I also had to learn how to be alone without turning solitude into a grievance. Some evenings I cooked the food I actually wanted, put music on the kitchen speaker, and ate while looking through the open doors at the marsh. Other evenings I called Ray, who would tell me I was welcome to come over but that he refused to discuss marital property while the baseball game was on. The invitations mattered even when I declined them. I had spent so much time worrying about whether Erica would leave that I had nearly forgotten how many people had stayed.
Lauren Whitaker came into the renovated front office on a Tuesday morning carrying a folder of old maintenance records and an expression that suggested she had already received several opinions she did not like. She was thirty-nine, a high school history teacher, and the new owner of a 1988 Grady-White fishing boat that had belonged to her father. The boat had spent too many seasons sitting under a cover that never quite kept out the weather. She had inherited it with instructions that were less a legal document than a family expectation: it was not to be sold simply because nobody wanted to deal with it.
"My father would haunt me politely if I sold it," she told Denise at the front counter. I happened to be walking through with a cup of coffee, and the sentence made me stop. Lauren turned toward me, holding out her hand. Her hair was pulled back loosely, and she wore jeans, practical shoes, and a shirt that had probably survived an entire school day before she came to us. She did not seem impressed by our new front desk or intimidated by the repair estimate she was about to request.
"I understand you may not be able to save it," she said. "But I'd like somebody to tell me what it actually needs instead of giving me a number big enough to make me go away." I told her that was a reasonable request, though old boats had a habit of making reasonable people regret using that word. Ray took the boat into the inspection bay that afternoon, and within half an hour he had called me over to show me a wiring bundle that looked like three generations of owners had taken turns inventing new interpretations of electricity. I knew immediately that Lauren was going to get a thorough explanation.
The motor coughed when we tried to start it, then settled into a rough idle that made Ray wince. There was corrosion on several connections, aging hose work, cracked cushions, and water where water did not belong. The hull needed careful evaluation, but it had been maintained well enough in its earlier life that there was a real possibility of restoring it safely. Ray wrote a list, and I insisted we separate necessary work from cosmetic work and things that could wait. I had repaired too many boats whose owners spent money on polished rails while the fuel system underneath them was preparing an argument.