On Wednesday morning it caught a white Range Rover.

I was in the main shed with a lumber driver, signing for a stack of white oak.

Two men from the marina next door had come over to help Cullen hang the Wilhelmina's garboard plank.

My father sat on his bucket by the bow, giving orders nobody had asked for.

Kiersten walked in through the big doors.

White suit. White sneakers, for the gravel.

Behind her came a man with a clipboard and a tape measure on his belt.

"Don't mind us," she said. "Just inspecting the collateral."

The marina men stopped with the plank between them.

My father stood up off his bucket.

"Who let you on my yard?"

"Your gate was open, Mr. DeVries." She smiled at him. "And technically, it's a little bit my yard now."

"It's my yard. You own a piece of paper."

"A piece of paper for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars." She turned to the man with the clipboard. "Write down the roof. That's a lot of rust."

He wrote down the roof.

She walked along the Wilhelmina, trailing one red nail down the mahogany.

Cullen set his end of the plank down on the sawhorse.

"Don't touch the boat," he said.

"Or what? You'll post about it?"

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