16. Etta
ETTA
I didn't believe it.
Vincent was a common name. There were probably a hundred bearded men working the sound. I'd barely seen his face in the rain and the storm had left me rattled enough to see things that weren't there.
I had work. I had a business to rebuild and bills to pay and no time to stand around inventing reasons to feel worse than I already did.
"Vincent," he said. "But he prefers Vinny."
That was what Orrin had told me. Standing in his office with his eyes on his desk like the name didn't mean anything at all.
But Vinny wasn't a name anymore. It was a person I'd known once. A boy who'd worked his uncle's deadrise at fourteen and earned a nickname on that dock and left it there when he grew up and built an empire.
I was the only person alive who knew he'd ever been called that.
Because he'd told me. Once. On a boat. The first summer.
I let it sit for two days.
On the third morning I went down to clean out the Charlene.
The deck was still muddy from the storm. I scrubbed it down, coiled the lines, checked the engine one more time to make sure it would turn over clean when I needed it.
Then I started on the gunwales.
That's when I found it.
Wedged against the inside edge of the port rail where it met the deck.
A ring.
Gold. Worn soft at the edges. Bright where something had been rubbing against it every day for months.
My ring.
The one I'd given back to him the day I left.
I picked it up and held it in my palm. It was warm from the sun. The band was thinner than I remembered. Softer. The gold had been worn down by years of being on a hand and then hung on a chain and rubbed against something metal day after day.
It must have come off during the tow. Slipped free. Landed here on my deck where I would find it three days later while I was trying not to think about who had been on the other end of that line.
I closed my hand around it.
I sat down on the deck and I did not move for a while.
After a long time I put the ring in my pocket. I finished cleaning the boat. I went back up to my room and I put it in the drawer beside my bed under a sweater I never wore.
I closed the drawer.
I worked the rest of that day and I slept badly and when I woke up the next morning I knew I wasn't going to be able to leave it alone.
I went to Insley's.
Orrin was out on the water. Curtis was in the shucking house checking traps.
"I need to see your day-hire sheets," I said.
Curtis looked at me. "What for?"
"I just need to see them."
He studied my face for a second. Then he put down the trap he was holding and wiped his hands on his jeans.
"All right."
He took me into the office and pulled a file box out from under the desk.
"How far back you want?"
"Last fall," I said.
He handed me the stack. "Take your time."
I went through them one by one.
The name was there on every page. Neat handwriting. Slanted a little to the right. I knew it the way you know the sound of your own voice played back on a recording.
Vinny. No surname. Just the one word and then a blank where a last name should have gone, on every sheet, going back months.
I'd seen that handwriting on the backs of photographs. On cards stuck to the refrigerator. On the line at the bottom of a check for the electric bill. That was the month after we got married when he'd been out for six days and I'd been too proud to ask him to come in early just to sign it.
On birthday cards. On ticket stubs from the ferry to Ocracoke the summer he surprised me with a long weekend. On a napkin from the restaurant where we'd gone for our first anniversary.
I knew that handwriting better than I knew my own.
The entries went back to last fall. Four days a week at first. Then five. Then six. Then seven.
Four in the morning starts. Sometimes five hours on the water. Sometimes eight. Always signed out by early afternoon. Always the same signature at the bottom.
Eight months.
"You find it?" Curtis asked.
"Yeah," I said.
I put the sheets back. I left.
I went to the docks and I pulled the delivery logs. Every crate that had come into Boone & Daughter since I reopened had a supplier code stamped on the side.
Insley's code.
Every single one.
I went back through the fall. Through the coldest months. Through the thaw into spring.
Hundreds of crates. Thousands of oysters. All of them from Insley's lease. All of them sorted and loaded and trucked in by hands I knew even when I didn't want to know them.
I stood there with the logs in my hands and I understood what I was looking at.
Every oyster my people had shucked since the day I went under had come out of the water by his hands. And he had never been paid. And nobody had been told.
He'd kept my business alive. Kept my people working. And he'd done it in the cold and the dark and the wet, four in the morning, six days a week, for eight months.
And I hadn't known.
I sat down on the dock because my legs wouldn't hold me anymore.
I stayed there until I could breathe again.
I spent the next two days trying to find the angle.
I asked the fuel manager at the commercial dock if Magnussen Seafood had an account there. He checked. They didn't.
I asked the wholesaler in Norfolk if there'd been any arrangement on the back end. Any deal. Anything at all.
"Day hire," the manager said. "No name on file."
I went back to Curtis.
"The man working for Orrin," I said. "Did he ever ask Orrin for anything? Any favors? Any deals?"
Curtis shook his head. "He asked us not to say anything. That's all I know."
"Not to say anything about what?"
"About him being here."
"Why?"
"Didn't say. Just said he'd appreciate it if we kept it quiet."
"Did Orrin try to pay him?"
"Eventually. Once the man had proved out. Orrin couldn't offer at first. Didn't have it. But after a while he started leaving envelopes. Cash. End of every week. Man wouldn't take them."
"What do you mean he wouldn't take them?"
"Said no thank you and walked away. Every time. Orrin stopped trying after a few months. Keeps the money in his desk. Says he'll give it to him when he's ready."
That was worse.
Because it meant he hadn't wanted anything. Not money. Not recognition. Not even for me to know.
I kept looking anyway. I wanted to find something that would prove this was something I could understand. Something that would let me put it down and walk away.
I didn't find it.
Because there was nothing to find.
I was on the deck at the shucking house when Daniella came by.
She'd been getting stronger since the transplant. She still moved slow but her color was better and she wasn't using the cane anymore.
"How's the Charlene?" she asked.
"She's good."
"Engine holding?"
"Yeah. Curtis thinks I should replace the fuel pump before next season but it'll hold till then."
Daniella sat down on the bench outside the door.
"That was something," she said. "Out there in the storm."
I didn't say anything.
"Mama said you handled it good. Kept your head."
"Didn't have much choice."
"The man who came out for you," she said. "He looked familiar."
I stopped scrubbing.
"Familiar how?"
"I don't know. Just the way he stood. The way he moved. Even with the beard." She thought about it. "He looked like the fella who drives me to dialysis."
My stomach dropped.
"What fella?"
"The one who drives me. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Has been since last summer."
I put the brush down.
"Daniella. What's his name?"
"Vinny," she said. "Why? You know him?"
I couldn't answer.
She looked at me for a second. Then she got up and left.
I sat down on the deck and I stayed there until I could stand again.
I went to see Yolanda that night.
She was at her house. I knocked and she opened the door and when she saw my face she let me in without a word.
We sat at her kitchen table.
"You knew," I said.
"Yes."
"He's been driving Daniella."
"Since last summer."
"And you never told me."
"No."
I looked at her. It felt like being hit.
"Why?" I asked.
The word broke when I said it. I hated that she could hear it.
Yolanda didn't look away.
"You told me not to," she said. "Last spring. Right after you left him. You sat at this table and you told me that if he ever came around I was not to tell you. You said you didn't want to know."
I remembered.
"And when he showed up last summer asking if he could drive Daniella," Yolanda said, "I didn't tell you. Because you'd asked me not to."
I put my head in my hands.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Don't be."
"Yolanda—"
"He asked if he could help," she said. "He said he had the route and he knew she needed rides and he wanted to do it. I told him I'd have to ask you. He said don't. He said if you knew it would stop you from letting her take the help."
I couldn't speak.
"So I didn't ask," Yolanda said. "I said yes and I kept my mouth shut.
And every Tuesday and Thursday for eight months he's picked her up at seven thirty in the morning and driven her to Norfolk and waited while she had her treatments and brought her home.
And on Thursdays he buys her a milkshake.
Chocolate. Because that's what she likes. "
Her voice was calm. Steady. There was no apology in it.
"The day the transplant call came in," she said, "it was a Tuesday. Four hours to get there. He drove. Waited in the parking lot for six hours while they did the surgery. Brought her home. Didn't tell anybody."
She reached across the table. She took my hand.
"Why would you hide this from me?" I asked.
She didn't look away.
"Because he wants to earn your love this time," she said.
I stared at her.
"That's what this is," Yolanda said. "You know that. He's not trying to get you back. He's trying to be the man you thought you married. And if you know about it then it doesn't count."
I pulled my hand back.
I couldn't stay there anymore.
I left.
Deshawn came to see me the next afternoon.
I was on the Sarah B checking the bilge pump when I heard footsteps on the dock.
I looked up and he was standing there with his hands in his pockets.
"Miss Boone," he said.
I climbed out of the boat.
"Deshawn."
"I need to ask your permission before I say anything," he said.
I waited.
"There are some things you should know about what happened last year," he said. "But I won't tell you unless you say I can. If you want me to walk away right now I will and I won't bring it up again."
I looked at him. He'd always been kind. Even that day at the gala when Sven had left me with him. Even when he'd sent through the cruise booking and looked miserable doing it.
"Does he know you're here?" I asked.
"No ma'am."
"Did he send you?"
"No."
"Then why are you here?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
"Because I was wrong," he said. "And I should've said something. And I didn't."
"Go ahead," I said.
He nodded.
"Simone Astala was fired last spring," he said. "Two weeks after you left. He terminated her."
I didn't say anything.
"She spread a rumor after that. Said your operation had contamination. No proof. No evidence. Just the rumor. The health department came out and cleared you but by then the damage was done."
Deshawn's voice was quiet.
"He pulled every email. Every call log. Every piece of paper she'd ever touched.
And when he had it all he got Kari and Leena Virtanen and the head of the certifying body out of Portland on one call and he put what she'd done on the record.
Terminated the representation agreement.
Put it in writing and sent it to everyone she'd ever worked with. "
My throat was tight.
"He knew it would cost him Scandinavia. Two years of work. Fifteen million dollars. I told him. He did it anyway."
My throat was tight.
"And he signed the company over to me," Deshawn said. "The next day. All of it. Vessels, plants, contracts. Told me he had day-hire work lined up."
I stared at him.
"I told him he was forty-six years old and he'd kill himself out there," Deshawn said. "He didn't care."
He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his jacket.
"The divorce," he said. "He didn't contest it. Told his attorney to move it as fast as the court would allow. Didn't ask for the house. Didn't ask for anything."
He held the paper out to me.
I took it.
"There's a line item in the settlement," he said. "Three hundred and seven. Thirty-eight thousand dollars for independent water testing and bottom certification. That's what brought you back online."
My hands were shaking.
"I'm not here because he sent me," Deshawn said. "He doesn't know I'm here. I came because I was wrong about the sourcing last spring. I knew it was wrong and I got overruled and I stayed anyway. And I watched what it did to you and I didn't say anything."
He stepped back.
"I wanted you to know," he said.
He left.
I stood there on the dock with the paper in my hands and I didn't move for a long time.
There was no angle.
There had never been an angle.
He'd lost everything. He'd given it all away. And he'd done it quietly and he'd told no one and he'd asked for nothing.
And I hadn't been there.
That was what hurt. Not that he'd done it. But that he'd done it alone.
Every one of these discoveries was another month of his life I hadn't been in. Another decision he'd made without me. Another piece of himself he'd torn away and I hadn't been there to help him carry it.
I went back to my room. I sat on my bed. I looked at my hands and they were shaking.
I thought about the handwriting on the day-hire sheets. I thought about the crates with Insley's code stamped on the side. I thought about the milkshakes on Thursdays and the surgery in Norfolk and the mornings at four on a cold deck.
I thought about what Yolanda had said.
Because he wants to earn your love this time.
I stood up.
I didn't know what I was going to say to him. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know if any of this changed anything at all.
But I couldn't not go.
I grabbed my jacket. I found my keys.
I went downstairs.
I got in my truck and I drove.