“Does she need a ride? I can go get her.”
“No, just let her be. Close up if you have to. I don’t know what’s on your plate today.”
There was a pause, and then he said, “You know what? I’ll go pick up Doris. She’ll love it. She’s still pissed we fired her.” Doris was Boon’s eighty-year-old mother, who worked behind the counter one season until the summer tourists complained that the usually fast service was now slow because Doris had fifteen-minute conversations with every local that came in to buy fish.
“You fired her,” I said. “I was fine with making the tourists wait.”
“Which is why you’re out there and I’m in here.”
“Boon, I’m out,” I said, done with the small talk. “These traps aren’t pulling themselves.”
“Wait a sec, now that I have you on the phone. I was just over at the warehouse with Manny. He said Bitty came over for bait this morning and told him he’s missing some strings.”
“Missing how?”
“Missing as in he can’t find them. He thinks they got caught out in the storm that came through a while back. They’d have to travel quite a bit to get to you, but keep an eye out. He’s blue and white.”
Like I needed him to tell me Bitty’s buoy colors. Like I wasn’t the one in these waters every day.
“Tell Jess I hope she feels better. You should be home with her,” Boon said. “Manny said you were coughing up a lung this morning.”
“You’re breaking up, Boon.”
“You can hear me fine.”
“Didn’t catch that. Hanging up now.”
“Catch this. You’re an asshole,” I heard him say before I ended the call. The last thing I needed was Boon and his Clara Barton act. Plus, I wanted the line free in case Jess called. I hoped I hadn’t given her whatever I had.
Not that I’d seen her lately to pass on anything to her.
She used to wait around for me after she finished at the shop in the afternoon. I’d motor in and see her lounging on the pier near our skiff, her feet in the water. She’d come on the boat and talk to me, or help me clean up, coiling the lines, or wiping the deck. Then we’d throw her bike in the bed of the truck and head home.
Now she was never around. It was mostly my fault, with my not getting back to the dock until after five or six. But even the days I was in by four, I’d duck in the shop, and Boon would shrug and tell me I just missed her. Then I’d get home, and she was either not there or locked in her room with the door shut.
Thinking about home now reminded me of Hope. I wondered if she was still angry about last night.
I hadn’t meant to sleep through dinner. But when I got home after work yesterday, Hope had been cooking, and she’d taken one look at me and said go lie down before we eat. So I had, and the next thing I knew Hope was shaking me awake, telling me to change out of my work clothes.
I remember the toothpaste against my teeth was ice, the heat from my fever lighting up my face in the bathroom mirror.
I told Hope not to kiss me when I climbed into bed, that I didn’t want her to catch my cold. I didn’t want her to feel how hot I was either. She’d been on me to go to the doctor, even made an appointment two weeks ago that I’d skipped. I didn’t have the energy to argue with her about it. I’d had colds before. They ran their course. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that.
When I’d climbed into bed, Hope had started talking about Peggy. I couldn’t follow it. I had my back to her, half-asleep, and I heard her say she’d been waiting all day to talk to me about this and I’d slept right through dinner.
Are you awake? she asked, and I mumbled, Mm-hmm.
She kept talking, and then she was shaking me, and I turned my head and said, “Jesus, Hope. What?”
“Why won’t you talk to me about this?” she demanded.
“We need to talk about this right now?” Not that I knew what this was.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Peggy’s husband?”
I craned my neck at her. “Who?”
“Ryland, Jack. Ryland Finn? The guy you picked a fight with me about after our party?”
“I told you I knew him.” I turned over, closed my eyes.
“You told me he was an asshole. That was it.”
“He is an asshole.”
“Well, he told Peggy the same thing about you.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it? Why? Why would he say that?”
“Maybe he doesn’t like my cooking,” I said into the pillow.
“That’s not funny, Jack. I’m serious.”
I didn’t answer because Ryland Finn was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I hadn’t thought about him since I’d cut his traps more than a month ago.
“Peggy said he told her your traps are in his territory.”
I pushed up on my elbow and looked at her. “Hope. Peggy’s your friend. I get that. Keep me out if it.”
“I know you don’t like her husband. But I’m asking you why he would say that.”
“And I’m saying it has nothing to do with you.”
“What has nothing to do with me?” she said, standing up, her voice getting louder.
I turned over, pulled the covers up to my shoulders.
“Jack. Wake up. Sit up.” She leaned over and shook my shoulder.
“Go to sleep, Hope.”
“I’d like to know what happened between the two of you.”
I stayed quiet. She didn’t want to know what happened. But I couldn’t tell her this. I couldn’t tell her any of it.
“So that’s it?” she asked.
When I didn’t answer, she sighed. I felt her eyes on me. It was a moment before the bed dipped and she got in.
I felt her fingertips on my shoulder. I reached back and grabbed her hand, pulled it across my middle.
“I’m on your side, Jack. Whatever it is. I’ll be on your side.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She leaned her forehead against my shoulder, and I felt her nod.
I was sorry. Sorry about the side of the story she knew nothing about. Sorry about the side of me she knew nothing about. Hope turned off the light, and there was darkness, overtaking me. A thick black oil spreading through my body, heavy and suffocating, making it difficult to breathe. I wondered if I had brought this year to us; if losing her was payback for my mistakes; the universe handing me what I deserved.
They say the sea hates a coward. That it finds out everything you did wrong. That sooner or later, the sea will catch up to you. Demand of you. Make you suffer the truth.
?13
Jess
I didn’t tell Alex that I faked being sick to get out of work just so I could go with him.
He’d patched the crack in my sailboat and wanted to take it out for a test sail on the river behind the Salt House, where the current was calm and the riverbank just a short swim in case the repair didn’t hold.