Chapter 10 - The Salt Air and the Sun
The dog was ninety-four pounds of pure, uncoordinated golden retriever.
His name was Barnaby Two, though Ren mostly called him "Captain."
He was six months old, his paws were too big for his legs, his tail knocked over coffee mugs from the low workbench with the regularity of a metronome, and he had an absolute, religious devotion to sleeping on Ren’s feet whenever she was sitting down.
It was late May, nine months after the fire.
The ice had cleared from Lake Michigan three weeks ago. The water was that dazzling, crystalline turquoise that only exists for a few weeks in the spring, before the summer algae blooms turn the shallows to green jade.
Port Mercer Marine Repair had two new service bays.
The property was ours now. We hadn't bought it with Thatcher money—every single cent of the criminal restitution awarded by the federal court had been placed into an irrevocable medical and educational trust that neither I nor anyone else could touch until Ren turned twenty-five.
We bought it because Vance’s friends in the Small Business Administration had reviewed our commercial loan application with that quiet, extraordinary speed that happens when someone at the director level puts a blue routing slip on the top of the file.
The sign above the main door had been repainted:
**CARTER & DAUGHTER MARINE REPAIR**
*Engines, Hulls, and Heavy Diesel*
The Bertram 31 was in the water.
She was sitting in Slip 1, her twin Detroit Diesels humming with that deep, rhythmic, sixty-cycle thrum that you feel in your dental fillings before you hear it in your ears. The white gelcoat on her hull was new, gleaming in the morning sun like fresh snow.
Ren was sitting on the engine box, wearing her purple sneakers, a pair of miniature canvas work bibs, and a high-visibility orange life jacket with a plastic whistle attached to the zipper.
Captain was sitting between her knees, his chin resting heavily on her left thigh, his golden ears twitching every time a seagull cried out from the top of the pilings.
The silver seam on Ren’s cheek was pink in the morning light.
She didn't wear a bandage anymore. She didn't wear the compression sleeve. When the tourists walked down the docks from the municipal marina and looked at her, Ren didn't look away.
She looked them straight in the eye, gave them a half-smile with her uninjured left cheek, and asked them if they wanted to see her dog do a high-five.
Most of them looked down at their own shoes within three seconds.
I walked down the teak swim platform, carrying two paper cups of hot chocolate from the bakery on the corner—the one that had replaced Graham Thatcher’s favorite real estate office three months ago.
I handed one to Ren.
"Oil pressure’s fifty-five pounds on both sides, little bird," I said, leaning against the cockpit coaming. "Temperature’s holding at one-sixty. We’re ready to run the sea trials."
Ren took a sip, leaving a mustache of chocolate foam across her upper lip.
"Are we going all the way to the lighthouse, Mama?"
"All the way to the light," I said. "And then out to the five-fathom drop to see if the lake trout are running."
She looked out across the harbor.
The Thatcher mansion on the bluff three miles south was empty. The limestone walls were still there, but the wrought-iron gates were chained shut with a federal court seizure notice posted on the stone pillars. The commercial strip malls downtown had been sold to a local cooperative at fifty cents on the dollar. The country club had quietly scrubbed the family name from their donor plaques during the winter renovation, replacing the brass with plain green plastic.
Nobody in Port Mercer talked about the Thatchers anymore.
In small towns, people have a remarkable ability to forget the wealthy once the money stops flowing. When the checks bounce, the aristocracy evaporates, leaving behind nothing but a few bad memories and some empty houses that smell of damp drywall.
Ren set her hot chocolate down on the engine box, reached out with both hands, and buried her fingers into the thick, golden fur behind Captain’s neck.
The dog leaned his heavy head back, his tail thumping once, twice, three times against the white fiberglass deck.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
It was the only sound in the harbor besides the gulls and the clean, steady idle of the twin diesels.
"Mama?" Ren said, looking up at me.
Her good eye was bright, reflecting the wide, endless blue of the Michigan sky.
"Yes, little bird?"
"I like the shop better than the big house."
I reached down, caught her by the hand, and pulled her close until her small forehead rested against the rough canvas of my work jacket.
She smelled of hot chocolate, lake salt, and clean dog fur.
"Me too, Ren," I whispered into her hair. "Me too."
I stood up, walked to the helm, and reached for the heavy chrome Morse shift levers.
May you like
I slipped them into gear.
The Bertram 31 surged forward with a smooth, heavy push, her bow lifting slightly as the bronze propellers bit into the cold, clear water, carrying us away from the dock, past the pilings, out through the stone breakwater into the wide, open, and beautiful silence of the lake.
