Page 59 of Presumed Dead

Greg Bonner came down Pier Three at eight with a tool bag and an opinion.

“You installed the pump.”

“Last night. Couldn’t sleep.”

“Show me.”

Ethan showed him. Greg got down on his knees at the engine cover with the slow care of a man whose knees had opinions of their own now, and he looked at the install for a long minute, and he ran a finger along the new hose clamp, and he grunted.

“That’s right.”

“High praise.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

Greg sat back on the gunwale and accepted the coffee Ethan handed him without being asked, and the two of them sat in the morning sun and looked at the water, and it was the kind of quiet that didn’t need anything done to it.

“You’re settling in,” Greg said.

“Trying to.”

“George likes you. Halsey doesn’t like anybody for the first six months. You’re ahead of schedule.”

“I’ll try not to ruin it.”

“Good man.” Greg drank his coffee. “Catherine likes you too, and Catherine’s a harder grade than George.”

“Catherine fed me twice in two days.”

“Then you’re basically family. God help you.”

Ethan laughed. It came easy, and it was real, and that was the part that kept catching him off guard down here, that some of it was real, that he could sit on a boat in the sun with a sixty-something charter captain and laugh at something genuinely funny and have it not be cover.

Greg looked out at the water and his face changed by a small degree.

“Pruitt’s boat went out before the storm yesterday,” he said. “Came back after.”

Ethan kept his face easy. “I heard he tied up at a friend’s place up the channel.”

“That’s what he’s saying.”

“You don’t buy it?”

“I’ve run this coast for thirty-five years. Doyle Pruitt doesn’t have a friend up the channel. Doyle Pruitt doesn’t have a friend anywhere.” Greg shrugged, a man putting something down rather than picking it up. “Not my business what he does with his boat. Just struck me funny.”

“Funny how?”

“A man takes a forty-foot diesel out into a fifty-knot blow for fun?” Greg drained his cup and stood with a hand on the rail to help himself up. “He didn’t do it for fun.”

He handed Ethan the empty cup and picked up his tool bag.

“Anyway. The pump’s good. You did right by Don’s boat.”

“Thank you, Greg.”

“Thank me by not sinking her.”

He went back up the pier, and Ethan watched him go, and the easy warmth Greg had brought down the dock with him stayed on the boat after he left. That was the thing about the good ones. They left some of it behind.