Page 40 of Presumed Dead

She walked the bow line the four steps to the spare cleat on the side of the slip and figure-eighted it around the cleat the way her father had taught her, and Ethan had the stern line on the cleat on the opposite side in the count of about three breaths after she’d set the bow, and they tied her off on both ends and the Whaler settled in her slip with the small sideways shudder a small boat made when her loose end had been caught.

Then the wind came in harder.

They moved together down Pier Two without talking. Sloane took the port side. Ethan took the starboard. A Sea Pro in slip eleven had a fender out, and Sloane pulled it in. A Catalina in slip twelve had a halyard loose against the mast and Ethan tied it off. The center console in slip thirteen had a Bimini she’d been meaning to lower for the owner since Tuesday, and she lowered it now. A Grady-White in slip fourteen had a cockpit cover with three loose snaps, and Ethan snapped them. The two end slips were empty, and they didn’t stop for them.

Pier Two took them eighteen minutes.

They went back up Pier Two against the wind. The wind was in their faces now. The rain was the rain of a storm that had decided to be a real storm, and the planking was slick under their boots, and Sloane went down once at the head of slip eight on a soft board she’d been meaning to replace for two seasons. Ethan had her elbow before her knee hit the planking. He let go of the elbow the moment she had her balance back. He didn’t say anything.

They crossed the boardwalk to Pier Three at four fifty-eight.

Pier Three was the easy pier.

Ethan’s Sundancer in slip seventeen was already buttoned down. A Bayliner in slip eighteen had her canvas on. A Mainship in slip nineteen had her canvas on. Two Sea Rays in slips twenty and twenty-one had owners on board — a couple from Tampa who came down two weekends a month and were already on deck in matching yellow slickers, the man on the bow with a fender and the woman on the stern with a line, and they nodded at Sloane and Ethan in the way of boat people who’d been doing the same work in the same rain and didn’t need to say anything about it.

Slip twenty-two had a houseboat owned by a retired English teacher named Margaret Linwood who’d been on this dock for nine years and who was on her deck in a yellow oilcloth coat that was the same yellow oilcloth coat Catherine had on, and Sloane saw that the marina had three yellow oilcloth coats on the dock at five oh-two on a Thursday in May, which was the kind of thing she’d laugh at later if there was a later.

Margaret waved them past.

They went past.

Ethan stopped at the head of slip seventeen on the way back.

“Anything else?”

“Pier One again. The two charters are secure but the fuel pump cover strap is going to go.”

“Lead.”

She led.

They crossed the boardwalk in the wind. The wind was running at fifty now, or close to it, and the rain had gone from steady to sideways, and the marina at five-oh-five on a Thursday morning was small and dark and full of small things trying to come loose, and Sloane Mercer ran her own dock at her own marina at her own work with a man at her shoulder who’d been on her dock nearly forty-eight hours and was already, in some way she didn’t have a name for yet, the third person who’d ever helped her run it.

The first had been her father. The second was Noah.

She didn’t let that sentence land. She had work.

They retied the fuel pump cover strap with a fresh length of marlin out of the cart, replaced the corner grommet on the canvas, and lashed the cover to the pylon at the head of Pier One with a four-foot length of three-strand. The strap was going to hold through the storm, but it would need to be replaced in the morning. Sloane filed both.

Then they went back to the office through the rain.

She unlocked the side door at five seventeen and pushed it open into the small warm dry square of the office and stood in the doorway for a count of about three breaths with the rain coming off her in sheets.

Ethan stood behind her on the boardwalk.

He didn’t come in.

She turned around. His foul-weather gear was glossed with rain, and his face under the hood was the face of a man who’d been working in a fifty-knot wind for forty minutes, which was wet and red along the cheekbones and quiet around the eyes, and he was waiting at the door because she hadn’t told him to come in.

“Get in here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He came in. She closed the door behind him. The wind cut off the moment the door closed, and the warm, dry, quiet of the office did the small, specific work an office does when the storm was on the other side of the wall, which was to make a person realize how cold they’d been.

Sloane was shaking.

She hadn’t known she was shaking. Her hands had been working and her feet had been working and she’d been moving from one slip to the next at a pace she’d built over fifteen years of running this marina, and the shaking had been waiting for her to stop. The shaking was here now. Her hands had a small, tight tremor along the fingers, and her shoulders had the soft uncontrollable shudder of cold-through-wet that came on a body four minutes after the body got under shelter.