Chapter 4: The Mast Step

Gran sat down on the edge of the railway and lit a cigarette she clearly wasn't supposed to have.

"Well, shit," she said.

Seth took the letter from me and read it twice.

Bess read it over his shoulder and said a word I didn't know she knew.

"Three hundred eighty," Seth said. "We were paying it. Every month. The bank never said a thing about selling it."

"Banks don't call to chat," Gran said.

"Can you pay it off?" I asked.

Gran laughed smoke out of her nose.

"Honey, I can pay for chowder."

She pointed her cigarette at the shed doors.

"There's only one thing in there worth that kind of money. Come on. You might as well meet her."

The hull in the middle of the shed was bigger up close than it had looked from the woodstove.

Forty-two feet of white oak frames, with long cedar planks running halfway up her sides.

Above that, nothing but ribs and sky through the skylights.

"Wind Rose," Gran said. "A sloop. Pure racing lines, the way they drew them a hundred years ago."

"Who's she for?"

"An old fool who's won the Classic Regatta six times and wants to win it once more before he dies."

"He's seventy-nine. He says that gives him a deadline."

"Six hundred forty thousand," Seth said. "Four hundred ten of it on delivery."

"And she has to race on September twelfth," Bess said. "In the Classic. That's in the contract. He's very serious about it."

I looked up at the empty ribs.

"Who designed her?"

Nobody answered right away.

"My husband," Gran said. "He finished the drawings in January."

"He died in February with his hand on that plank there. The one with the pencil mark."

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