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“You need my help.”
Did she mean to prevent him from killing himself? His heart rate ticked up. “With what?”
“Your boat. Restoring it. Sailing it.” She swept her arms wide.
He scoffed. “Do you know how to sail? How to restore a boat?”
“No. But you can teach me.” She crossed her arms across her chest, determination in the bent of her brow.
“Look, Laura, I appreciate the help, but…” How could she help him? It would take longer for him to teach her how to restore the boat than to just do it himself.
“No.” She shook her head, lips pressed into a thin line. “You don’t understand. You’re not going to put me off or tell me thanks but no thanks. I’m not going away.”
“I’m not even sure we can restore the boat in time, and even if we did, we’d need three more people to help race it.”
“We can find them.” She was so stubbornly hopeful. Why?
Mark let out a long breath. “Why are you so determined? This isn’t even your project.”
“I need this,” she said. “You don’t know why I’m really here.”
“Because your affair with Dean the Prick ended badly,” Mark said, remembering her drunken tirade from the other night.
“That’s not it. Not really.” She took a deep breath and hugged herself tighter. “I’m here because I got pregnant. By Dean. I lost—” Laura sucked in a deep breath, the emotions seeming to overwhelm her “—the baby. I don’t even know if I can have another one, or if I ever will.”
Mark stood stock-still. He recognized the grief in her face, in the tremble of her voice. He’d known all along she suffered a loss. Maybe not like his, maybe different, but loss all the same. The pieces all fell together then. That’s why she fell apart when she saw Timothy’s baby video. Grief.
“And, I need something, like you need something,” she continued, swiping angrily at the tears that sprang to her eyes. “I thought cashing in my 401(k) and coming here would be enough but it isn’t. It isn’t enough. I need something. I need to put my hands to work, like you. I need to find something to take my mind off this…god-awful loss. Or I’m going to lose it.”
Mark knew the feeling. It’s why he began restoring his father’s old boat; it’s why he hatched this plan. Putting his hands to work was a defense against the grief, against the black hole of darkness that threatened to suck him in and never let him out.
“But Dave leaving,” he began. “I mean, I don’t even know if it’s a good plan anymore.”
“You’re going to give up this easily?” she challenged him. “The very first bump in the road and you’re throwing in the towel?”
He hadn’t thought of it like that before. Was he capitulating too soon?
“Look, you need this. I need this. And I’m going to make your life a holy hell until you agree to at least let me try. You saw me the other night. You know I can.”
Mark suddenly had an image of her running drunk down the beach shouting, “Build that boat!” and knew she was right. The woman was stubborn, he’d give her that. She might be small, but she was unbreakable. An unbreakable pebble, the kind that got in your shoe and bugged the heck out of you.
“You really want to get your hands dirty?” he challenged her.
“Just try me,” she said, raising her chin in the spirit of defiance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
OVER THE NEXT WEEK, Laura learned that while she might know a thing or two about software development, she had no idea how to build anything with her hands. She bungled the nail gun, she sawed off the wrong edge of a plank of wood and she nearly botched the sail she was trying to sew together. It was one mistake after another.
To his credit, Mark never lost his cool. He just kept moving her from one project to another, hoping she could find her stride.
That morning, Mark sat her down on top of the new wooden deck with several sanding blocks.
“I’m a disaster,” she admitted, feeling despondent. “You really trust me with something new?”
“I think you can do this. I really do. There’s no cords, no on-off switch, just this and elbow grease,” he said. He sanded a bit of board and then slid his hand across it. “There? You feel how that new part feels?”
She ran her hands down the now-smooth wood, nodding.
“That’s what the entire deck needs to feel like.”
She glanced up at the twenty feet of deck and suddenly felt the monumental nature of the task. “Every board?” she asked, swallowing hard. That was going to take forever.
