Page 69 of Harbor Me

The smile dies. He stands there holding his sunglasses, his expression changing from a smile to a frown. I watch eight thousand dollars of winter storage and maintenance start backing toward the door on two boat-shoed feet, and I genuinely don’t care, which should scare me a lot more than it does. Winters are quiet. I need this man’s business. I just need him out of my face with his talk about me and Vanessa being in love even more.

Marcus suddenly appears with a rag over his shoulder. "Doc. Good to see you. Come on, I'll walk you over. You can pick out your own covered spot before Whitmore takes the whole shed. Our best customer deserves the best spot." He steers him out by the elbow, chatting about haul dates, and Rourke lets himself be steered because Marcus could talk a lobster back into the trap when he sets his mind to it.

Through the workshop window I watch them cross to the office. Vanessa comes out from behind the desk to meet him. Even through the glass I can hear the shape of it. Her voice pitched up bright and warm, laughing at something, walking him through the booking like it's the best part of her week.

So she's fine.

I’m the only one losing my mind over this. I should have known. She walked into the door because she was in a hurry, not because she’s as agitated as I am.

Less than a week after our interlude in her office, after leaving her paper defense on the desk, and she's in there sparkling at a dentist. Great. That makes it easier. Eases the burden of guilt I’ve been carrying over the other night. The voice she’s using on Dr. Rourke is exactly the same one that talked its way into my yard in the first place, and I'm the idiot who let my guard down when I knew better.

I put the grinder to the strut I'm working on and let it scream so I don't have to hear anything else.

When I shut it off, Marcus is back, standing there with his arms crossed. Diesel gets up from his new spot, gives me a long look, and walks out of my line of sight entirely.

"He signed," Marcus says. "No thanks to you. That's an eight-grand contract you tried to throw in the harbor because a nice man mentioned a photograph."

"Then it worked out. Good for you."

"Diesel won't stay in the same room as you. Tommy's scared to talk to you. When you’re not being rude about his jokes, you’re biting his head off over nothing. Yesterday you told him his splice looked like a bird's nest, and it was a fine splice. You know it was."

"Is there a work question in this?"

"No," Marcus says. "There's no work question in this. There’s just me trying to have a reasonable conversation. Guess that’s on me." He goes back to the lift without another word, and that tells me exactly how bad the situation is. Marcus always pushes until he gets what he came for, and this time he’s not bothering.

Friday morning, just after coffee, a silver Buick pulls into the lot and parks crooked across two spaces, the way it has my whole life.

I very strongly suspect my mother isn’t here for a casual visit. Someone must have called her and tattled on me. My money’s on Marcus.

She doesn't come to the workshop. She stands in the middle of the lot with her arms crossed until I go to her, because that trick has worked on me since I was six years old.

"Ma."

"Aiden." She looks me over the way she used to look over half-assed book reports. "Apparently Carol's been sending soup down here. Carol doesn't send soup for nothing. And Missy's telling anyone who'll hold still that you've gone mean as a bull shark. Apparently, you snapped at her in the store when she asked how the new romance is going. Near took the poor woman’s head off. She says people were staring."

"It's a workday. I don’t have time for gossip."

"It's been years since you last tried talking to me in that tone and it didn't go very well for you then either. I’m sure you’re about to fix that attitude and try again." She takes my arm. "Walk me somewhere with coffee."

I bury the sigh I want to give, knowing it won’t get me anything but more trouble. Then I walk her to the caravan that sells coffee down the pier, because the only place with coffee in the boatyard is Vanessa’s office and there's no way I’m having this conversation anywhere near her.

My mother sits on the nearest bench and waits. Her expression implacable. The story comes out of me the way it's been living in me all week. Short, ugly and to the point. I leave out the sex parts and tell her all the rest. The letter. The signature. The fact that she took this job knowing full well who I was. The firing.

She doesn't say anything for a long moment. Then, quietly, "That’s why she was so shaky at lunch that day. When I told her about the storm she went pale as bone and stopped talking for almost ten minutes. I've been wondering about it ever since." She takes a sip of the coffee and makes a face. "Next time don’t buy me this swill. Well. Now I know why she was so affected."

"There's more." I don't know why I say it. It's been chasing me in circles for a week and my mother is the only person on this earth I feel comfortable unburdening myself to. "She says I fished her out of the harbor the summer I was seventeen. She was-"

"The little one," my mother says, like something is finally clicking. "I knew there was something familiar about her face. She had a long braid and the biggest eyes."

"You remember her?"

"I brought a towel and dried her off, Aiden. You gave her your shirt and went running for something else to put on. I sat her on a bait cooler and squeezed water out of her hair. She spent the whole time looking for you to come back like the sun rose out of your pocket." She sets the cup down. "So that was Vanessa."

"So she says."

"So she says." My mother mimics my words in a way I don't appreciate. "And what did you do, when she told you that?"

"I told her she lied to me about two things and fired her." It sounds worse when I see my mother’s face than it did in my head. "She’s been deceiving me right from the get go, what else was I supposed to do? There's a stack of paper on her desk right now, letters, appeals, whatever. She thinks it proves something. I'm not reading it. Nothing in it changes what she did, and honestly, the sooner she's gone, the sooner this yard goes back to-"