Part 3 — The Boat Name
I stood at the stern of that boat with my hip aching, and I read the name out loud, because everyone on that dock was waiting.
“Reel Escape.”
Beneath it, in smaller letters, was the hailing port. Jacksonville, Florida.
Hank let out a long, slow breath. A fisherman on the next slip shook his head and went back to his rope.
Paulette set down both coffees on the cabin roof. She told me, in a quiet voice, that she was a charter captain and a boat broker, and that Dale had bought the boat from her last August. He had asked to put the registration in her name for a while, until his paperwork was finished.
She said she had not known he was married. She had believed what he told her, that he was a bachelor who lived alone.
She looked at the receipts in my hand, and her cheeks went pink.
She did not argue and she did not make excuses; she walked into the cabin and came out with a folder, and she gave me every page.
The bill of sale. The ledger of the eleven payments. The text messages in which Dale had asked her not to call the house phone.
Dale stood on the deck with his hands hanging. He said he was sorry, and I believed that he was, and it was no longer enough.
I called a family lawyer in Jacksonville that afternoon from the dock. She told me that in Florida, money a spouse wastes can be counted against him when the marriage is divided, and that a vessel bought with marital funds is a marital asset, whoever is named on the paper.
Paulette cancelled the sale on her own and signed a statement. The boat went back on the market with the court watching the proceeds, and it sold in three weeks for a little over thirty-six thousand dollars.
After the lawyers, the broker and the bank, twenty-eight thousand came to me. My surgeon scheduled the hip for the second of December.
Dale moved into his brothers spare room. He wrote me a long letter with no excuses in it, and he started meeting with a counselor on Tuesdays. I told him I would see how he did over a year.
The school sent flowers. A third grader drew me a card with a cane on it, labeled in crayon, NURSE COLLEEN IS BRAVE.
In February, I walked down that same dock again without a limp, with Hank holding the gate.
Slip fourteen was empty. The water was flat and bright, and I passed a peppermint to a boy fishing off the end.