Read Online Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) by Christine Kling - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Christine Kling
Tags: nautical suspense novel
Ads: Link
the ketch at Bahia Mar and turning the keys and the responsibility over to her new owner. The guy had looked ashen-faced after Zale and I had thrown off the towlines, setting B. J. and the new ketch adrift. I’d docked Gorda on the T-pier, and then he’d watched as B. J. started the engine and brought his fifty-seven-footer in so easily that Zale and I were able to reach up and grab the dock lines neatly coiled on her bow.
The three of us were huddled in Gorda ’s deckhouse now, headed home, just waiting for the warm lights of the Larsens’ place to appear around the next bend. B. J. came up behind me and reached around to put his hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt. I leaned back into his chest, rested my head in the hollow of his neck, and pressed my butt against him. The instant rise in my temperature was due more to the thrumming I felt inside than to the mere combination of our body heat. With his hands still inside my sweatshirt pockets, he began tracing small circles on the front of my jeans. We had a couple hundred feet of clear water between us and the next channel marker, so I let go of the wheel and turned into his arms. Over his shoulder, I saw Zale sitting on the wheelhouse bunk, wrapped in a blanket, his head lowered, and I heard him sniffling in the darkness. I nodded my head and B. J. looked over, too. I didn’t know if it was the cold making the kid’s nose run or if he was crying again. I saw in B. J.’s eyes that he felt as I did—either way, we were helpless to cure it.
Once we’d tied up the tug at my dock and I’d shut down the engine, the night seemed eerily quiet. As is typical the day after a cold front comes through, the night was dry and cold, with temperatures in the forties already and headed for the thirties by morning. The unusual lack of humidity made the night air crisp and clear, and the stars and the lights of the city all seemed to pierce the black night with uncharacteristic clarity.
As the three of us walked up the path toward my cottage with Abaco bounding ahead, Zale stopped dead, staring upward. Without looking at me or B. J., he asked, “Where do you think he is right now?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I tried not to let on how often I wondered that same question about all the people I’d loved and lost.
“Do you think he still is ?” Zale looked at me, the starlight reflecting off his wire-rimmed glasses. “I mean, is my dad up there somewhere in the heavens—like Gramma Josie says, in Skyland—watching me? Is he still, you know, my dad?”
B. J. slid in between us and put his arms over both our shoulders. He hugged Zale especially tight. “Hey kid, there’s no way we can really know for sure about that, is there? We humans are always asking that question, the question of another life, of whether there is such a thing as an afterlife. But you know what I think? You know that feeling inside you right now? That hurt, that sense of loss?”
Zale nodded.
“That’s your dad settling in right here.” He took the arm off my shoulder and patted Zale on the belly. “You’ll always have that feeling there when you think about him. You’ll always carry that part of him with you.”
“I miss him so much already,” he said in a choked whisper. Then he wrapped his thin arms around his midsection, shrugged off B. J.’s embrace, and stepped off the path. He swung his torso back and forth as though he were suffering from a bellyache. Then, turning to us, he asked, “Why?” The tears rushed back and his voice cracked with emotion as he struggled to say between sobs, “Why would somebody shoot my dad?”
VII
When I pulled my Jeep to the curb in front of Molly’s house, I thought at first that she wasn’t home. The house looked dark and there wasn’t any sign of a car parked in the drive. We climbed out and B. J. lifted the seat so that Zale could get out of the Jeep’s backseat, and as soon as the kid’s sneakers hit the pavement, he trotted up
The three of us were huddled in Gorda ’s deckhouse now, headed home, just waiting for the warm lights of the Larsens’ place to appear around the next bend. B. J. came up behind me and reached around to put his hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt. I leaned back into his chest, rested my head in the hollow of his neck, and pressed my butt against him. The instant rise in my temperature was due more to the thrumming I felt inside than to the mere combination of our body heat. With his hands still inside my sweatshirt pockets, he began tracing small circles on the front of my jeans. We had a couple hundred feet of clear water between us and the next channel marker, so I let go of the wheel and turned into his arms. Over his shoulder, I saw Zale sitting on the wheelhouse bunk, wrapped in a blanket, his head lowered, and I heard him sniffling in the darkness. I nodded my head and B. J. looked over, too. I didn’t know if it was the cold making the kid’s nose run or if he was crying again. I saw in B. J.’s eyes that he felt as I did—either way, we were helpless to cure it.
Once we’d tied up the tug at my dock and I’d shut down the engine, the night seemed eerily quiet. As is typical the day after a cold front comes through, the night was dry and cold, with temperatures in the forties already and headed for the thirties by morning. The unusual lack of humidity made the night air crisp and clear, and the stars and the lights of the city all seemed to pierce the black night with uncharacteristic clarity.
As the three of us walked up the path toward my cottage with Abaco bounding ahead, Zale stopped dead, staring upward. Without looking at me or B. J., he asked, “Where do you think he is right now?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I tried not to let on how often I wondered that same question about all the people I’d loved and lost.
“Do you think he still is ?” Zale looked at me, the starlight reflecting off his wire-rimmed glasses. “I mean, is my dad up there somewhere in the heavens—like Gramma Josie says, in Skyland—watching me? Is he still, you know, my dad?”
B. J. slid in between us and put his arms over both our shoulders. He hugged Zale especially tight. “Hey kid, there’s no way we can really know for sure about that, is there? We humans are always asking that question, the question of another life, of whether there is such a thing as an afterlife. But you know what I think? You know that feeling inside you right now? That hurt, that sense of loss?”
Zale nodded.
“That’s your dad settling in right here.” He took the arm off my shoulder and patted Zale on the belly. “You’ll always have that feeling there when you think about him. You’ll always carry that part of him with you.”
“I miss him so much already,” he said in a choked whisper. Then he wrapped his thin arms around his midsection, shrugged off B. J.’s embrace, and stepped off the path. He swung his torso back and forth as though he were suffering from a bellyache. Then, turning to us, he asked, “Why?” The tears rushed back and his voice cracked with emotion as he struggled to say between sobs, “Why would somebody shoot my dad?”
VII
When I pulled my Jeep to the curb in front of Molly’s house, I thought at first that she wasn’t home. The house looked dark and there wasn’t any sign of a car parked in the drive. We climbed out and B. J. lifted the seat so that Zale could get out of the Jeep’s backseat, and as soon as the kid’s sneakers hit the pavement, he trotted up
Similar Books
