Cape Grace

by Nathan Lowell

  She nodded. “I’ve gotten the orientation from Stella already.”

  He nodded. “When can you start?”

  She tilted her head a little to the left. “I started this morning.”

  “Don’t you have to find a replacement? Move?”

  “My assistant harbormaster is already running things very nicely, thank you very much.” McIlheny laced her fingers together in her lap. “Mr. Spinnelli arranged for a nice little apartment just around the corner from the office here. I moved in last week.”

  Jimmy sighed and stared at her, admiring the way the light shone on her hair.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “No. Nothing’s wrong.” He struggled to find something to say. “Why?”

  “Well, you’re looking at me rather oddly. Would you prefer somebody else?”

  “Not that,” he said. He gathered his limited wit and tried to start over. “Why do you want this job?”

  McIlheny nodded. “Because I wanted to be higher up the food chain and you need the help.”

  “Higher up the food chain?” Jimmy looked around his office, peeling paint, dented furniture and all. “This is higher up the food chain?”

  She shrugged. “You’re the apex predator. Other than maybe Violet Austin. Everything that happens along the South Coast starts here. I’ll be where the action is, even if all I’m doing is getting coffee and making sure you’re eating regularly.”

  “I don’t need a keeper,” Jimmy said, a bit of anger beginning to coil in his gut.

  “You need an assistant, according to Mr. Spinnelli. If I’m going to be a problem, I’m sure I can find another job in the company.”

  Jimmy swallowed and stood, crossing to peer out the window over the bay. “No,” he said. “I do need an assistant. I keep leaning on Tony every time I need something. It’s a bad habit.” He found it easier to talk to her when he wasn’t looking into her green eyes.

  “That’s what he told me,” she said. “What do you need me to do?”

  Jimmy thrust his hands in his pockets and shook his head, still staring out over the bay. “I don’t know. I didn’t know I was going to have an assistant this morning. I don’t have anything lined up.”

  “What’s the most pressing problem you have at the moment?” she asked.

  He turned to look at her.

  “Besides me,” she said, grinning. She paused for a long moment. “What’s the problem, Mr. Pirano?”

  He leaned against the wall beside the window. “Your grievance failed,” he said.

  She nodded. “We both knew it would.”

  “But you still want to work for—or with—me?”

  “You said it yourself,” she said. “It’s not under your control. Home office dictates and you have to do what they say.” She shrugged. “I don’t hold that against you. How could I?”

  Jimmy nodded. She sounded reasonable enough.

  “So, here I am. What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. You’ve caught me out. I wasn’t expecting an assistant to just show up.” He shrugged.

  “What’s your biggest problem right now?” she asked.

  Jimmy looked at the display on his console. “Winter scheduling.”

  She nodded. “What’s the issue?”

  “It’s a jigsaw puzzle,” Jimmy said, staring into the middle distance. “We don’t require anybody to go to the Deep Sea platforms. It’s strictly voluntary.”

  McIlheny nodded. “Yeah. I knew that.”

  “So some people want to work through the winter. It’s good because it means we can give the offshore crews down time, but it makes for uneven logistics.”

  “What does that mean?” McIlheny asked. “Uneven.”

  Jimmy nodded, pursing his lips and measuring his words. “During the normal season, we have enough boats and crews. Everybody’s working. That includes the Deep Sea platforms where we rotate the crews to keep the boats working all the time without requiring the same crews to be stuck out there.” He paused and looked at her.

  She nodded. “I get keeping the boats working.”

  “In winter, when the coastal fisheries shut down, all the boats are idle, so we’ve got more people than boats. I’ve been trying to use that to get the offshore crews some extended downtime.” He shook his head. “Not everybody wants to work year round. Not everybody wants extra down time.”

  “As I understand it, the offshore boats have regular crews. They’re working two weeks on, two off,” McIlheny said.

  “Yeah. So we swap whole crews. Fly one out, bring one back. The boats keep working year round.”

  “So, winter?” McIlheny asked.

  “I’ve got people asking to go out to the ridge for the winter. Lot of single people. Younger people wanting to get more time on deck.”

  “Logistics?” McIlheny asked.

  “Skippers tend to like their winters off. So we have people wanting to crew but not enough skippers.”

  “You need somebody to find skippers to make full crews?” she asked.

  “Something like that,” Jimmy said, lacing his fingers behind his neck. “We also need more boats out there. They’ve all got two crews already.”

  “Boats that will be idle during the season,” she said, nodding. “And the fishing season is longer than the winter season.”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “What’s the company’s side on this? How would it affect the landings?”

  Jimmy released his hands and shrugged, turning to look out over the bay. “Depends on how many want to do it. Whether we can get enough full crews out there to make a difference.”

  “Deep Sea landings are a lot higher per boat,” McIlheny said. “How many boats do we have out there now?”

  Jimmy glanced over his shoulder at her. “Something over a hundred.”

  “That’s what? About sixteen per Deep Sea station?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Jimmy ran the numbers in his head and nodded. “Yeah. I think Deep Sea Five has twenty.”

  “So what’s the incremental cost of moving one extra boat out to have a spare at each Deep Sea?” she asked.

  Jimmy crossed his arms, put his back against the wall, and stared at the floor. “Six more boats against a fleet of a hundred?” He shook his head. “Not that much really.” He looked at her. “What about during the season?”

  “Backup. You have a spare on scene in case one of the boats has some mechanical problem.” McIlheny shrugged. “How do you deal with breakdowns now?”

  “Each Deep Sea has a small chandlery for common parts. They’ve all got mechanics out there to help in case of breakdown.”

  “How many days do they miss because of mechanical issues?” she asked.

  Jimmy shook his head, feeling like he was failing an oral exam. “I don’t have the details.” He shrugged and grinned. “I should have my assistant look that up and see what a cost-benefit analysis says on the subject.”

  She grinned back at him and stood up. “I’ll have those numbers for you this afternoon.”

  Jimmy blinked at her. “You sound pretty sure you can find them.”

  “I’ve been plugging numbers into that database for the last ten stanyers. I think I can get some numbers out.”

  “You have an office?” he asked, abashed that he hadn’t thought about it.

  She pointed to the wall. “Next one over. Tony’s arranging to install a door. Carpenters will do it over the weekend. I’m all settled in.”

  Jimmy felt his jaw sag a little. “And nobody thought that perhaps I’d like to know what was happening?”

  McIheny folded her hands behind her back and looked down a little, her red hair swaying in the morning light. “Tony didn’t think you’d take kindly to having me as your assistant. What with the grievance and all.” She shrugged. “After you took off that day at Bleak Harbor, I wasn’t sure you’d accept me either.”

  “So he figured asking forgiveness would be better than permission?” Jim
my asked, feeling a bubble of amusement in his chest.

  McIlheny shrugged. “Something like that.” She bit her bottom lip for a moment. “Was it something I said?”

  “What?” Jimmy asked.

  “That day when you came out to talk to me about the grievance?”

  “I’m not following.” He swallowed, a chill working its way down his back.

  “Well, things seemed to be going pretty well, then next thing I know, you’re bolting off the deck and flying away.”

  Jimmy swallowed again, trying to push down the lump of embarrassment in his throat. “I panicked.”

  “Panicked?”

  He nodded. “It felt a little too ... intimate?” He glanced up at her. “It made me uncomfortable. Felt inappropriate.”

  Her lips twitched a little, almost as if she wanted to smile but fought the impulse. At least she wasn’t laughing.

  She nodded once, an abrupt bob of her head. “I see. Thank you.” Her eyes narrowed just a fraction. “And now?”

  “Now?” he asked.

  “Is it going to be a problem? Do you feel this is too intimate?” She tilted her head to one side. “Will I be able to work with you?”

  He stared into her eyes, seeing something there that hadn’t been there before. A challenge, perhaps. Or a fear. “I think the question is whether or not I can work with you,” he said, the words tearing at the base of his throat.

  A tiny smile worked its way from her lips up to her eyes. “You’re the Pirano. You can pretty much work with whoever you want, can’t you?”

  An imp of the perverse made him grin. “I try not to work with people I want. Too much tension.” He clamped his mouth shut, feeling the heat in his face. He turned away and looked out the window.

  She laughed. “Fair enough.” Her footsteps echoed in the hallway as she left and Jimmy heard them through the wall as she entered her office. “That went well,” she said. Jimmy heard her keyboard clacking and realized he’d been hearing it for almost a week.

  He swallowed a curse and rested his forehead against the cool glass.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Cape Grace: October 5, 2349

  THE TWO KIDS LOOKED nervous. Otto wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they had to be nervous about, but he schooled his features and settled at the kitchen table with a mug of tea.

  Sarah looked at Bobby.

  Bobby swallowed and turned to Otto. “Sir, I’d like to marry your daughter.”

  “Well, that’s really up to her, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve asked her already.”

  Otto looked at Sarah. “What did you say?”

  “I don’t want to work on the boat anymore.” She glanced at Bobby. “I can’t stop unless I’m married.”

  “Is that enough foundation for getting married?” Otto asked.

  She hugged Bobby’s arm. “He’s a good guy.”

  “Do you love him?”

  Bobby looked over at her and their eyes met. “I think so,” she said. “How do you know?”

  Otto looked at Bobby. “Do you love her?”

  Bobby nodded. “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Bobby asked.

  “Why do you love her?”

  He looked at him and then at her. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just do. I never thought of why.”

  Otto nodded. “Well, that’s as good an answer as any.”

  “So I have your permission, sir?”

  Otto laughed. “You don’t need my permission.” He looked at Sarah. “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. You’ve always said I needed to make up my mind about what I wanted to do. I think this is a good path for me.”

  “Have you listened to the world lately?”

  “We went for a long walk just this morning.”

  “What did you hear?”

  Bobby looked back and forth between them but Otto kept his gaze fixed on Sarah.

  “There’s a storm coming,” she said, her voice quiet.

  Otto felt a streak of ice slide down his back. “You’re willing to weather the storm with him?”

  Sarah bit her lip and cast a side-eyed glance at Bobby. “I am.”

  Otto blew out a breath he didn’t know he held in. “Well, let’s plan for a wedding next year, then. I’m sure your grandmother will have a lot of ideas. I know she did when I married your mother. You wouldn’t want to spoil her fun.”

  “Really?” Sarah asked.

  “What? You expected I’d say no?”

  “Just ... I didn’t know.”

  “I’ve said all along that you’d need to get a job or get married if you want to stay on St. Cloud.” Otto shrugged. “Seems like you’re on the path.”

  “All right, then,” Bobby said, a grin splitting his tanned face.

  “I’ll need to stay on the boat for one more season,” Sarah said, almost to herself. “I can do that.”

  “I thought you liked it,” Otto said.

  She shrugged. “I do, but it’s hard to focus sometimes. The season starts out fine, but I get more and more distracted. When the season’s over, I can come ashore, walk the beach, carve. It centers me.” She shrugged again. “I can’t explain it.”

  Otto grunted. “Don’t need to. I know exactly what you mean.” He turned to Bobby. “You know she’s a shaman, right?”

  “She can’t be a shaman,” he said. “I know she carves and thinks she’s a shaman, but unless she’s a boy, she can’t be one.” He shrugged.

  “You two haven’t talked about this?”

  Sarah looked down at her hands on the table. “We’ve talked about it some.”

  “You’ll need to sort this out between you,” Otto said.

  Bobby’s brow furrowed as he looked back and forth between Otto and Sarah. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I’m going to go into my shop and let you two talk for a bit.” Otto stood, took his mug of tea, and went down the hall to the shop. He stoked the fire in the stove up with a couple of pieces of waste wood and settled in to finish up the inlay on a parrot. He heard low voices but made no effort to try to make out what they were saying. Fear lay like a rock in his belly, cold and hard and scratching every time he moved. An odd aroma drifted in the air—not smoke from the stove and not the fresh cut wood. Something else. Whenever he tried to focus on it, it disappeared. Eventually the voices became quiet. He heard the door open and close.

  Sarah joined him in the shop and took out a whale carving that she’d nearly finished. She didn’t look at Otto, but sat hunched over the piece and kept her eyes on the work.

  Otto bit his lip to keep from speaking and finished the inlay.

  “Some fish chowder for dinner?” he asked, working to keep his voice level. Keeping away from the question he needed an answer to.

  “Sounds good.” She shot a quick glance out of the corner of her eyes. “Let me finish this fluke and I’ll come make some biscuits for us.”

  Otto accepted the offering. “Sounds good.”

  He left her hunched over, her blade scraping the final shape from the wood. Her words haunted him.

  There’s a storm coming.

  He’d done what he could to help her. He hoped she could weather the storm on her own.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Cape Grace: September 7, 2349

  BOBBY KEPT LOOKING at her funny. Nothing overt. Just little glances like she had something weird on her face. She did her best to ignore it but after they secured the boat for the day, she asked, “Is there something wrong?”

  He grinned at her. “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “You’ve been looking at me sideways all day. Do I have a zit on my forehead or something?” She brushed her salty fingers across her forehead. She regretted it almost immediately as she realized where her hands had been all day.

  “Nope. Just wonderin’ if you had any plans for when the season’s over.”

  “Plans?” she asked. “Like what?”

 
; He shrugged. “Going back up to the orbital to visit your great-gran?”

  “We’ve still got a few weeks of crabbing,” she said.

  “Yeah, but after that?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Mostly stepping back from the boat. Catching up on my carving.” She bit back a comment about getting away from the noise and the mess of crabbing. The stink of the bait didn’t bother her half as much as the exhaust fumes. She actually enjoyed the roaring of the wind in her ears but enjoyed the rumble of the engine only when it stopped at day’s end. It made it hard to listen, but that wasn’t something Bobby needed to know.

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “You really don’t like doin’ this, do you,” he said.

  “What? Crabbing?”

  He nodded again. “Yeah. Working every day during the season.”

  “We don’t work every day,” she said.

  “Darn near,” he said. “Only time we don’t work is when the weather’s too bad to take the boat out.”

  “True,” she said. “But we’ve got three or four months completely off after they pull the boats for the winter.”

  He shrugged and stuck his hands in his jacket pockets.

  “Why?” she asked. “You have plans for the off-season?”

  “Maybe,” he said, giving her another of those funny looks.

  She sighed. “All right. Give.” She braced herself, unsure of where the conversation would go but certain she wasn’t going to like it.

  “Comstock’s letting me work the relief crews out on the ridge this winter,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” His face lit up with enthusiasm. “Big time, finally. If I do good out there, I might get a better slot here next season.”

  The pit of her stomach fell away as she drew the connections. “You wouldn’t be crabbing?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. No sense piddling around with crabbing when I could get a real job.”

  His words scoured her, stripping her bare. “This is a real job,” she said, nearly strangling on the hot lump in her throat.

  He shrugged. “Maybe to you,” he said. “But really? Is it? If you wanted to get married, settle down? Could you live on what you’re making here?”