Iron Daughter

IRON DAUGHTER Chapter 2

Cash was still there at seven the next morning, parked in the exact spot he'd claimed the day before, like he'd never left it, which as far as Raine could tell, he hadn't.

He was sitting on the tailgate with a gas station coffee going cold between his boots, and when she pulled in he lifted two fingers off the cup in something that wasn't quite a wave.

"You sleep in that truck?"

"Slept at the Sandpiper. Drove back over at six." He said it like it was a reasonable thing a person did, driving to an empty boatyard before the gates opened rather than sleeping until a decent hour like a normal man with somewhere else to be.

"You didn't have to."

"I know."

She let herself into the shop without answering that, because there wasn't a version of answering it that didn't require more of her than she was willing to hand over before her first coffee.

The water pump was already sitting where she'd left it, cleaned, the housing she'd ordered in yesterday afternoon still shrink wrapped on the bench. Twenty minutes of work, maybe less. She could have him gone by nine if she wanted him gone by nine.

She did not start with the pump.

She started with Bertram, because Bertram was a problem that didn't talk back, and she needed forty-five minutes of not talking before she trusted herself around him again.

He didn't push.

He sat on an overturned bucket near the door and watched her work with the particular stillness of somebody who'd grown up around engines himself, not asking questions, not narrating what she was doing back to her the way people who didn't know better always did.

"You got good at this," he said finally, when she came up for air.

"I was always good at this."

"You were good at it because Duke taught you the basics. You're good at it now because you did something with it he never expected you to."

She didn't have an answer for that one ready, which annoyed her more than the comment itself did. She wiped a smear of grease off her wrist with the back of her glove and moved to the water pump instead, because her hands needed a new problem and the old one was standing six feet away watching her with an expression she didn't have the energy to name.

"Wren's getting married," he said, to the housing on the bench, not to her, like it was easier to say to an object. "October. At the clubhouse."

"I don't need the wedding invitation of a woman I haven't spoken to in six years."

"That's not why I'm telling you."

"Then why."

"Because your dad wants you there. And he's not going to ask you himself, because he's Duke, and Duke doesn't ask people for things, he waits for them to offer, and you've made pretty clear you're not offering."

Something in her chest did a small, complicated thing, not quite anger, not quite the other thing underneath the anger that she'd spent six years refusing to name. She set the wrench down harder than the job required.

"You drove four hours to deliver an invitation you could've put in the mail."

"I drove four hours because I wanted to see you. The invitation's just what I'm using to justify it out loud." He said it plainly, no performance in it, and that was somehow worse than if he'd tried to charm his way through it. "You can be mad about the wedding. You can be mad at your dad. You can be mad at Wren, God knows you've got the receipts for that. I just don't want you mad at me for something I didn't do."

"You were there."

"I was seventeen."

"So was I."

"And I didn't fight for you the way I should've. I know that. I've had six years to know it." He finally looked up from the housing, and there was nothing careful left in his face, which made it hard for her to keep hers careful either.

"I'm not asking you to forgive that today. I'm asking you to let me say it out loud at least once, because I never got the chance to before you left, and I've been carrying it around ever since like it's yours to hear whenever you decide you're ready."

She didn't say anything for a while. The compressor kicked on somewhere behind her, a low mechanical shudder that filled the space where a response should have gone, and she was grateful for it in a way she'd never admit.

"Finish your coffee," she said eventually. "I'll have the pump in by nine."

It wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't even close to forgiveness.

But he seemed to understand that it was something, because he nodded once and let the silence sit there between them without trying to fill it with anything else, and for the length of time it took her to seat the new gasket and torque the housing down, neither of them said another word, and the not talking felt less like avoidance than it had in six years.

Gus showed up a little after eight, took one look at the two of them, the truck still parked where it had no business being parked overnight, and didn't say a word, just headed for the coffee pot in the office with the studied casualness of a man who had decided this was not his business and intended to keep it that way.

Raine caught him glancing back once through the office window, and when their eyes met he raised his mug half an inch in a gesture that could have meant anything and probably meant several things at once.

By eight forty the pump was seated and torqued to spec, the belt tensioned, the housing bolts marked with paint pen the way she marked everything so she'd know at a glance if something had backed off. She primed the line, ran it dry for thirty seconds to check the impeller was turning true, and stepped back to let Cash have a look, because it was his client's boat and some habits about showing your work didn't leave you no matter how many years you spent trying to leave everything else behind.

"Good as new," he said, crouched by the lower unit, running a thumb along the new hose clamp like he was checking her work out of old habit rather than doubt. "Better than new, probably."

"It'll get him to Beaufort."

"It'll get him a lot farther than Beaufort."

Her phone buzzed twice on the bench beside her, face down.

She didn't turn it over. She felt Cash notice her not turning it over, the small shift in his attention, and neither of them said anything about that either.