I didn’t, because the kids were watching, and I did not want them to see me fight their uncle in front of strangers. I thought he would cool off before he finished. He didn’t.
When the boat was gone, the first person to reach me was an older man in a marina shirt named Lenny. He had worked that dock for thirty-one years, and he had a face like a saddle left out in the rain.
“Ma’am,” he said quietly. “I can get him on the radio. He’s got a handheld aboard. I can have him back at this slip in ten minutes.”
I thought about it hard. Then I pictured it: Lenny’s voice on the radio, my sister learning what happened from a marina speaker, Jed backing into the slip with thirty people waiting to watch him.
My sister would have to live with that man the rest of her life. Dragging him back in front of the whole marina would have cost Tillie more than it cost him.
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“No, sir,” I said. “Thank you. Let him go.”
Lenny looked at the stack of coolers and at my kids in their life jackets. He nodded once, like I had told him something he understood.
Jarvis came back down the dock in his gray T-shirt with the parking receipt still in his hand. He stopped ten feet from us and looked at the coolers, then the empty slip, then the water.
“Where’s the boat,” he said.
“Gone. He unloaded our things and left.”
Jarvis is not a yeller. I married him partly for that. But his jaw set, and he said, “Lenny, you got a boat I can borrow. I’ll go get him.”
“No,” I said, and I put my hand flat on his chest. “Let him go.”
“He left the kids on a dock, Stella.”
“I know what he did. I was standing here.” I kept my voice low. “And you called him cheap in front of half the marina. Let him go tonight. We’ll fix it in the morning.”
He didn’t like it. But he took a long breath, knelt down, and fixed the twisted strap on Jonah’s life jacket without a word. That is the kind of man Jarvis is.
The sun went down behind the ridge. Lenny helped Jarvis carry the coolers up to the marina’s little motel, eight rooms facing the water. There was one left, at ninety-four dollars.
My phone rang at ten after eight. It was Tillie, crying so hard I could barely understand her.
“Stella, I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. I came up top and we were already past the buoys, and he wouldn’t turn around.”
“I know you didn’t, honey.”
“He says he’ll bring the boat back in the morning when he cools off. He won’t talk to me. He’s just sitting at the wheel. Una keeps asking where Carter is.”
Una is her oldest, eight, and she and Carter have been thick as thieves since they could walk. Kip is her baby, four, and he worships Jonah.
“Don’t fight him tonight,” I told her. “Tie up somewhere safe and put the kids to bed. We’re fine. We have all the groceries, which means y’all are having a sorry supper.”
She laughed through the crying. Just a little. That was all I wanted.
The signal out in those coves is poor, and the call dropped. I stood outside on the motel’s little concrete walk and looked at the dark water for a long time.