18. Etta
ETTA
I went back to work.
That was all there was to do.
The water was still cold the morning after I left his kitchen. The Charlene's engine turned over clean and I cast off in the dark and ran my lines the way I'd run them every morning for eight months. Alone.
Daniella met me at the dock when I came in.
"You good?" she asked.
"I'm good," I said.
She nodded and helped me unload. "Mama says she'll come by this afternoon and go over the books."
"Tell her they're clean."
"I already did."
We worked in silence for a while, sorting the catch.
"You want to talk about it?" Daniella asked.
"Not yet."
"All right."
She didn't push. That was one of the things I loved about her.
We didn't talk about it. There wasn't anything to say.
Winter came hard that year. The sound froze over twice and we lost four days to ice. But the bars were clean now and the orders kept coming and Boone & Daughter ran six days a week with all eleven shuckers working.
Daniella got stronger every week. She'd been off the cane for two months by Christmas and she was learning the operation fast. She had good instincts and she didn't need to be told things twice.
"You want me to run the books?" she asked one afternoon in the middle of winter.
"You know how?"
"My mother taught me when I was sixteen. I kept them for her before I got sick. I can do it."
I looked at her. "You sure?"
"I'm sure."
I handed them over.
She was better at it than I was. The numbers balanced every week and she caught two ordering errors in the first month that I'd have missed completely.
"Where'd you learn to do that?" I asked her.
"My mother. She used to say if you can't count your own money you don't deserve to keep it."
"Smart woman."
"She is."
By the end of winter she was running the orders too.
She'd call the buyers in the morning and have the routes planned before I came in off the water.
By the time the water warmed she was out on the Charlene with me three mornings a week, learning to read the bottom the way her mother had taught her before she got sick.
"You're good at this," I told her one morning.
She grinned. "I know."
"Your mother would be proud."
"She is proud," Daniella said. "She tells me every day."
We ran the lines together and the sun came up over the water and I thought about how much I'd missed this. Not just the work, but having somebody alongside me who understood it.
"You ever think about getting your own boat?" I asked.
"Maybe one day. Right now I'm just glad to be out here again."
"Me too."
She looked at me. "You mean that?"
"I do."
"Even with everything?"
"Even with everything."
She was quiet for a minute. Then she said, "My mother says you're the strongest person she knows."
"Your mother's kind."
"No, she's not. She's honest. There's a difference."
I didn't know what to say to that.
Ray Cullens stopped me one day in the shucking house.
"Heard Magnussen signed the whole company over to Deshawn," he said.
"I heard that too," I said.
"You know why?"
"No."
He looked at me for a long moment, like he was trying to decide whether to say something more.
"Seems like a strange thing to do," he said. "Man builds an empire for twenty years and then just hands it over."
"Maybe he had his reasons."
"Maybe." Ray picked up another crate. "Or maybe he just figured out what mattered."
I didn't ask what he meant.
But I thought about it all afternoon.
Spring came and the water warmed and the season opened full. We ran seven days some weeks and the shucking house stayed loud and I went to bed tired every night and slept hard with the window open to the sound of the water.
I had everything I'd had before. The lease. The boats. The people. Boone & Daughter was mine again and nobody had given it to me.
I'd rebuilt it myself.
But it didn't feel the way I thought it would.
Something was still missing.
Curtis told me about the supply work one morning at Insley's when I stopped by to pick up a part for the Charlene's bilge pump.
"You know Magnussen's been buying off Orrin for six months now?" he said.
I stopped. "What?"
"Ever since your water cleared. Your orders came back, Orrin's dropped off, and somebody over at Magnussen started buying off this lease to make up what Orrin lost."
"Who?"
Curtis shrugged. "Some day hire. Comes in at four, works the tide, leaves. Don't talk much. Don't know his name."
But I did.
I stood there with the part in my hands and I didn't say anything.
"Orrin asked him once if he wanted to get paid," Curtis said. "Man just shook his head and walked away. Orrin's got eight months of cash envelopes in his desk drawer with nobody's name on them."
"Eight months," I said quietly.
"Yeah."
"Since my water cleared."
"That's right."
Curtis looked at me. "Orrin says the man shows up every morning before light. Works harder than anybody he's ever had on his dock. Never complains, never asks for anything, just does the work and leaves."
"Why's he telling you this?"
"Because he knows I know you. And he figures maybe you ought to know."
I drove home and I sat in my truck in the driveway for twenty minutes before I went inside.
He'd kept my people working when I thought he'd gutted me. And when I didn't need it anymore he'd kept Orrin solvent instead.
He'd given the company away. All of it. Two hundred vessels and every plant and every contract. And then he'd worked a rival's dock for no wage to keep the water whole.
I went inside. I made coffee. I sat at my kitchen table and I tried to add it all up.
It didn't add up to what I'd thought it was.
It didn't add up to a man who'd put anything above me.
Yolanda mentioned the truck once the season opened.
We were sorting crates in the shucking house and she said it like she was commenting on the weather.
"Sven was headed down Turner Road last week," she said. "Saw your truck coming the other way and turned around before he got to the intersection."
I looked up. "How do you know?"
"Jesse saw it. Told Curtis. Curtis told me."
"He turned around."
"He did."
I set my coffee down.
"He's kept his distance all year, Etta," Yolanda said quietly. "You told him not to come looking and he hasn't. Not once."
"I know."
"So what are you waiting for?"
I didn't have an answer.
"You think he's going to fail?" she asked. "You think he's going to show up one day and prove you were right to leave?"
"I don't know."
"Yes you do. You're just scared."
I looked at her. She looked back.
"What are you scared of?" she asked.
"That it won't be enough," I said. "That I'll go back and it'll be the same and I'll have to leave again."
"And what if it's different?"
"I don't know how to believe that."
Yolanda set down the crate she was holding. "You don't have to believe it. You just have to go see."
"What if I'm wrong?"
"Then you'll know. But right now you don't know anything except that you're miserable."
"I'm not miserable."
She gave me a look.
"I'm not," I said.
"Etta. You've got everything you wanted. Your business is back, your people are working, your water's clean. And you're standing here looking like you lost something anyway."
I didn't say anything.
"Go find out," Yolanda said. "That's all you have to do. Just go find out."
Twice that spring I saw his truck in town and both times it was gone before I got close. Once I saw him at the fuel dock from half a mile out and by the time I came in he'd already cast off.
He never crossed my path. He never invented an errand. He never signaled from the water.
A year of him not coming, and nobody was checking.
I read the letter every night.
I didn't mean to. But I'd brought it home from his kitchen and it was in the drawer beside my bed and some nights I'd open the drawer just to see if it was still there.
And then I'd take it out. And then I'd read it.
I told you the business came first because we needed the security.
What I meant was that I needed it. I thought if I could give you a house that didn't leak and a car that started every time and enough money that you'd never have to choose between paying a bill and fixing a net, that would be the same as being a good husband.
It wasn't. You already had a life. It wasn't glamorous, but it was yours, and you knew what it was worth.
I took you out of it and I thought I was doing you a favor.
I knew it by heart before the spring run.
The night at the house, my voice filled the room before you asked for the divorce. Your hand went up. I did that, and I know exactly what it looked like, and you had no way in the world of knowing it wasn't true.
By early summer I wasn't reading it anymore. I was arguing with it.
He thought he'd taken me out of my life. But he hadn't. He'd just stopped being in it the way I needed him to be.
And by high summer I'd stopped arguing.
The morning Yolanda said it, we were in the shucking house and Daniella was running the offshore order and everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be.
Yolanda was checking inventory and I was updating the board when she said, "You've got it all back."
"I do."
"And you're still not happy."
I looked at her.
"It's not about the business, Etta. It never was."
I didn't say anything.
"You wanted him in it. That's what you told me in Norfolk. You didn't want out. You wanted him in."
"I know."
"So what are you waiting for?"
"I don't know if it's enough," I said.
"What he's done?"
"What he's done. What he's doing. I don't know if any of it means it'll be different."
"It won't ever be enough if you're the one deciding when," Yolanda said. "You'll find another reason. And then another one. And one day you'll look up and he'll be gone for real and you'll spend the rest of your life wondering what would've happened if you'd just gone and asked."
I stood there with a crate of oysters between us and I felt something crack open in my chest.
"He did it," Yolanda said quietly. "He's been doing it for a year. The only question left is what you want."
"I want him," I said.
The words came out before I could stop them.
Yolanda smiled. "Then go get him."
I knew what I wanted.
I'd known for a long time.
I went home that afternoon and I opened the cooler I'd left in the corner of my kitchen last winter. I'd never unpacked it. Never thrown the food away. It had just sat there like a reminder of the day that never happened.
I packed it fresh. Turkey and swiss on the bread he liked. Coffee in the thermos, the dark roast he always bought. Apples and chips and the tin of smoked oysters I'd bought last winter and never opened.
It was the same food I'd made a year ago for a trip that never happened.
I set it by the door.
I didn't sleep that night.
I lay in bed and I thought about every reason not to go. Every way it could go wrong. Every chance I was making a mistake.
And then I thought about Yolanda's question.
What are you waiting for?
I wasn't waiting anymore.
I got up at three and I drove down to Insley's dock in the dark.
The first tide was at four and I knew he'd be there.
I parked at the top of the ramp and I carried the cooler down and I stood there and I waited.
The sky was starting to lighten over the water when I heard his footsteps on the planks.
He stopped when he saw me.
I looked at him. He looked thinner than he had in the kitchen. Older. There were lines around his eyes I didn't remember and his hands were rougher than they'd been when he wore suits every day.
He'd been on the water for a year. Working.
"Etta," he said.
His voice was quiet. Careful.
I set the cooler down at my feet.
"I'm going out," I said. "Are you coming?"
He didn't move. He just looked at me like he was trying to figure out if I was real.
"There's conditions," I said.
He nodded slowly. "All right."
"You come out on the water with me," I said. "Not sometimes. Not when it suits. Not booked in advance. You come."
He looked at me and his face didn't change but something in his eyes did.
Something that looked like hope.
"Yes," he said.
I waited. He didn't add anything. He didn't qualify it. He didn't ask what happens if he can't or what about when the weather turns or whether twice a week would be reasonable.
He just said yes.
I took a breath.
"When I tell you something hurts, you don't fix it. You don't price it. You don't put it anywhere. You listen to the end of the sentence. All the way to the end of it."
His jaw tightened. "Yes."
Still no conditions. Still no negotiation.
One more.
"You don't pay for anything that's mine," I said. "Ever again."
"Yes."
I looked at him and he looked back and there was no hesitation in him. No doubt. No asking for time to think about it or talk to someone or make sure he understood what I was asking.
Just yes.
"I won't be saying any of this twice," I said.
"I know," he said.
The water was moving behind us and the sky was getting lighter and I could see the Charlene tied up at the end of the dock where I'd left her yesterday.
"I'm going out," I said. "Are you coming?"
"Yes," he said.