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"I want to talk about the business." Deep breath, opening line, just like rehearsed. "Cole Marine does exceptional work and nobody outside this peninsula knows it exists. There's no website. No listing. If someone new buys a boat and searches for service, you don't come up. A basic online presence, photos of the work - before and after, an online booking option, service reminders off the customer list I built. Low cost, real return."

So far so good. He's wiped his hands and he's leaning on the bench, drinking my coffee, ignoring the muffin I put down on the bench, watching me with no expression at all, and it's the no expression that does it. The mirror never did that.

"Beyond that there's, um. There's an opportunity to strengthen customer retention through structured touchpoints-"

Oh no.

The words are out and my own ears report them to me like a crime. Touchpoints. Weeks of scrubbing that voice off and it walks right back in the second I'm nervous, dragging all the business lingo with it. I’m going to lose him.

"I mean. Reminders. Just reminders, when a boat's due." The page has stopped making sense. My eyes are on the third bullet, and I've just delivered the fifth, so now the third one's an orphan, and I can't remember if I already said the part about photos. Said it. Didn't say it. No idea. "And the photos would, the before-and-after ones would-"

"You said photos already."

"Right." Heat crawls up my neck. "The point is visibility. You're invisible to anyone who doesn't already know you."

He lets me stand in that silence a moment. Takes a slow mouthful of coffee.

"We fix boats, we don't perform fixing boats for an audience. Every customer on that list of yours found us because somebody they trust told them to, and that's worth more than any website. I'm not turning my father's yard into an influencer."

I’ve been rehearsing for an entire night, and he sank it in three sentences without raising his voice or looking even vaguely interested.

"Okay." My voice comes out small. "Noted."

"That it?"

"That's it." You obnoxious, stubborn bastard.

He sets the mug down and folds himself back over the engine, done with this conversation. I didn’t even use the whole five minutes he gave me.

The walk to the door takes a year. Halfway there the good answers start arriving, right on schedule. Word of mouth doesn't reach people who just moved here, your father's yard had your father selling for it and apparently, he was a people person, you’re not. At all. Even a tiny bit. On the contrary.

Every one of them sharp and correct and completely useless now.

At the door I look back. He's got the muffin in his fist. Wrapper already balled up on the bench, and he's eating it with his head in the engine like it arrived there by natural causes, like the woman he just shot down didn't bake it at six in the morning while rehearsing a pitch for his benefit.

Diesel follows me out and lies down across the office threshold, and I sit at my desk and put the folder in a drawer where I don't have to look at it. Touchpoints. God. Two weeks spent proving I'm not that person anymore, and the first time it matters, she comes out of my mouth wearing my voice and doing a jig.

The boat announces itself before I see it.

An engine with a wet cough, coming around the fuel dock in slow, apologetic lurches, and Tommy's voice carrying across the yard with genuine joy in it. "Boss. Boss. You gotta come see this."

I come out onto the office porch because whatever it is, it beats staring at the drawer with my folder in it. Diesel lifts his head, decides it's worth his time, and comes with.

It's a cabin cruiser, maybe thirty feet, listing into the dock with the grace of a man carrying groceries on ice. White hull. Blue lettering across the stern, big and proud and freshly painted.

Ship Happens.

"No," I say, out loud, to nobody.

"Oh yes," Tommy says.

Aiden's already down at the fuel dock catching the line, because a boat limping in gets help no matter what's painted on it. He'll be rude to the owner's face in about ninety seconds, but he’ll make sure the boat’s secure first.

I drift down the ramp for a better view of the crime scene. The owner's up top waving, sunburned, delighted with himself, clearly waiting for someone to mention the name.

Nobody mentions the name.

Aiden ties off, listens to the engine's death rattle for exactly as long as it takes to diagnose it, then shouts up, “Shut it off before it embarrasses itself more.” Then he's crouched at the stern, sleeves still shoved up, forearm flexing as he hauls a hatch open, and my whole body tips its hat to that forearm on the way past like the shameless thing it's become.