Chapter 17: The East Road

Rafe's POV

At 5:50 in the morning I was on the dock with a bucket of water and a deck brush.

Jo was asleep upstairs with her hair across my pillow.

I had not slept at all, and I did not mind.

I heard the truck before I saw it.

It came down the gravel at a crawl with its lights off, a gray Ford with a toolbox in the bed.

I knew that truck.

I had watched it sit on the east road for two hours once, with its engine running.

I set the brush down.

Frank Brennan got out in a pressed shirt and carried a clipboard under one arm.

He walked the length of my dock slowly, looking at the pilings.

"Donnelly," he said.

"Mr. Brennan."

"You've kept the place up."

"It's my father's."

"Was." He stopped four feet away. "I came to settle this."

"Settle what?"

"Your booking for the fourteenth."

He drew a check from under the clip and held it out between two fingers.

It was made out to Donnelly's Boathouse for fifty thousand dollars.

The memo line said: Release of date.

I looked at it for a long time.

"The hall books at nine thousand," I said. "Your daughter's deposit was nine thousand two hundred."

"Call the rest your trouble."

"My trouble."

"You don't need this wedding. You've got a business to build. I'm told the roof leaks."

"It does."

"Fifty thousand fixes a roof." He leaned in a little. "And you walk away from her a second time. You're good at it."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Four to One: Outvoted at My Own Wedding from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.