Years Offshore, I Turned Toward Spring Ridge

Chapter 2: The Empty Slip

I spent the next morning counting boats instead of money.

The yard had twelve repair slips, eight of them occupied. Two of the boats belonged to people I knew. The others had nameplates I didn't recognize, though I could identify their owners by the way they'd left their tools beneath the hulls.

Willa had listed the slips as "nonessential operations" in the Tideglass proposal.

"That's corporate language for throw them out," I said.

She was at the far end of the workshop, checking the hydraulic lift. "It means Tideglass doesn't need them."

"It's our yard. They don't get to decide what it needs."

"They do if they buy it."

I crouched beside the lift and checked the base. One bolt had worked loose. I tightened it with a wrench from the wall rack.

"You've got a mechanic's bill here for the lift," I said. "Why hasn't it been repaired?"

"Because it works."

"It's shifting under load."

"I know."

"Then why—"

"Because I had to choose between this repair and the insurance payment." She stopped, then added, "I chose the insurance."

I put down the wrench. That was the first clear number she'd given me, and it felt less like an answer than a door that had opened a c***k.

"Show me the ledger," I said.

"You'll be here for days."

"I have days."

"You have a flight booked."

"I changed it."

"For how long?"

"I don't know yet."

She looked past me to the lift. "That's what you always say."

I wanted to argue that I had not always said anything. I had left after our father's death, when the yard had become a place where every object seemed to accuse me of not having been there. Willa had taken over the books. I had taken the first offshore job that would let me work three weeks on, three weeks off, then the second job that kept me away for months at a time.

I had sent money. I had called. I had told myself that distance was not abandonment if I kept showing up on a screen.

But Willa had been here in the rain, closing the yard alone.

"I know I left you with more than I should have," I said.

She turned back to the lift. "That doesn't change the numbers."

"No. It doesn't."

At noon, I went to the town archive above the library. Bellwether Bay was built around a crescent harbor, with Spring Ridge rising behind it. The ridge was not a mountain, despite the name, but a long green slope where wildflowers came up every April. From the top, the town looked almost untouched by time. Down by the water, Tideglass's survey stakes stood in a straight line through the old public access road.

The archive clerk found our lease file after I gave her Dad's name. I had expected to find a deed or an old business permit. Instead, I found a map annotated in my father's handwriting. The harbor access road was marked as a public easement. The yard's lease gave Hart Marine control of the property, but it did not give us the right to close the road or sell the passage.

The Tideglass proposal depended on the easement being transferred with the lease.

I photographed the map and called Willa.

"Did you know the road is public?"

"I know what the lease says."

"Do you know the easement can't be sold?"

"It can be amended."

"By the town, not by us."

"Then the town will amend it."

The certainty in her voice made me pause.

"Did Tideglass promise you that?"

"They have counsel."

"So do I."

"You have a cellphone and a library photocopy."

"I also have seven years of offshore inspection records proving I know how to read a contract."

She sighed. "Mara, this is not a game. We have a payroll due on Monday."

"I'll cover payroll."

"With what?"

"I have savings."

"Your savings are your life raft. Don't sink it for a boatyard that's already going under."

I looked at the old map. "Maybe it's worth finding out whether it's going under."

The phone went quiet.

"I'll send you the accounts," she said at last.

When I returned to the yard, a man in a gray coat was waiting beside the office door. He introduced himself as Colin Rusk, Tideglass's local project manager. He had a polished smile and mud on his shoes.

"I hear you've come back," he said.

"I have."

"I hope you'll see that we're trying to build something lasting here."

He held out a card. On the back, he had written a meeting time for the next morning.

I took the card without promising anything.

As he walked away, I noticed that his coat pocket was full of rolled plans. One edge bore the same blue tab as the agreement Willa had shown me.