Chapter 3 #2
“Hold up.” She wedged two fingers into the gap and worked out a battered tin.
Red paint, white letters rubbed almost smooth: ALTOIDS.
She knew that tin. Her father’s pockets had been bottomless for them when she was little.
Wintergreen for headaches, peppermint for scrapes, always a tin rattling in the glove box of the truck.
Her pulse did a shift she didn’t like. She flicked the lid with her thumb. The hinge squealed. Inside lay a small coil of red cord, a brass washer, and… her breath stuttered— a tiny carved rabbit, worn silky at the ears.
For a second, the engine room was their old lake cabin kitchen—her six-year-old legs twined around the rung of a stool, her father sliding a length of rope across the table and wrapping it around her wrist. The rabbit comes out of the hole, goes around the tree, back down the hole.
See? He’d carved the rabbit in one long evening, smelling like sawdust and cheap coffee, and had tied the little bowline for her over and over until she could do it, eyes closed.
Little mate, as long as you can tie this, you’ll never drift away from me.
He’d said it like gospel. He’d meant it.
Her throat burned. She didn’t want it to.
She didn’t want anything about him to get in through the anger she’d lacquered on thick enough to weather a hurricane.
But the rabbit sat there in a bed of wintergreen dust like proof that once upon a time he’d remembered her favorite flavor and the way to her laugh.
Rone stilled beside her. “What is it?”
She couldn’t talk right away. She didn’t owe him that, she reminded herself. But the word loan was still hanging between them, and the blower ticked time away, and Echo had scooted an inch closer—silent, like he could smell the shift in her posture.
“It’s mine,” she said. Her voice came out huskier than she wanted. She cleared it. “He carved this. Taught me a bowline with it. He… used to keep mints around for me.”
“Rabbits and knots.” Rone’s tone was neutral, a safe place to stand. “Old trick.”
“It worked.” She set the tin on a narrow shelf and slipped the cord free. The knot was perfect—bowline clean and snug, the rabbit threaded through like it had breached from the story itself. She put her thumb on the washer and felt an engraved burr. “There’s something on this.”
Rone angled his flashlight. The light caught under the cheap brass. Isobel eased the washer, flipped it. Letters crowded the curve in a cramped hand that had learned to write on a rocking table: FOR FIRST MATE—ALWAYS HOME. —DAD
Not Shade. Not even his first name. Dad.
The word went through her like cold water, shocking and bracing at once.
He had left. He had lied with a boat name.
He had made choices that blew people off course.
All that could still be true. And also—he had put this where she, not a stranger, would find it.
Hidden where mints would go. Tied the knot the way he’d taught her hands to move.
Signed it with the one thing she hadn’t let herself say out loud in years.
Echo rose and pushed his head into her knee like he’d been cued. Isobel let her palm settle between his ears. The dog’s skull was warm, solid as anything in her new life. Something inside her loosened with a quiet snap.
She looked up. Rone’s face was a study in restraint, a man stepping back inside himself so she had space inside herself. The offer of the hotel sat unspoken on his tongue again, and she found she didn’t mind it.
“Isobel.” The way he said her name sounded like he’d put it on a tool rack and planned to use it carefully.
“I’m not leaving,” she said, but it didn’t come out as defiance this time. It came out as a line she was willing to hold because of something besides pride. “But… the loan. I’ll think about it.”
He nodded once, not pushing, and tipped his flashlight toward the starter. “Blowers are done. Ready?”
She tucked the rabbit and washer back into the tin and slid it into her pocket like it was expensive glass. “Ready.”
He returned to the engine room and showed her the fuel valves and the generator, pointing and nodding at various pieces of machinery and tubes. Not talking down to her, but explaining with few words.
When done, they went to the breaker and he showed her what needed to be flipped on before leading her to the pilot house.
She glanced at the romantic, solid wood wheel but then glanced at the controls. “I’ve only run sailboats on the lake…” she eyed the knob that said thruster.
“No worries. This is a single screw, so you have a bow thruster to help push the bow. It’s electric, so you can’t hold it for long.
Two to three second burst. Shade never upgraded to hydraulic and didn’t add a stern thruster, so you’ll only be able to take her out of here on slack tide, and her draft is over five feet, so high tide is the only time you won’t run aground.
She blinked at him, appreciating him.
“What?”
“I’m just surprised you’re taking the time to explain this when all you want is for me to leave the boat, not learn to operate it.”
He took in a breath. Echo let out a short bark.
“You love this stuff, don’t you? Boats?”
He returned to showing her the controls, but part of her didn’t want to admit she enjoyed this. A moment of patient instruction and guidance. “You remind me of him.”
He froze, his hand on the helm, and quirked a brow.
“I don’t know this Shade you talk about, but my father in childhood—the one who I thought loved me—you remind me of him. A man of few words, but soft and kind with his teaching.”
Rone adjusted his stance and pointed to a button. “Let’s test her out.”
Echo shook his head as if telling her not to push, so she didn’t.
Rone turned the key.
The starter clanked. Coughed. Silence.
He didn’t curse. He took her hand and pushed her finger to a button. “Hold this.”
He cranked again. He didn’t look at her to see if she’d flinch. “Again,” he said. “She’s been sleeping a long time.”
They waited. On the fourth attempt, something caught—ragged, reluctant, then alive. The engine shook the room into motion. Vibration became rhythm.
Isobel laughed outright, surprised at the sound. Rone didn’t smile big, but he did then—just a flash—like a man who’d gotten paid in something besides cash.
Upstairs, the A/C finally found its legs and shoved a breath of honest cool through the vents. The rabbit tin was a weight in her pocket. Echo’s tail thumped a slow, relieved beat.
Always home, the cheap brass whispered against her thigh.
She looked at Rone and felt the smallest click of something she didn’t want to name.
Not romance or affection, she had no room for that despite the ruggedly handsome, soft touch of a man in her loneliness.
Just… recognition. Perhaps he wasn’t the monster she’d thought him to be, but he was still a man who could do wrong.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For the engine?” he asked.
“For not… pushing,” she said, touching the tin. “For helping despite your desire for me to leave.
He dipped his chin. “We’ll keep it running.”
Echo’s ears tipped, body going still a second later, gaze cutting toward the front windows. Rone’s head turned too—automatic, like they shared a neck.
“I’ll get her running and sold,” he said quietly, voice gone serious again.
Isobel’s fingers tightened around the rabbit in her pocket.
And for the first time since the attorney had slid her the keys and the lie of a will, here felt less like a punishment and more like an opportunity to discover what really happened to the man that once cuddled, fished, and kissed her wounds away.
Rone hosed the salt off the top deck, steady arcs, the water turning silver in the last of the light before it sheeted down the swim platform.
The boat drank and bled at the same time—scuppers spitting, last of the soap suds swirling then disappearing.
Inside, the A/C hummed like a contented machine.
Through the pilothouse glass, he studied Isobel.
Not frantic. Methodical. She leaned over the helm with a coil of painter’s tape sliding down her arm and a Sharpie in her fist, labeling buttons and switches where the names had been worn off.
For the past two days, she’d asked smart questions, wanting to know how everything worked.
Inquisitive and capable, but despite not admitting it, nerves kept drawing her attention out the window or behind her.
It had been quiet, though. He knew he was kidding himself, hoping they had found what they were looking for the other day when they’d tossed the pilot house.
Echo flopped on the deck by his side with his head hanging over the edge, watching the water like it might tell him a secret. After a beat, the dog tipped his gaze up at Rone—one of those expressive, human looks that said more than a bark ever could.
“Don’t start,” Rone said, palming the spray pattern down to a rinse. “I’m not her savior. I’m not here for her. We’re just getting the boat to tolerable. Then she sells. Then we’re done. I’m not going to let any more drama happen on my dock. It’s been quiet since Shade…”
Rone didn’t finish the statement because the idea that he didn’t push to see Shade’s body still haunted him. They said he’d been identified through dental records, and he’d told himself that was it. But the way the Sheriff ushered him out warned of a cover-up.
Echo blinked, unimpressed. The ear closest to Rone cocked out like a challenge.
“I mean it.” He set the hose down and reached for the long-handled brush.
“We keep the water where it belongs, the power where it’s supposed to be, and we don’t catch feelings for stubborn women who think a cot in a motel is a battle lost. I know this is a lonely life, but it’s what we chose. It’s what we want.”
The dog’s gaze didn’t waver. Rone looked away first. Coward.