“Beau is agoodman.”
She stares, and I turn and leave.
Lyingin bed the next morning, I stare at the text Beau sent me last night.
Beau
Don’t worry about the presentation stuff, okay?
I haven’t responded yet because I don’t know what to say.
Part of me wants to be the bigger person here and just do it. But thinking of presenting to the city council in a few days makes me sick now. I don’t have it in me.
Gemma
I’ll update the folder with the newest footage for you to use.
Thank you, Gemma.
I miss you.
I let my head drop back onto my pillow. I miss him too. So much it physically aches. And I know I don’t have to. We’re not fighting or anything.
I think my brain has just mingled Beau and the island too much to separate what happened at the city council meeting. And maybe somewhere inside, I’m scared that Beau will reject me like Sunset Harbor has.
It’s after noon when I get an email from Eugene. It’s a forwarded email—the report from the surveyor. I’m tempted tojust send it straight to my trash folder. With the new short-term lease ban, what does it matter? Mr. Wallace won’t want the property no matter what the survey results are.
Eugene has a call scheduled to discuss things with Mr. Wallace later today. He thinks there’s a possibility he may still want to pursue the purchase and develop the property as a long-term rental. I hope he’s right because we have no other motivated buyers at this point. Apparently, the ones that wanted showings this week were all either investors with their sights set on short-term rentals, or they’ve found better options.
Too curious to leave the forwarded email alone, I open it. It’s got an attachment, of course, but there’s a bit written by the surveyor to Eugene, as well.
As you can see in the attached report, my findings show that the current fence sits approximately 16.24” past the legal property line and that the dock, in its entirety, falls outside of the property boundary.
I stare at the words, then reread them to be sure I understand correctly. Then, just in case my brain isn’t working—wouldn’t be the first time—I open up the attachment and scroll through until I see the plat maps. One of them shows the location of the current fence which, just like the email said, is well to the right of Grams’s actual property line. The true boundary cuts in a straight line from the front of the property, ending just to the left of the dock—putting it squarely on Palmer land.
Beau was right.
The dock isn’t ours. It isn’t just notoursas in not-the-Sawyers’, but also notoursas in not shared between the Sawyers and Palmers. It’s their legal property.
All these years, Grams has insisted the dock was ours. And she was wrong.
“You’re late,”Grams says when I reach her room at Seaside Oasis forty-five minutes later.
“Sorry,” I say. “Something came up.”
She looks at me through narrowed eyes, as though she thinks I was with Beau or something.
“Not that,” I say.
“Come on, then. I’m hungry, and today’s spaghetti. If we get there soon enough, the cook will slip me an extra portion of parmesan.”
I consider asking her to wait so we can talk about the boundary issues, but it’ll be better to discuss all of this when she doesn’t have an empty stomach, so we head to the cafeteria and get our plates of spaghetti—and extra parm.
Grams has a huge appetite, and I almost expect her to lick her plate clean. The whole time, though, I’m watching her and wondering whether she even knows she’s been championing a cause all these years with no ground to stand on.
“Let’s go play some checkers,” she says, putting out a hand for me to help her up. “I’m gettingverygood.”
“There’s not a ton of strategy to it, is there?” I support her until she’s standing.
