19. Etta #2
She stared at me. Something broke in her expression. Desperation under the anger. Fear under the professional polish she'd worn for so long.
"You can't do this. You can't just?—"
"Now run along," I said. "My husband and I are going to take a quaint little trip on the bay. Just the two of us."
The words came out before I thought about them.
Husband.
Like it was simply what he was. Like the papers that said otherwise didn't matter. Like it had never been anything else.
The room was completely silent.
Simone's mouth opened again. Still nothing.
Behind me I heard someone move. Footsteps. Ray's voice.
"You need something, Etta?"
"Ms. Astala was just leaving."
More footsteps. Jesse. Two others. Maybe three.
They came and stood behind us. Not threatening. Just there.
A wall between her and the door she'd walked through. Between her and the building. Between her and anything she thought she still had a right to.
Simone looked at all of us. At me. At Sven. At the men standing there with their arms crossed and their faces set.
She looked at the water through the open door. At the boats tied up at the dock. At the sound beyond them.
At everything she'd tried to take and failed to hold.
"This isn't over," she said.
Her voice was shaking now. All the professional polish gone. All the warmth and the careful words stripped away.
Nobody answered her.
She turned and walked toward the door. Her heels clicked loud on the concrete. The sound echoed off the walls.
Ray and Jesse stepped aside to let her pass.
The door swung open. Closed behind her.
We heard her car door slam. Heard the engine start. Heard gravel spray from under the tires as she reversed too fast.
The sound faded. Disappeared. Gone.
The wind moved across the water outside. A gull called somewhere over the sound. The rigging on the Sarah B made a soft chiming noise against the mast.
Ray cleared his throat.
"Y'all all right?" he asked.
"We're fine," I said. "Thank you."
"She give you any trouble before we came over?"
"No. Nothing we couldn't handle."
Ray looked at Sven. Sven looked back.
"She comes back," Ray said, "you let us know."
Sven nodded. "Appreciate it."
"We look after our own," Ray said.
He said it like it was simple. Like it was just a fact. Like there was no question about what that meant or who it included.
Our own.
Something passed between them then. Some understanding I wasn't part of. Some recognition that men give each other when they've been through something together and come out the other side.
Then Ray turned and went back to his station. The others followed. The sound of knives on shells started up again. Steady. Familiar.
I looked at Sven.
"You want to go out?" I asked.
"Now?"
"Unless you've got somewhere else to be."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head.
"No," he said. "I don't."
We took the Charlene.
I didn't ask if he wanted to take his boat or mine. I just walked down to the dock and he followed me.
The water was flat and gray under a sky that was starting to break up. The clouds were moving east. It wasn't going to rain. Not today.
I climbed aboard and started the engine. It turned over on the first try. Smooth and steady. The sound was familiar. Comforting.
Sven untied the lines. Bow first. Then stern. He coiled them properly and stowed them and stepped aboard without me having to tell him where anything went.
His movements were easy now. Practiced. Like he'd been doing it every day for years.
He had been doing it every day. Just not here. Not on this boat. Not on this water.
Until now.
He sat on the bench beside the helm.
"You all right?" I asked.
He looked up at me.
"Yes."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. I'm all right."
I looked at him. At his hands. At the new calluses forming across his palms. At the way he held himself now. Different than he had been a month ago. Quieter. More settled.
"Good."
I turned back to the helm.
I backed us out of the slip. Turned us toward open water. Opened the throttle and felt the boat respond under my hands.
"Where are we going?" he asked after a minute.
"Out," I said.
"How far?"
"Far enough."
He didn't ask anything else.
I ran us out past the lease. Past the buoys that marked our forty acres. Past the bars I knew by heart and could name in the dark. Out toward the middle of the sound where there was nothing but gray water and low clouds and the wind coming in cold off the ocean.
When we were a mile out I cut the engine.
The boat drifted. Rocking gently in the current. The sound of the water against the hull was the only noise. That and the wind in the rigging. That and our breathing.
I stood there at the helm for a moment.
Looked out at the water. At the horizon line where the gray sea met the gray sky. At the place where they blurred together and you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
Then I reached into my pocket.
I'd been carrying it for weeks. Since the week of the storm. Since the morning I found it on the deck after he'd towed me back and I'd picked it up and put it in my pocket without thinking.
I'd had it with me every day since then. In my jeans pocket. Against my leg. I'd felt it there when I worked the lines. When I stood at this same helm going out in the dark. When I sat across from him at breakfast and didn't say a word about what was weighing down my right front pocket.
The chain was still warm from being against my leg. Silver. Thin. Long enough to wear under a shirt.
I pulled it out and held it in my palm.
The ring hung at the bottom of it. Turning slowly. Catching what little light there was. The one I thought had gone into the bay with everything else.
The one I'd been carrying and never said a word about.
I held it up.
He looked at it.
Then he looked at me.
His face went completely white. Like all the blood had drained out of it. Like the world had stopped and he was the only thing left moving in it.
"Where did you get that?" he asked.
His voice was barely above a whisper. Careful. Like he was afraid the answer might break something.
"Found it on my boat. After you towed me back."
He stood up. Slow. Like he was moving through deep water.
His hand came up. Stopped halfway between us. Like he didn't trust what he was seeing. Like he thought if he reached for it it might disappear.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
I looked at him.
At the man I'd married. At the man I'd left. At the man who'd come back to my dock at four in the morning and stayed.
At his face. At the question in his eyes. At the hurt and the hope and the fear all mixed together in a way I recognized because I'd been carrying it myself for longer than I wanted to count.
"Same reason you didn't."