I Died In His Sick Game novel · Chapter 7 of 24
Chapter 7: Fish Shack
Nan's fish shack sat on pilings over the Barron River, with a tin roof and a hand-painted sign that said SAYWARD'S, SINCE 1971.
Above it were two small rooms and a porch that leaned toward the water.
"The bed's lumpy," Nan said, throwing open the door. "The shower runs hot or cold, never both. The pelicans are loud. Don't feed them, they unionize."
The room had a quilt, a ceiling fan and a window full of river.
Nan brought me a plate.
"Stone crab claws," she said. "Season doesn't open till October. These are last year's, out of the deep freeze. You didn't see them."
They were cold and sweet, and she'd cracked every one for me.
I ate three and put my head down on the quilt and slept for fourteen hours.
When I woke up, my daughter wasn't there.
That was the first thing I knew, every morning, before I knew anything else.
The detectives had come to my hospital room the day I woke and taken my statement.
Two of them, a man and a woman.
They wrote down the motel, the island, the crate, the camera.
The man had asked whether I'd ever gone out there willingly. For a rest. A retreat.
Bradley's lawyer had already called them.
Tilly had gone home from the hospital to Bradley's mother's big house in Port Royal.
I called the house the first morning.
His mother answered.
"She's napping," she said, and hung up.
I called again at four. It rang and rang.
Nan found me on the porch with the phone in my lap.
"Right," she said. "Get dressed. You're working."
"Working?"
"I've got a lunch rush and a busboy with a hangover. You can carry plates or you can sit up here and stare at that phone. Pick."
I carried plates.
An old man in a captain's hat told me I'd put the tartar sauce on the wrong side.
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