Chapter 4

The Pruitt Marine office sat on the water at the end of the gate road. Georgia had a key to it she had not used in five years. She used it Tuesday morning, two hours before dawn. The office smelled like diesel and old coffee and cold. She turned on the desk lamp and sat down in a chair nobody had ever seen her sit in. Then she laid the trust deed on the blotter. Notarized. Nine years old. Her name. She waited.

Wendell came in at seven and stopped in the doorway. "What are you doing in here?" "I own it," Georgia said. She said it once, quietly, the way she did everything. His mouth worked for a few seconds. "You-" "Nine years. The dock. The terminal. The buildings on Front Street." She did not raise her voice. "You have been running my gate and signing my name." Wendell sat down slowly, like a man stepping into deep water. He tried a laugh. "That's a good one." "Then call the bank and ask them." He did not call the bank. He looked at the deed. Then at her. Then at the door. "You never came down here." "Not while you were watching." That was the only answer he was going to get. Georgia watched him understand it and then decide to keep going anyway. That was how it went with men like Wendell. They kept going until the floor opened.

He pushed the trust folder across the desk, because there was nothing else to do with his hands. She opened it under the lamp. She went through it line by line. The board minutes. The insurance. The lease on the Front Street buildings. The management fee paid out every month to the same name. Wendell Boyd. Every month for five years. Since the day the boat went down. Georgia felt nothing at all. Then she felt everything.

She had not come down here in five years because the water was the last place her son had been. Now she was sitting in it with the lamp on, and the water had given something back. Not what she wanted. Something worse, and better.

At the back of the folder was the accident report. Water-stained. Filed by the county. Two names. Wade Pruitt. Emory Pruitt. Found: one. Not found: one. She read it twice. Then the guardianship paper, the same one he had shown her at the gate. Her own name at the bottom in a hand that was almost hers. She turned the page over. A single sheet slid out from behind it, folded small. The paper was soft from handling. Somebody had opened it and refolded it a hundred times. It was her sister's handwriting all the way down. Colleen's hand. Her loops. Her tight little slant. Georgia had not seen that hand in five years.

She put the pieces in a row in her head. The fee, every month since the drowning. The forgery, eight days after. The letter, hidden in his desk. The drowning that never was. Five years of flat quiet broke open in her chest, and she held it still. Then she looked up at the man across the desk. "Then why is my dead sister's handwriting on the paper in your desk?"