by Liz Johnson
“No, I don’t.” The shiver that raced down his spine might have had something else to say.
“Don’t argue with me, boy.”
He cracked open one burning eye to see her standing right before him, hands on her hips and a pinched line where her smile usually was.
Her nose wrinkled. “And you smell like sour fish.”
“Smell like har’ work and a job,” he slurred.
“You can’t . . .”
He was too tired to argue anymore, so he closed his eyes and the rest of the world disappeared.
When Oliver woke, the sun had set, and the only light came from the lamp in the corner of the room. A heavy quilt covered him, and he shoved it over the back of the sofa, sweat sticking to his face and down his back. He wanted to rip off his extra sweatshirt, but that required moving more than he was willing to at the moment. And despite the absence of the scent of supper, his stomach growled.
“Hey there, sleepy.”
He opened one eye and peered across the room to find his mom rocking in her oversized recliner, an open paperback in her hands.
“Hey.” He sounded like a grouchy monster from a kids’ show.
“So that’s your new plan for winning arguments. You just pass out on me.” She closed her book and shot him an affectionate glare.
“I’m sorry.” His voice cracked, and he pushed himself up. The room took a quick spin, so he plopped himself right back onto the pillow.
“Are you hungry?”
He grunted, and she got up, returning a few minutes later with a bowl of steaming soup and a glass of water. Perfect. Only he wasn’t sure he could eat the soup lying down. And lapping the water like a dog wasn’t going to work either.
He pushed himself up again, slowly this time, giving himself a moment to acclimate. Then another small movement and a short break. By the time he made it upright, his feet firmly on the floor, the steam on the bowl had disappeared. But the living room and all of its furniture held steady. A nice change.
He reached for the bowl, cupping his hand around the hot pad beneath.
“I’ll put your water over here.” His mom slipped one of the clay coasters she’d made closer to the edge of the end table.
He nodded as he sipped at a spoonful of corn chowder. It was salty and soothing and tingled at the back of his throat. It wasn’t a fancy homemade soup, just something from a can with more broth than shreds of chicken or corn. But it tasted of comfort. When all they’d been able to afford was food from a can, corn chowder had been his favorite. There’d been no money for crackers then, so no need for them now.
He set his spoon down and took a swig of water. “Thanks.” He sounded more like a human this time.
She stood before him, staring at him with a strange intensity, only the sound of her breathing and his slurping soup between them. “What happened?” she finally asked.
“I don’t know. I just felt off all day. I thought maybe it was . . .” He couldn’t get the words out past the memory of holding Meg as she’d sobbed in his arms.
His mom sat on the cushion beside him, her apron gone, revealing the stained jeans she’d worked in that day. She patted his arm. “Did something happen on the boat?”
“Just . . .” He wasn’t sure how much he should say. It wasn’t really his news to share. Of course, once it was out there, the truth would make the rounds through Victoria faster than lightning. “Meg heard from her dad last night.”
“Oh no.” The smooth lines of her face crumpled. “It’s not good news, is it?”
“No.”
Mama Potts got up and paced the living room, her hands twisting at her waist. “I knew it wasn’t good, the way Sandra has been hanging on to Walt’s arm. She’s barely walking on her own. But I was praying I was wrong.”
Setting down his empty bowl, he leaned his elbows on his knees, folded one fist inside the other, and stared at a patch of tan carpet. “Mom, I don’t know what to do. Whitaker’s been like . . . well, you know.”
She continued her march, head shaking and eyes focused on another time or another place.
“I don’t know how to help. I feel like I have to do something. Something more than what I’m already doing.”
“What are you already doing?”
“I’m—that is, Meg and I are—handling the business. I’ve made sure that he doesn’t have to worry about anything. I’m getting all the phone calls and checking all the messages. I’m dealing with the shore buyer and managing the books. I want him to be able to spend as much time with Mrs. Whitaker as he can.”
“And what about Meg?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. He took a long drink of water. “What about her?” She was Meg. He’d handle the business for her. He’d take over 100 percent of the details. He’d even hold her while she cried.
But he already knew—she didn’t really want that from him.
“Is she getting to spend time with her mom?”
Again he played fish, words escaping him as he tried to form them.
His mom plopped down next to him, this time closer than before, and patted his knee. “Honey, I wish more than anything in the world that you didn’t know what it’s like to lose a parent.”
His shoulders tensed, and he shook his head. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Not exactly, maybe. But looking back . . .”
He moved his knee away from her touch and put his face in his hands, squeezing his eyes shut. He didn’t want to look back at anything.
She sighed. “We don’t talk about your dad much.”
“For good reason. You taught me if I didn’t have something nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all.”
“I did.” Her words were slow, contemplative. “But it wasn’t all bad. Without your dad, I wouldn’t have gotten three beautiful sons.”
He snorted into his hands. “You mean two good-looking sons and a—”
“Oliver Ross.” Her voice cut sharper than the knife she’d dropped earlier. “Eli is still my son. And I love him.”
“Yeah? When’s the last time you watched the Rangers play?”
She stiffened, and he wanted to punch himself in the face. What kind of a jerk changed the subject to something that hurt his mom worse than the subject of his dad leaving? Him. Yep. He could be almost as much of a buffoon as Eli when he tried.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” But he didn’t want to talk about his dad. And he sure didn’t want to think about how often he missed the guy. If he could have regrets about a bully and a cheat, well, Meg would be in a world of hurt when she lost her mom.
He pushed himself to the edge of the seat. “I should get to bed. I’ve got an early morning.”
She stood before he could. “You don’t think you’re actually fishing in the morning, do you? You just passed out on my sofa a couple hours ago.”
“Who else is going to do it?”
“Kyle can handle the boat.”
Pressing his hands against the cushions, he forced himself up on semi-steady legs. When he looked down into her eyes, he saw the worry there.
“Dad took everything from us,” he said. “Our home. Our stability. Our reputation. This is my chance to get it all back. And I’m not going to give up.”
fourteen
Oliver survived the following morning. But just barely.
The next was only slightly better, as he was pumped full of vitamins and all the home remedies Mama Potts could cook up. He managed to stay on the Pinch and haul in his traps. As far as he could remember, every single one of them had had bait when they dropped back into the water. And he hadn’t fallen in with them. That had to count as a win.
That they’d hauled in more than two hundred pounds both days was as good as he could hope for.
By Friday morning, he was mostly on the mend and thankful that Meg hadn’t given him a second look since she’d fallen apart in his arms. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t embarrassed and she shouldn’t be either. But maybe it wasn’t ab
out how she’d cried in front of him. She could just as easily have been distracted by everything going on with her mom or preparing for her parents to return that weekend.
Kyle, on the other hand, had been shooting him strange glances most of the week. Oliver had shrugged it off as lack of sleep, and no one would argue with that. Not with their hours.
“How you feeling?” Kyle asked, thumping him between the shoulder blades.
Oliver let out a wheeze. “Perfect. Happy to have a floating boat.”
Kyle let out a belly laugh that turned heads from several other boats around them.
“What’s so funny?” Meg asked as she joined them, passing out tall cups of coffee.
“Ma’am.” Kyle gave her a mock bow.
Oliver smiled his thanks—and hoped he’d remembered to acknowledge her earlier in the week.
If knowing the regulation trap size and navigating the Pinch were his jobs, Meg had taken on the role of coffee distributor. Not that she couldn’t have done something else—in fact, she did a lot of other things. It was just that the coffee she brought from Tim Hortons was so far superior to his own burnt sludge that he couldn’t turn it down. She’d brought it every day for almost two weeks, and he prayed she’d bring it for another six.
Pressing the plastic lid to his lips, he sipped, the liquid burning over his tongue and down his chest, heat radiating to the tips of his gloved fingers. Bitter, but not too much. Silky smooth. A touch of sweet cream and sugar. “Mm-hmm.”
For the first time in days, she returned his smile. “I’m glad you like it.”
Kyle drank his like a shot of whiskey, downing it in one tip of his head and then chucking his cup into the trash bucket. Meg cupped her hands around her coffee, sniffing at the steam that escaped the small hole in the lid. Her lips curled up at the corners, a tiny dimple tucked into her cheek.
“Your folks coming back from away this week?” Kyle must have noticed too.
Her smile faltered, but she forced a brave face back on. “I’m not sure Toronto really counts as away.”
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “Don’t argue with your elders, kid.”
She laughed then. “Fair enough. Yes. They’re coming back from away.”
Kyle clearly wanted to ask another question—probably the same one Oliver did. But there were some things still off-limits. Like how her mom was doing. Like how her dad was holding up. Like if she was about to crack under the pressure of it all.
Instead, Kyle cracked a joke he’d heard on the wharf, and Oliver walked toward the helm and turned on the engine. It purred to life, and he sipped his drink while he checked the instruments and set their coordinates into the GPS.
This had become their morning routine—coffee, ribbing each other, and preparing for another haul. A simple tradition before they stocked up on bait and headed out for the open water. Oliver didn’t mind it. As much as he’d hated the idea of her being on his boat at first, it hadn’t been terrible.
He just had to figure out how to make her not want to stay. Let her know she could run the business but make her hate the very idea. Or maybe make something else more appealing.
He wasn’t sure how to do that. And he wasn’t any closer to coming up with an idea by the time they reached their first buoy. At that point, he only had the brain space to concentrate on what was before him.
They hauled in the cluster of traps at the first buoys without incident, save for a higher-than-average number of undersized lobsters, which were tossed back into the water. “Next year,” Kyle said as he chucked one more overboard.
Meg had gotten good at snagging the buoys with the gaff, and she worked the hauler like she was part machine herself, threading the rope into it and pulling the traps right to the port side. She grabbed two and Oliver the other three, and they settled them onto the counter. They cleared them out, baited them, and shoved them back overboard.
The air was still and quiet as they approached their fourth marker, Oliver watching the GPS panel.
“I don’t see it,” Meg called from behind him.
She’d never said that before, and it made his stomach fall to his boots. She had to be wrong. They’d put their traps down right here the day before.
He looked over his shoulder at Kyle, who shook his head. Oliver narrowed his gaze. They had to be wrong. Maybe a wave had blocked the view of the bright green floater. He joined Meg at the rail and squinted across the flat surface of the water. Even their boat caused only a ripple in the glassy surface.
He crossed his arms and frowned. This made no sense. Buoys floated, but not far when they were attached to a cluster of traps sitting on the ocean floor.
Grabbing the binoculars from beside the wheel, he scanned the water from the boat to the horizon in long, sweeping motions.
Nothing.
“What happened to it?” Meg’s question carried a heavy note of concern, the same kind that twisted his insides.
“Could be the rope broke.”
Kyle snorted his disagreement, and Oliver couldn’t blame him. The industrial ropes they used didn’t just break. And if a rope had frayed, they’d have noticed it the day before or the one before that.
Punishment.
The word popped into his head, but he shoved it away just as quickly. They hadn’t broken any unwritten rules. There would be no reason for another fisherman to cut their line, no matter what threat Little Tommy Scanlan had made. Punishment only followed a crime. And no one on the Pinch had committed one.
“What are you thinking?” Meg asked, jerking him from his thoughts.
He squinted across the water again. “Nothing.”
It was her turn to snort. If a little more feminine than Kyle’s, it still got the message across. “We lose five traps, and you’re not thinking anything?”
“Well . . .” He closed one eye and stared at her through the other. “We have to report lost equipment to the authorities.” The government kept track of litter in the fishing areas but didn’t penalize licenses unless they made a habit of it. This was Whitaker Fishing’s first offense in Oliver’s six years on the Pinch.
Meg’s eyes flashed bright in her pale face, despite the frown still tugging at the corners of her lips. “I can do that. I’ll do it as soon as we get back to shore.”
“All right. I’ll show you exactly where we’re at.”
She followed him toward the control panel, and he stepped to the side so she could see the simple GPS. Pointing at the flashing light, he said, “This is us.” Then he pointed to a list of coordinates. “And these are all of our drop points. Every one of our forty-eight clusters.”
“Hey!” Kyle’s call whipped them both around. “Look over there.”
Oliver followed the line of Kyle’s finger to the opposite side of the boat. There was the bobbing buoy, bright against the gray of the morning water. He steered the boat toward it until they were close enough for Meg to reach it with the hook, but it was on the wrong side to put it into the hauler.
Hand over hand, all three of them pulled the wet rope in. There wasn’t a cluster of traps on the end, only a small stone.
Oliver felt it like a slap in the face.
“Still think it broke?” Kyle asked.
No, there was no pretending that now. Their line had been cut, their traps most likely left on the bottom. And it posed just one question.
“Who would do this?” Anger laced Meg’s words, and she crossed her arms over her gray sweater.
Punishment.
“Someone thinks we’ve broken a rule.” It was the only explanation Oliver could muster. Still, he racked his brain and could come up with no offense worthy of this retribution. Letting out a slow breath through tight lips, he pressed his hands to his hips and looked around once more. But the offending ship and its captain had their own traps to check. They’d long since gone.
They worked the rest of the morning in relative silence, communicating only through sparse grunts and monosyllables. By the time Oliver navigated the
m back into the harbor, their catch unloaded, his feet felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each.
He secured the boat and trudged off it after Meg and Kyle. That’s when he saw Little Tommy standing beside his own vessel, securing it to the dock. Oliver’s feet flew across the wharf until he was only inches from the older man’s face.
“Why’d you do it?”
Tommy blinked slowly, his features revealing nothing of the crime he’d almost certainly committed. “You best be careful, boy.” He gave Oliver a little shove on his shoulder, despite the six inches and thirty pounds separating them. “I don’t care fer yer tone.”
Oliver didn’t budge. If Tommy hadn’t cut their line, he sure knew who had. “Why’d you cut our line?”
“I don’t like what you’re implying.”
Oliver’s chin ticked to the left, his fist clenched and trembling at his side. “I’m not implying anything. And I don’t like what you’re doing.”
Tommy took a tiny step toward him. Throat clenched so hard that the veins nearly popped, he grunted, “I ain’t doing nothing. But now I’m tempted.”
Oliver could barely hear the threat for the roaring in his ears. Louder than the ocean had ever been, a rush of blood surged through him, almost knocking him to the ground. It stirred a fire in his gut that he hadn’t felt in years. A familiar chorus.
He didn’t deserve this boat or this business.
But he did. And he was going to show Little Tommy Scanlan just how much.
His fist was nearly to his shoulder when two hands wrapped around his forearm, right beneath his bunched-up sweater. They were lean and delicate and cool, dampening the fire that Tommy had stoked.
Oliver looked down just as Meg smiled at him. Gentle. Soothing. She took an exaggerated breath through her nose, her motions broader than they should be. Then she turned that same smile on Little Tommy.
“Mr. Scanlan, it appears one of our lines was cut, our traps lost.”
His furry eyebrows joined to make one black caterpillar right above his nose. “You don’t say. That’s a shame.”
“It really is. Especially when it’s hurting my father.”
The sunspots on his forehead disappeared into deep ridges, and he crossed his arms over his stocky chest, tucking his hands beneath his armpits. “How’s that, now?”