BY THE TIME the commuters were on board for the afternoon run back to Brenton, there was a constant boom of thunder off to the west. Just like pretty much any summer afternoon on the Chesapeake—but here, the land was too high to see storms coming.
Courtney asked Billy if he thought they should wait it out, but he was already casting off lines and picking up the boarding steps. “We’ll be fine—almost September. Water’s too cold for thunderstorms.”
By the time they’d reached the outer edge of the harbor, the freshening southwest breeze had dropped again. Billy must be right—a week ago, another menacing line of dark clouds had broken up as soon as it hit Narragansett Bay.
Behind her was a queen-sized mattress that had been delivered an hour earlier, taking up the entire back half of the wheelhouse. She pressed back into it, glad despite its bulk that she’d suggested the movers set it down in here; even plastic-wrapped, the salty wet deck would ruin it.
A flash crackled down onto the land to starboard. One, one thousand. . . two, one thousand. . . three—boom. Three miles away, looked like it had hit something. Courtney shivered.
She hated lightning.
Minutes later, rain pelted onto the deck. She turned on the wipers. Billy dashed forward into the wheelhouse, pulling the door shut behind him. “Wow, cushy mattress!” he said, leaning back against it. “I’m so tired, I could fall asleep right like this. DJ was up all night— he’s got colic, poor little guy. Who ordered this thing?”
“James.”
“Oh really! And yours was the very first ass to rest against it—perfect!”
“Jesus, Billy—”
Another flash, and a loud bang—only one second between sight and sound. Billy turned the wipers up to their fastest setting. Courtney tamped down the bile rising in her throat and concentrated on the small piece of water she could still see through the curtain of rain, right in front of the Homer’s bow.
“Wow, that came on fast,” Billy said. “We had a storm just like this last summer, going out of here. Saw a house on the starboard shore get zapped, lit up like a—”
Flash-CRACK! A sizzle raised the hairs on her arm, which glowed with a faint blue light.
“Wow, feel that?”
Courtney clenched her teeth together to keep them from chattering. “I hate l-lightning. . .”
Rain drumming on the wheelhouse roof drowned out her words. Courtney couldn’t even make out the Homer’s bow, let alone anything in front of it. Billy turned the windshield wipers to slow, then back to fast again. Didn’t make any difference.
“Can’t see a damn thing,” he said.
“Glad we’ve got radar.” She reached up to lower the range, but the screen was black—uh-oh.
She pulled the throttles back to idle. “Steer for a minute, wouldja?”
Billy wrapped his left knuckles around the king spoke and stared out through the streaming windshield, chewing away on his right thumbnail.
The chartplotter screen was dark too. Courtney pressed the power button, twice—and then held it down to reboot it. Nothing. She never looked at it now; had she forgotten to turn it on before she left the dock?
Above her head, both VHFs had gone dark as well—and those were definitely squawking when they motored out of the harbor.
“Electronics got fried,” she told Billy.
“But the lightning didn’t hit us!”
“Close enough.” Rubbing down the hairs still tingling on her arm, Courtney took over the wheel again. “All we can do is keep idling forward till it clears. If we hit something, it should be me steering.”
The old Billy would’ve scoffed, told her he could find the island without any help. Instead he stood beside her, staring out through the blinding squall.
Five minutes later, the rain backed off enough to see the bow. Courtney pushed the throttles forward again, eventually climbing back up to cruising speed as the storm moved off to the east. When she looked over at Billy, he was leaning back against the mattress again, shaking his head.
“Man, you’re a cool one,” he said. “I was freakin’ out back there.”
Me too. But instead of admitting that, Courtney pointed to the rainbow touching down ahead of them. “Pot of gold on Bird Island— who would’ve guessed?”
When they pulled up to the Brenton dock only five minutes late, James tossed across the spring line. The sky was blue, and a dry northwest breeze had dropped the temperature twenty degrees.
“Mack tried to reach you on the VHF after that thunderstorm,” James said, leaning his elbows on the nearest piling. “Looked like it went right over you.”
“It did—knocked out all the electronics.”
“Jesus! You okay?”
“Yes.” Courtney shivered, partly from the chilly breeze. “But I. Hate. Lightning.”
As soon as the passengers cleared out, James came down the gangway. When he stepped through the port doorway, Courtney thought he was going to hug her. Instead he stared at the mattress. “What the hell is this?”
“I was wondering the same—”
“I just placed the order this morning!” He pressed a thumb into his scar. “Figured I’d go ashore with Mack tomorrow, pick it up.”
Courtney cocked her left hip against it, crossed her arms over her chest, and winked. “Chase suggested he and I test it out.”
“He didn’t! Jesus, that guy. . .” James’s hands knotted into fists. “I have half a mind to—”
“Kidding!” Courtney said quickly. “Weighs a ton, by the way.” She pressed a hand into the foam. “Took two big guys to drag it down the ramp.”
“Top of the line memory foam. My back’s been bothering me lately. . . and the reviews said this one was fantastic. . .”
Was he blushing? Courtney certainly was, so she glanced out the port doorway at the dock.
When the delivery guy had told her the mattress was for James, she’d thought it was a mistake. Saturday evening in West Harbor, she’d pressed him about the sailing job and he hadn’t answered. Monday, he ordered a new mattress. So was he staying then?
And if he stayed, what would he do? There was only one job here for him: hers.
“Way bigger than I thought it would be,” James said. “How the hell am I going to get it over to the house? Maybe the fire truck. . .”
Courtney pointed across the harbor. “We could deliver it by water—if it’s deep enough to get into your dock.”
James turned to look over the Homer’s bow. “There’s one rock we’d have to avoid. . . but high tide’s only an hour away.”
“So is sunset.” And the Bean’s outside deck was empty.
“Sure you want to risk it?” he asked.
She nodded. It would be her best chance to ask James if he’d decided to stay on after all. “Want to take her out? I won’t tell.”
He started the port engine on the first try. Starboard engine started up without any fuss at all, of course. But James was frowning.
“Port needs—”
“I know, I know, it’s pinging like crazy! I’ll add some oil tomorrow.” Before he could give her another maintenance lecture, she stepped out onto the side deck and cast off the lines.
The air was freshly washed—and chilling down fast. Courtney closed the port wheelhouse door behind her, rubbing goose-bumped arms.
“No depth sounder,” she reminded him.
“Harbor’s plenty deep, except for a few rocks—and I’ve already hit them all.” Then his grin faded. “I’ve never actually been into that dock in anything bigger than a dinghy, though. Steer, would you? I’ll check the fuse box.”
He opened a small hatch on the starboard wall. After a little fiddling, he said, “Got it!” and the port VHF squawked to life. Soon chartplotter and radar were working too.
“Wow, that was easy,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Keep wearing that lucky shell.”
“Oh I will.” She fingered its jagged edge.
James took back the wheel and turned it two spokes to port. Courtney kept her eye on the depth readout, but it held steady at twelve feet as they rounded the small point and headed into the dock. On the Chesapeake, deep water access like this would be worth a fortune—too much to toss as a thank-you scrap to the last lighthouse keeper.
10.6 feet. 9.8, 8.6. When the depth dropped below seven, James slid the throttles back to neutral and Courtney opened the wheel-house door—brr. Trying not to shiver, she stepped up to the bow to rig one of the spare lines.
The dock wasn’t nearly long enough. She tied off to the piling closest to the house, and James tossed her another line he’d tied off to the midship chock.
“Good enough for unloading,” James said.
The mattress was like a leaden marshmallow. James tied a line around each end, and with her pushing and him pulling, they managed to heave the wiggly lump up over the rail, onto the dock, across the yard, and up onto the back deck.
Better check for splinters. She tried not to giggle.
“That’s great,” James said, breathing hard. “I’ll—”
“Might as well go all the way.” She was blushing again.
Inside, the mattress slid easily across wood floor. “Glad that nasty rug’s gone.”
James was breathing too hard to answer.
The stairs off the dining room were narrow and steep. Courtney led up the stairs, heaving and pulling; James pushed from below. When she reached the top, she could barely see down the dark hallway.
“Which room?” she asked. There were three narrow doorways.
James looked around the mattress, panting, and nodded to the end of the hall. Then he started shoving again.
The room was small, with an angled ceiling and a window overlooking the harbor. Marsh air blew white curtains against the screen. A wooden bed frame with a sagging mattress took up most of the floor space—a double.
“Queen-size won’t fit,” she said.
“Oh! Damn, I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Just put this on the floor for now.”
“That’ll work?”
“That’s how my bed is over at the cottage.” Which used to be yours. Something she tried not to think about, going to sleep each night.
He scratched at his beard. “My dad built this bedframe. I can’t just. . .”
“Can we move it to another room?”
Twenty minutes later, there was room on the floor for the thick new mattress—still in its plastic wrapping, but James could deal with that on his own. They needed to get the Homer back to her own dock, before sunset and a falling tide pinned her here for the night.
James started up the engines again, like he was in charge. “Oh, sorry. D’you—”
“That’s fine, you take her out.”
Once Courtney had coiled and stowed the spare lines, she joined him in the wheelhouse and slid the door shut. Sweat dried on her face and arms; she’d be shivering again in five minutes.
The harbor shimmered in a swath of color. “Sunset’s so early now,” he said, spinning the wheel hard to starboard to back away from the dock. “Guess summer’s really over.”
Which meant he’d be leaving—so why buy a frickin’ mattress? Her heart thumped against her ribs. “The other night, I asked you about that sailing job. And you—”
“Lloyd’s only a few days away from bankruptcy.”
“Wait—what? How do you know? So he’s gonna lay me off?”
He reached over to switch on the running lights. “Won’t need to, if he goes under.” Even in the growing dark, she could see his lips stretching wide. He thought this was funny!
Courtney gripped the counter, knuckles whitening. “You’d love that, wouldn’t—”
“Only because it lowers the price on the ferry.”
“Oh great, so the banks’ll take it over! Maybe Chase’ll end up running it—then I’d definitely have to sleep with—”
“Chase is not going to be your new. . . anything.” That shit-eating grin hadn’t faded one bit.
“How do you—”
“Can’t tell you quite yet,” he said. “Still working out a few details. . . so for now, you’re just gonna have to trust me.”
Why should she, when James didn’t trust her enough to share his secret?