The Morning A Ferry Supervisor Came Looking For A Retired Woman

Pilar Domínguez came through our shop door carrying a ferry cushion with a split seam.

"You look busy for a woman who retired yesterday," she said.

I stopped my machine with my knee. The needle stayed buried in blue vinyl.

"Who said I retired?"

"Your partner. He offered to move our contract to his new place."

I was Laurel Baines, forty-five, a marine upholsterer with twenty-three years spent sewing things meant to survive salt water. I was a white woman with freckled arms, gray threaded through my brown braid, and a pale scar across my left thumb.

Emmett Cross had never asked what that scar cost me. He only asked whether a job would be ready by Friday.

Emmett was a broad white man of forty-nine, with sandy hair, pink cheeks, and a smile that arrived before he did.

That smile had sold plenty of work at Baines Cross Marine Trim. Meeting the dates he promised had been my job.

Outside, a truck rattled over the broken pavement of our yard in Wilmington, North Carolina. The river wind smelled of wet wood and diesel. Inside, Pilar set her cushion beside my old fishing tackle box.

I kept my thread spools in it, sorted by color. Blue for most work. Red for warning flags and repair marks. Green for the ferry cushions waiting on my table.

"I haven't retired," I said.

"Good. I have thirty-six bench cushions due in eleven days."

Pilar was fifty-two, a Dominican American woman with dark curls clipped above her collar. Her work shirt had a tiny burn near one cuff. She ran maintenance for Cape Reach Ferry Service, a small private ferry fleet that carried people and service trucks across the lower Cape Fear.

"Emmett said you were tired," she told me.

"I am. That's different."

She almost smiled.

Her contract was worth $48,600. We had received a $24,300 advance. The other half would come in three payments of $8,100, one for each accepted batch of twelve cushions.

The money should have paid for foam, vinyl, fittings, and help.

I pulled up our bank account.

The balance was $19.42.

I refreshed the screen. As if asking twice might change the answer.

Two transfers had left the day before. One was $24,300. The other was $13,740.

Together, they had taken every dollar except a little interest.

"Is something wrong?" Pilar asked.

"Yes. Give me a minute."

I called Emmett. He answered over the sound of a drill.

"Laurel. I was going to stop by."

"Where's the ferry advance?"

"Working capital."

"Working where?"

"Don't get wound up. We need room to grow."

"Did you tell Pilar I retired?"

The drill stopped.

"You said your hands hurt. I gave you an easy exit."

My hands did hurt. They had hurt while I stitched his daughter's porch cushions at cost. They had hurt while I hauled wet foam out after the hurricane.

"Put the money back."

"There's no point fighting this. People buy from me. You sew."

He hung up.

Pilar studied my face, then looked toward the empty chair at his desk.

"I need to know whether to hire someone else."

"I need until tomorrow morning to give you a true answer."

"No speech?"

"No."

"Nine o'clock," she said. "A kept promise is worth more to me than a good pitch."

After she left, I shut the door and slid the tackle box toward me. Under its lift-out tray was a flat waterproof pouch.

Two years earlier, a hurricane had pushed water through this shop. Emmett had wanted to walk away. I had paid $42,000 from my mother's estate to reopen it.

Before I paid, I had hired Ruth Vale, a business lawyer.

Emmett had signed what she drew up. Then he had slapped the pages with his palm.

"Whatever keeps the lights on, Laurie."

Nobody else called me Laurie.

The signed agreement gave me a choice if he moved a customer deposit to a business he owned without my written consent. I could buy his half of our company for a fixed $18,000.

There was a matching clause for him if I did the same thing. Ruth had insisted. It was a rule for both owners, even if only one of us expected to need it.

He had agreed because, during the flood cleanup, his half had seemed worth less than nothing.

I had placed that $18,000 in Ruth's escrow account. The receipts were still in the pouch, dry and flat.

I touched the tackle box latch. It gave its familiar small click.

Then I called Ruth.

"I need you to read paragraph nine with me," I said.

Before she answered, my phone lit with a message from Emmett.

It held a photo of a fresh shop sign: CROSS COASTAL CUSHIONS.

Under it he had written, Send Pilar here before you embarrass yourself.