“I don’t know what that means either.” He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “We have loads of time before your flight. Why don’t we stop at the shipyard for a few minutes and you can charge your phone there?”
Since the harbor was so close to Hugo’s house, they stopped to pick up a rapturous Humphrey, and then drove the short distance to the shipyard. There wasn’t much activity at the moment; the sky had turned gray, and even from a distance, Marigold could tell the water was growing choppy. Hugo parked by the large building where boats were stored and repaired, and Marigold followed him inside.
“Oh, wow,” Marigold said as she turned from side to side. Instead of the jumble of motorboats she remembered, about a half dozen sailboats in various stages of completion rested on wooden frames. A few were barely more than skeletons, but the one closest to them was nearly finished. She ran her hand along the gleaming wooden hull, marveling at the elegant lines. “My stepfather would kill for a boat like this. There aren’t many wooden ones this size on the market.”
“I know. That’s why I started designing them.”
Marigold whirled around to face Hugo. “Youdesigned this boat?” She knew it’d always been a dream of Hugo’s to design boats—he had dozens of notebooks full of sketches. But he’d always told Marigold it was an impossible field to break into and that he was better off sticking to repairs.
“This one… and those. All of them.”
“Holy shit, Hugo. They’rebeautiful.”
“They’re all right. The hardest part is saying goodbye. They take so long to build, you get attached.”
“Are they all commissions?”
“Not anymore. Once business picked up, I decided I didn’t want to design them for rich assholes. I make them the way I want, and then I wait for the right buyer.”
“So how do they find you?
He looked away, almost as if he was embarrassed. “I guess you could say I took a page out of your book.”
Marigold waited a beat to see if he’d say more. “Yeah, sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You told me not to contact you in your letter, but I was worried, so I started looking for you on social media, just to make sure you’d made it back to New York okay.”
“Oh, right…”
“You never told me about all that stuff. That you were, like, this big-deal influencer.”
“I was happy to get away from it for a few weeks. And, I don’t know, I didn’t want you to think I was some shallow…” She trailed off.
“Are you kidding? You know that campaign you did? For the sports cars?”
“Yeah?” She’d made a windfall creating content for a company that specialized in refurbishing vintage sports cars. The videos had been her idea, which was rare. Usually, clients had a whole ad agency working for them, calling the shots.
“I thought it was genius how you wrote a dating profile for each car, like ‘seeking someone who can operate a stick around dangerous curves.’?”
Marigold covered her face. “Oh god, please don’t quote me. I’lldie.”
“So I… I might’ve borrowed the idea. I did something similar for the boats.”
“You madevideos?” The Hugo she remembered hadn’t owned a smartphone, let alone a camera and editing equipment.
“No, but I wrote descriptions from the point of view of the boat, listing the type of captain they were looking for. I gave each one a personality, a voice, I guess. And it worked. I owe you, big-time.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I’m happy for you. Andproud. Is that weird to say? I don’t know if I’m still allowed to be proud of you.”
He smiled, and the laugh lines around his green eyes crinkled. “I grant you permission to be proud of me.” He led her out through a side door, along a short breezeway, and then into the refurbished fisherman’s cabin that served as his office.
“Um, is this a joke?” Marigold asked, looking around the room. With its reclaimed wooden floor, hodgepodge of vintage furniture, and paintings of boats, it made the Sandpiper Island Yacht Club’s attempt at “nautical chic” look cheap and gaudy. “When did you become an interior decorator?”
“I rented it furnished,” Hugo said. He walked over to a file cabinet and, after some digging, found a cord that would work for her phone.
Marigold walked over to look at some sketches on a large wooden desk. “So this is where the magic happens?”
“Sometimes. I do most of my design work on the computer, but clients seem to like the hand-drawn sketches. It makes the whole thing more ‘authentic.’?” He walked over to a cabinet withan electric kettle and a coffee maker on it. “Want anything?” He opened the cabinet doors, revealing a half dozen liquor bottles. “Pick your poison.”
