Two boats
Her skiff had no name. Her father had insisted a boat ought to earn one after it touched water, and she had accused him of avoiding a decision because he liked hearing suggestions. He had offered Captain, the name he gave every dog he could not remember. She still had a penciled C on the inside of the bow where she had almost let him win.
Iris knelt beside the skiff that morning and ran her palm along the bare edge. They had started it together when she accepted the berth in another port, saying it would give them something to work on before she went. The boat now stood on a pair of supports under a window, open enough for rain light to reach the ribs. She had meant to fit the next plank before her father died. She had not come into the shed since the fall.
Dev tapped on the frame with two knuckles. “Eamon brought oranges. I told him you were working and he left them with me.”
“Were you kind?”
“A little.” He set the bag beside her. “I did not tell him to stop asking about the launch.”
“You could try.”
“He has asked since the first screw went in.” Dev peeled an orange with a thumb blackened by pencil lead and held her half. They ate standing over a boat neither had to finish today.
Her father had once shown her how to feel for a ridge with her eyes shut. “Your hand knows before the light does,” he had said. When she was twelve, she had deliberately left a ridge to test him. He found it on the first pass and pretended it was a sea monster rising under the wood. She had loved him for making work into a joke. Later, when she was old enough to do the job beside him, he sometimes forgot that a joke was not an answer.
Two weeks before the funeral, he had written her name on the yard calendar beneath Eamon's sea-trial date. Iris found it while measuring the skiff. She went out to the launch with the ruler still in her hand.
“You told Eamon I'd finish his bow?” she asked.
“I told him we'd be ready. Dev can get the engine in. You'll do the fairing faster than either of us.” Her father had kept scraping a spot on the hull. “He's planned the trip with his daughter. She has the time off.”
“Five weeks until I start the berth,” she had told him.
“This is before that.”
“If nothing goes wrong. If I don't need to pack or move or sleep.”
He had lowered the scraper then. His face looked tired rather than commanding. “I thought you wanted the boat in the water before you left.”
“I want you to ask before you tell someone I'll do it.”
He had said, “I thought I knew what you would say.” That was the part she kept hearing. It was almost an apology, and it hid the thing he had done. They had eaten dinner together that night with Mara. When he asked Iris to pass the salt, she said she had not agreed to finish Eamon's boat, and being angry did not mean she had changed her mind. He said she needn't say it again. Iris said she couldn't wait to get away from this yard. He left his plate and went outside. Mara heard them both and began talking about the soup. Then he fell at the yard, and the last clean chance to finish the argument went with him.
Dev watched her put the ruler back on its shelf. “We can move your skiff to the dry end,” he said. “Then there's room to lay Eamon's rails out.”
“I don't want to move it yet.”
“I didn't say we had to.” He looked at her through the open ribs. “I can finish the straight work on Eamon's boat. I can't promise him the trial day alone, especially if I take the other job.”
“You should take it.” She knew what he earned and what the yard could not pay him if it sat quiet. “I'll tell Eamon myself. Just not this morning.”
Julian came through the gate carrying a small paper bag of pastries from the town bakery. The garage had called to say the hose would be fitted by late afternoon, and he had decided to spend the wait at the yard. Iris had not invited him, but Dev offered him an orange before he could speak. The two men stood awkwardly with fruit in their hands.
“Is that yours?” Julian asked, nodding toward the skiff.
“Mine and his,” Iris said. Then she heard how it sounded. Her father was dead; the boat was not. “We started it together.”
Julian went to its stern and looked in without touching. “I don't know what I could do.”
“There isn't a task for you.” She watched his face close a little. “You can sit, if you're here. Dev has enough to do without guarding a visitor.”
He sat on an upturned crate while she and Dev laid out a plank for Eamon's launch. The work needed four hands. For a moment Iris considered making him hold the far end. She asked Dev instead. Julian stayed and unwrapped the pastries, passing them around when their hands were clean.
At noon Eamon arrived in person. He had brought a packet of old photographs he meant to give Mara, including one of her father waist-deep in water with a rope in his mouth. The sight of Julian under the shed roof made him stop so abruptly that the photographs slipped from his fingers. Julian bent to help gather them. Eamon shook his head and took them himself.
“I was going to ask about my trip,” he said to Iris. “I can ask next week.”
“I'll come see you before then.”
He nodded. He was hurt already, by a delay she had not yet confirmed. She saw it and did not offer a date to make his face easier to bear. When he left, Julian picked up the pastry bag and found one sugar-coated end still inside. He put it on the bench near her without a word. Iris ate it while Dev held the next plank steady. The sweetness made sawdust cling to her fingers, and she had to wash her hands before she could mark the wood.