Page 43 of Presumed Dead

Slip seven was empty. Slip eight was empty, though she didn’t stop at slip eight.

She walked past slip eight.

She wasn’t going to think about that yet.

Slip nine was still empty.

She stopped at slip nine.

Ethan stopped beside her.

They stood at the head of slip nine with the rain easing and the wind dropping and the first pale gold of the morning coming up over the Gulf at their backs, and the cleats on the head of slip nine held Doyle Pruitt’s lines coiled tight and clockwise, and the slip held no boat.

Sloane was soaked through under the foul-weather jacket. Her shoulders were sore. The left knee, the one she’d gone down on at slip eight, ached. Her hands were cold, and her hair was wet at the ends where it had escaped the hood, and she stood at the head of slip nine on a Thursday morning at six twenty-eight with a man at her shoulder, and what she felt was the small unfamiliar weight of not being on her dock alone.

She turned to him.

“Ethan.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“You didn’t ask me to.”

“I didn’t have to.”

He looked at her.

She looked back at him.

The pale gold morning was coming up over the Gulf and the rain had eased to a soft warm drift and the first of the captains on Pier One were starting to arrive in the new light, and Sloane Mercer stood at the head of slip nine at half-past six on a Thursday morning in May with a man who’d come up her dock in the dark at four-something without being asked. What she didn’t say out loud was the answer the question on the bench seat had given her on Wednesday night.

Care was the word. Care was still the word.

It was a bigger word this morning than it had been yesterday.

She didn’t say that either.

She did what she had been doing for four years, which was put her hand on the cleat at the head of the slip and feel the wood of the planking under her boots and the weight of the dock under her feet. She did the small specific thing she’d learned to do at five forty-three for four years, which was let the dock be the dock and the slip be the slip and the absence be the absence.

Then she did something she hadn’t done at the head of a slip on her own marina in four years.

She looked at the man beside her.

Just looked.

He was already looking at her.

Neither of them said anything for the count of about four breaths, and the four breaths were the longest four breaths Sloane Mercer had spent on her own dock in four years. At the end of the four breaths she turned away first, not because she wanted to turn away first but because turning away first was something she could still control.

“I’m going to check the rest of the dock.”

“I’ll come.”

“No.”

She said the no without thinking about it. He didn’t move. He waited the count it took for her to decide whether she meant the no, and she meant it, and she said it again.