Chapter 5: Net Loft

By day fourteen I had learned three things.

The auction house opened at four in the morning.

My husband slept five hours a night and ate standing up.

And the weights on the ice plant sheets never matched the weights on the dock sheets, by a little, every single week.

I had written the difference on a card and put it in my bag.

I didn't mention it yet.

On Saturday evening he was not at the house.

Avó, at the stove with her cane, said without turning around, "He goes to the loft when he is deciding."

"What loft?"

"Over the east wharf. His father's. Take a coat, the nets are cold."

I took a coat.

The Sequeira dock was quiet at that hour, with the scallopers tied up three deep and the lights coming on one by one along the pier.

The net loft stood at the end of it, a long shingled building with an outside stair.

I climbed the stairs and pushed the door.

It was one big room under the rafters, smelling of tar and salt and old rope.

Heaps of net lay folded against the walls, and a long sailmaker's table ran down the middle, scarred and bare, under a single bulb.

Vasco was standing at the window with his back to the room and a paper in his hand.

He didn't turn.

"You're early," he said.

"It's day fourteen."

"It's seven-ten. The day ends at midnight."

"I didn't come to count," I said.

I closed the door behind me and leaned on it.

"You haven't filed," I said.

"No."

"Why?"

"I haven't decided," he said.

"You've had fourteen days."

"I know how long I've had." He turned.

He held up a sheet of legal pad, covered in crossed-out lines.

"I wrote it three times. One page on why I should file. One on why I shouldn't. The second page was longer."

"What did it say?"

"That you cooked for forty people with no chair," he said.

He put the paper down.

"That you took Henrique's scale ledger and never once complained about it. That my grandmother likes you, and she doesn't like anyone."

"That's not a reason."

"It's a list," he said.

"Debtors don't climb the net loft," I said.

His eyes sharpened.

"You said it on the wedding night. In the morning, you're my debtor."

I pushed off the door and walked down the length of the table.

"I've been your debtor for fourteen days. I've been good. I've been in bed by ten, and you've slept in the chair and watched me not sleep."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Sister Ran Before the Wedding, So I Said I Do from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.