Free Monterey Bay by Lindsay Hatton Page B

services a much belated act of gratitude. For the kindness you showed her after the accident.”
    She heard a chuckle from the corner of the room. During Ricketts and her father’s conversation, Steinbeck had somehow rematerialized unnoticed. He was settled deeply now into a low-slung rocking chair in the corner, knees hitched up to chest height, a large notebook open on his lap, looking for all the world as though he had been there for a century or more and had been disappointed by every second of it.
    â€œIf I were you,” Steinbeck suggested, “I’d consider the debt already repaid. In full.”
    Her father gave Steinbeck a bemused look and then turned back to Ricketts.
    â€œFive, then?”
    â€œWhenever you like,” Ricketts replied.
    â€œMake sure you knock first,” Steinbeck added. “Or else you might interrupt some . . . how did you put it, Anders? Some ‘youthful follies’?”
    â€œJohn . . .” Ricketts laughed nervously.
    â€œYes, yes,” Steinbeck continued, undeterred. “I’m quite the comic. Have you heard the one about the sea otters, Anders? When the male otter takes a mate, he sinks his teeth right into the female’s face and holds on until he’s done!”
    She raised an inadvertent hand to her wound and then quickly lowered it. Her father’s left eye twitched.
    â€œI don’t concern myself with lesser mammals,” he sniffed.
    â€œIf only your daughter shared your aversions.”
    â€œJohn.” Ricketts’s voice was solemn now, completely absent of its earlier mirth. “I’m sure you don’t know what you’re saying.”
    â€œAnd I’m sure he didn’t mean to insult my book.”
    â€œYour book was sentimental,” Anders replied. “And unclear.”
    â€œUnclear? How’s this for clarity? Ed fucked your daughter.”
    Her father’s face sank and then reacquired a terrifying blankness. He turned to Ricketts.
    â€œEdward?”
    â€œAnders, there was nothing—”
    Steinbeck leapt to his feet, the chair rocking violently in response.
    â€œOne more lie from you and I swear! I swear I’ll break every jar, Ed. I’ll release every shark. I’ll burn this stinkhole to the ground.”
    â€œYou’ll have to excuse him,” Ricketts explained frantically, his underarms dark with sweat. “He’s under quite a lot of stress. He’s been getting death threats from the agricultural associations, the movie studios won’t leave him alone, his wife has started raising rabbits and—”
    â€œMargot?” Her father was standing very close to her now, his smell an ancient indictment.
    She shook her head.
    â€œSay it,” Anders insisted, grabbing her shoulders and shaking them. “Say it in words.”
    â€œYou have no right,” Ricketts yelped, as if it were his body under assault, not hers. “She’s a human being. Of age.”
    â€œOf age?” He released Margot and strode across the room in Ricketts’s direction, toppling the remaining candles. “What monster considers fifteen years old
of age
?”
    Ricketts blanched. Margot stopped breathing.
    â€œFifteen?” Ricketts coughed, slinking back in the direction of the beer crate. “I must say, Anders. One could be forgiven . . . on account of her height, you see . . . for thinking she was a good deal . . . ahem . . . older.”
    â€œMy God,” her father whispered.
    An interval of hellish silence, Steinbeck’s chair squeaking as its empty form continued to rock. In the distance, she thought she could hear the voices of the woman and the boy, Wormy and Arthur, laughing at something in the water.
    Her father put on his hat and made for the door.
    â€œAnders, I certainly hope—”
    â€œOh, let him go, Ed,” Steinbeck said. “He’s no friend of ours.