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they were concerned. All a guy could do was pay attention to what a vessel was telling him, he reminded himself as Richard Stedman gazed beseechingly at him, then be ready to try answering in some way that was at least halfway useful.
    “Okay, let’s just see what the trouble is,” he told Richard, now hurrying ahead down the boat ramp.
    “I already know what the trouble is.” Richard’s rubber flip-flops slap-slapped the ramp’s grooved granite-slab surface. “Damn thing’s capsizing.”
    “Yeah, well,” Sam replied, unwilling to commit himself any further than that without more information, and not about to take Richard’s word for anything, either. Because on the one hand, Richard Stedman so far had been good-humored, a hard worker, and most important, willing to listen, a trio of qualities that in Sam’s experience was uncommon among boatyard customers.
    On the other hand, though, here Richard was, running around practically barefoot in the middle of October. So we’ll see , Sam thought, still keeping an open mind about the fellow trotting ahead of him between the dock pilings.
    Here on the windy side of the island, the water bounced with a light chop, the greenish froth-topped waves still racing in the aftermath of the storm the night before. But the sky overhead was blue, only the dark gray mounds of the low-pressure system’s trailing cloud bank showing like foothills of a mountain range, to the east.
    “Just take it easy,” Sam told the worried boat owner. “So far, we don’t know anything.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Richard groused, but amicably enough under the circumstances. “You mean you don’t know.”
    Fair comment; Courtesan was tied up outside the farthest corner of the long T-shaped dock. Sam hadn’t seen her since the last time Richard had dragged him down here, four hours earlier.
    What he did know, though, was that it made him happy to be hereat all: on or near the water, among the boats and even among their beleaguered owners. It was a knowledge he’d gone through a lot to obtain, trying and failing at college, trade schools, even online correspondence courses.
    But none of them had worked, and he’d drifted aimlessly and unhappily for a while before realizing: he could do this . And not only could he do it, but he was good at it. The only thing wrong with living and working right here in Eastport, in fact, was the lack of female companionship; most of the women his age were taken, and of the ones who weren’t, either they didn’t want him or he didn’t want them.
    “See?” Richard said, pointing. “She’s going down.”
    “Huh,” Sam replied, understanding now as he caught fresh sight of Richard’s recently purchased vessel at last. The way she moved in the water, sluggish and tubby looking, contrasted sharply with her bright, jaunty attitude of earlier in the day. And her rail, riding a foot or so closer to the waves than it had been …
    “Oh, yeah, that’s …” Bad . His voice trailed off as he sized up the situation and realized that it was dire.
    “Going down,” Richard repeated gloomily. “Isn’t she?”
    In his late twenties, he was about five-eight and compactly built, with small but solid-looking muscles, thick, curly yellow hair, and the deeply tanned complexion of a man with the freedom to have spent much of the previous summer outdoors.
    Not exactly a veteran sailor, Sam had already decided, but Richard was definitely correct about one thing: from the look of her at the moment, his boat was about to become an underwater activity.
    “Yeah,” Sam conceded. “You’ve got problems, all right.”
    He strode farther along the dock, then knelt on it, peering over Courtesan ’s rail and into her hatch. The twenty-four-foot fiberglass yawl Richard had bought used a few days before floated parallel to the dock—if you could call what she was doing floating.
    Even capsizing wasn’t the right word; sinking , actually, was more like it. Sam stood and thought