The tide was wrong, and the trout probably preferred live shrimp, which he didn’t have, but Nate didn’t particularly care one way or the other. He settled himself on the edge of the dock with his legs dangling over the edge and cast his line into the middle of the creek, letting the line drift toward a deep spot in the bottom before setting the bail of his reel. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and inhaled the scent of mud and marsh and salt, occasionally giving the line a gentle bump.
He found his mind drifting too, back to his pirate days.
They were fourteen years old. Too young for real jobs, too old to be bossed around by parents or babysitters. There were four in his crew, island boys all, no summer people or weekenders allowed. Unlike the rich brats who spent their summers lounging around pools or swatting at tennis balls, they were the sons of working-class families. Pete Davenport’s mother was a single mom who cleaned houses on the island for a living. The Mayo twins, Bobby and Corey, lived in a modest cottage in the village. Their alcoholic father was the groundskeeper at the golf club, and their mom had been missing in action for as long as the twins could remember.
Nate was the captain of the crew—not because he was clearly from a higher socioeconomic class, but only because he’d managed to save enough money from mowing lawns to buy a leaky old Montgomery Ward aluminum johnboat with a fifteen-horsepower Johnson outboard.
Most mornings they’d meet up at the marina, pool their money to buy gas, Cokes, and chips, and set out to sail the seas. They knew the salt flats of the bay and the winding creeks like they knew their own home phone numbers.
They spent their summers on the water, fishing, crabbing, and casting for shrimp, which they’d either sell to the bait house or use themselves, and generally getting into the kind of mostly innocent trouble boys got into. They explored the wildlife refuge, hung out at the dump, shooting rats with Pete Davenport’s BB gun, and talked about the cars they would buy and the girls they would screw when they got older.
That fall, they all started high school on the mainland. Nate played JV football, and then baseball in the spring, and the rest of the crew played truant. When summer rolled around that year, Captain Joe decided he was old enough to work as a deckhand on the Carolina Queen, and the Mayo brothers found work as caddies, while Pete Davenport was forced to attend summer school in a doomed effort to save his failing grades. Nate hung with his friends on weekends, when he wasn’t working, or went into town to lift weights at the high school gym with the rest of the football team, but predictably, the crew drifted apart.
There was one last memorable escapade, the Labor Day weekend before school started. A camping trip was organized, and the crew took the johnboat and an old Boy Scout pup tent and some mildewed sleeping bags out to Lighthouse Key, the marshy island that was home to the Big Belle lighthouse.
Corey Mayo had swiped a bottle of Jim Beam from a golfer’s bag, and they’d had themselves a high old time around their campfire, roasting hot dogs and passing the bottle around until the four of them either passed out or puked.
And that was the last hoorah for Nate’s crew. Sixteen, it turned out, was the age when their differing interests and temperaments set the crew adrift for good.
Before their senior year of high school, Pete’s mother remarried and moved with him to Orlando. The last Nate heard, he was selling used cars in Tallahassee. Corey Mayo dropped out of high school, drifted on and off the island, and eventually ended up in prison for car theft. His brother, Bobby, enlisted in the Army and served honorably in Operation Desert Storm. He’d come home from the war suffering from PTSD, gotten married, and had a baby on the way when he’d killed himself on a cloudless May day in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
And Nate Milas had gone off to college at Wake Forest, started one doomed business, then moved to California with his best buddy and girlfriend to start up a new enterprise, a real estate app called Cribb.
The johnboat had developed a slow leak while he was away at school, and when he’d returned home to the island at Christmas break, he discovered it had sunk at its mooring, ruining the outboard and ending their pirate days forever.
He found his own success as improbable as the Mayo brothers’ failure. He’d thought about the crew a lot since his return home to Belle Isle. What, really, was the difference between himself and those fourteen-year-olds? An intact family, yes, that was part of the equation. His parents had been loving, but strict. Annie Milas, a teacher herself, had kept on top of him about his studies, and Joe, who’d never gone to college, had passed along his own demanding work ethic.
Luck and timing were factors, too. What if his sophomore-year roommate hadn’t been Matt Seaver, a computer nerd who shared Nate’s fascination with the Internet? What if, after he’d been dumped by Riley Nolan, he hadn’t met Cassie Barnes, who was as brilliant at business as she was beautiful? And what if the three of them hadn’t landed in San Carlos, with some of the highest real estate prices in the country, and been totally frustrated in their efforts to find a condo they could afford?
The intense heat was making him sleepy. He yawned. Yeah, luck and timing, and a decent family, and yeah, he had to hope his own smarts and hard work had something to do with it.
Things were lining up again, he felt, now that he was home. All he lacked was a partner, somebody who would help him build a new dream from the ground up. He’d have to forget about Riley Nolan, though. She’d made it crystal clear that they had no future together.
Nate felt a tug on his line. He sat up and started reeling, watching as the silvery shadow of a nice five-pound trout skimmed through the water. Hmm. Luck and timing again. Maybe this was an omen.
39
Left to her own devices, Maggy would sleep until noon. Friday morning, Riley went into her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. She looked down on her sleeping daughter’s face. She was sun-browned, and her toffee-colored hair was lightened, too. Her pale pink lips were slightly ajar, and the room was quiet except for her deep, even breaths. Her hot-natured daughter had kicked off all the covers and was sprawled sideways on the pink-sprigged sheet.
“Hey, Maggy,” Riley called softly. “Sleepyhead.”
Her daughter sat up in bed, stretched, and yawned. “What time is it?”
“It’s still early. Just barely eight.”
“Good.” Maggy launched herself backward onto the mattress. “See ya, Mom.”
“Honey, I just wanted to let you know I’m going into town this morning, to try to buy back our house.”
Maggy’s eyes widened. “Oh, Mom. That is so awesome. I’ll get my old room back, and we won’t have to share a bathroom.…”
“Wait. I said I’d try. The house is being sold at an auction, and that means that if somebody else comes along with more money, I might get outbid.”
“Then you just outbid them. Right? I mean, it’s our house.”
“Not anymore,” Riley said. “It belongs to the bank now. Look, there are some things I need to tell you. I thought you were too young to understand before, but now, I really don’t have a choice. I’m sorry, baby, but you’re gonna have to grow up in a hurry today.”
Maggy clutched her hand. “What, Mama? Are you sick?”
“No, baby, that’s not it. I’m healthy as a horse, and I’m not going anywhere. It’s about your dad.”