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for a moment, gazing back toward shore.Now at low tide, the storm-scoured beach extending a quarter mile on either side of the dock was a curving crescent of smooth, gleaming stones.
    But at high tide, the water had been twenty feet higher, leftover waves from last night’s big blow swamping the dock and tossing thick mats of seaweed and driftwood right up into the boatyard’s gravel parking lot. Which meant that now the water was getting deeper again as the tide came back in.
    Richard shot Sam a hopeful glance. “I figured you’d know what to do,” he ventured.
    Sam didn’t reply. Five years ago he’d have enjoyed the flattery, even milked Richard for more. But back then he’d been a twenty-year-old kid whose youthful energy and odd natural talent for boats were getting submerged in a sea of alcohol.
    Not that he’d lacked excuses: years before that, his mom had been a financial manager on Wall Street, with little time—or natural talent, either—for chasing after a small boy. Her own upbringing had been nightmare material, too, so had it been any wonder she’d had no idea how to raise her own kid?
    Meanwhile, his dad had been a well-respected brain surgeon, the kind you went to when all the other brain surgeons started talking to you about hospice. As a surgeon he was the equivalent of a tightly focused, freakishly accurate laser. But as a dad he’d been more like a brick through a plate-glass window, when he was around at all.
    In the end, Sam’s father had died of an octopus-shaped mass that he’d joked must have formed inside his skull as revenge for the many other tumors he’d killed—that is, before he became unable to joke at all. Sam sometimes wondered if he would ever be able to forgive his dad, or if instead he would carry the memory of Victor’s long-term neglect mingled with his own helpless love for the man, like an albatross around his neck forever.
    Today , he realized; today’s his deathiversary . “Sam?”
    The voice jerked Sam back to the present, and to Richard Stedman still standing there looking at him like a puppy hoping not to be kicked.
    “So what do you think?” Richard asked. His voice didn’t soundhopeful. Not that it should have, even if his boat hadn’t been on its way down to Davy Jones’s locker.
    Hope, Sam knew, was a feeling reserved for the boat-buying process and its immediate, euphoric aftermath. Once the deal was done, other emotions kicked in: rage, sorrow, despair. If a new boat-owner was lucky and had any skill, his feelings didn’t end up including the gut-twisting terror that accompanied drowning.
    “Not sure,” Sam temporized, reluctant to voice the bad news. Richard had hauled the boat down here to the slip he’d rented, he’d told Sam, to get her shipshape while enjoying the natural surroundings: granite cliffs, a thickly forested shore, and the rocky beaches that were all you could see from the dock, plus of course the water itself.
    Courtesan wasn’t quite ready to sail, Richard had admitted, but he’d thought that he could motor her around in calm weather, using the seven-and-a-half-horse Evinrude on her transom. Now, though …
    “Doomed, isn’t she?” Richard repeated.
    Sam had liked the look of Courtesan , even at first sight. A lot of used boats had sat unloved in someone’s backyard for too long, their decks showing the imprints of the autumn leaves left to pile up on them and their teak trim cracked with neglect.
    But Courtesan had been well kept, and she’d floated when she slid off the trailer Richard had bought for her; some preowned vessels didn’t. Sam had congratulated the new skipper on the deal he’d made, suggesting that if Richard needed any help getting her seaworthy, Sam and the boatyard equipment were available.
    Then he’d handed Richard his card, not expecting to hear any more about it. The urgent call this morning had been a surprise, but also a false alarm; bilges were supposed to have water in them, Sam had