Chapter 7 #3
She did what she had been doing for four years, which was put her hand on the cleat at the head of the slip and feel the wood of the planking under her boots and the weight of the dock under her feet.
She did the small specific thing she’d learned to do at five forty-three for four years, which was let the dock be the dock and the slip be the slip and the absence be the absence.
Then she did something she hadn’t done at the head of a slip on her own marina in four years.
She looked at the man beside her.
Just looked.
He was already looking at her.
Neither of them said anything for the count of about four breaths, and the four breaths were the longest four breaths Sloane Mercer had spent on her own dock in four years.
At the end of the four breaths she turned away first, not because she wanted to turn away first but because turning away first was something she could still control.
“I’m going to check the rest of the dock.”
“I’ll come.”
“No.”
She said the no without thinking about it. He didn’t move. He waited the count it took for her to decide whether she meant the no, and she meant it, and she said it again.
“No. Thank you. I want to do the rest myself.”
“All right.”
“Ethan.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to ask you the question later.”
“You said.”
“Today. This afternoon.”
He didn’t answer right away. The brown eyes with the small fleck of green didn’t move off her face.
The small, careful smile she’d seen at the corner of his mouth at six thirty-two on Tuesday wasn’t there.
He looked, in the pale gold morning, like a man who had been waiting for a sentence for a long time and had heard the sentence land.
“I’ll be on the boat.”
“Good.”
He went up the dock toward Pier Three. He didn’t look back.
She knew he didn’t look back because she watched him not look back the whole way up the pier and across the boardwalk and onto Pier Three to his own slip, and the not-looking-back was a man holding the line a woman had drawn at the head of her brother’s empty slip, and the man holding the line was the man who’d been on her dock since six thirty-two on Tuesday morning.
She stood at the head of slip nine for another count of about ten breaths.
Then she walked to Pier Two.
Slip ten was the cleat she’d need to replace this afternoon; slip eleven had a fender she’d pulled in; slip twelve’s halyard was tied off.
She walked each slip with the small inspection of a marina owner who’d secured nineteen boats in a fifty-knot wind and wanted to see whether the work she’d done at four-forty would hold at six-thirty, and the work held.
The lines were where she’d left them, the Bimini on the center console was down where she’d lowered it, the cockpit cover on the Grady-White was snapped where Ethan had snapped it.
She finished the pier at six thirty-five and started back up toward the boardwalk.
Then she heard the engines.
They came in from the east, low and steady, the unmistakable double-throated sound of a forty-foot Bertram running at idle through the breakwater.
Sloane stopped on the planking and turned.
The Bertram came around the channel marker at six thirty-six and angled in toward Pier Two at the unhurried pace a man brought a forty-foot diesel into her own slip at idle, and Doyle Pruitt was at the wheel in a yellow oilcloth coat she’d never seen him wear before.
He was bringing her in alone.
Sloane walked back down Pier Two to slip nine.
The Bertram came in along the pier with the small, careful inches of a Navy boatswain bringing a boat into her slip in the wake of a storm, and Sloane was at the cleat at the bow end by the time Doyle had her angled in, and she reached for the bow line he tossed her without his having to ask.
“Need a hand with the lines?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.”
She took the bow. He came off the helm and onto the side deck and tossed the stern, and she walked the bow line to her cleat and figure-eighted it tight, and Doyle worked the stern from the boat, and the Bertram settled into slip nine.
She’d settled into slip nine on a thousand Thursday mornings before this one, except this time her owner was wet through and his hands were red along the knuckles and he hadn’t shaved since at least yesterday morning.
Sloane wrapped the bow line and stepped back from the cleat.
“Where were you?”
She said it neighborly. No weight in it. The same offer she’d have made George Halsey or Greg Bonner or any of her long-time tenants bringing a boat in after a hard night.
“Took her out for a shakedown yesterday afternoon. Couldn’t get her back in before dark. Tied her up at a friend’s slip up the channel.”
“In a storm.”
“Couldn’t leave her on a strange cleat in fifty knots. Came back this morning early to bring her in.”
“That’s a long night.”
“It was a long night.”
“Glad you made it in.”
“Glad to be in.”
Doyle stepped off the side deck onto the planking and the Bertram rocked once and steadied, and he looked at her for a half-second longer than a man looked at a marina owner he’d known five years, and what was in the half-second was the small careful calculation of a man trying to read whether the marina owner who’d just helped him tie off was the marina owner he thought she was.
She gave him nothing.
She’d been giving men at her dock nothing for fifteen years, and the giving-them-nothing was a face her father had taught her, and her face today was that face.
“I’m going up to start the coffee,” she said. “There’ll be some at the office in about ten minutes if you want it.”
“Thanks, Sloane.”
“Welcome.”
She walked back up Pier Two.
She didn’t look back at slip nine until she’d reached the head of the boardwalk, and when she looked back, Doyle was on his transom with a coil of dock line in his hand, looking up the pier at her with the same half-second calculation in his face, and she pretended not to see him looking.
She turned at the kiosk, crossed to the office side door, and went in.
The kiosk light came on at six forty-one.
She stood at the back counter with both hands flat on the wood and didn’t move for a full minute.
There was no friend with a slip up the channel.
She’d known there wasn’t a friend with a slip up the channel the moment Doyle had said it, because Doyle Pruitt didn’t have a friend on this part of the coast who’d let him on their dock for the night, because Doyle Pruitt didn’t have friends.
He had a marina owner who took his money and a bait-shop owner who sold him gear and a marina tenant or two who tolerated him at the counter, and none of them would have given him a slip in a storm.
He’d been somewhere yesterday afternoon, somewhere overnight, and he’d come back this morning in the kind of weather a man only ran a boat through if he had a reason to, and the reason wasn’t the friend with the slip.
She added the lie to the shelf behind the insurance certificates.
The shelf was full now.
She made the coffee.