Wrecked by Mary Anna Evans

Author:Mary Anna Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2020-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

Amande loved her boat even more than she loved her car. It was just an old oyster skiff, not much different from the ancient oyster skiff that her mother had owned and loved since before Amande was born. Like her mother’s boat, Amande’s looked just awful but its motor sang like an angel, because Faye had taught her how to make it do that.

When that thought crossed Amande’s mind, she adjusted it to be more truthful and also to preserve her self-esteem. She reminded herself that she had been pretty handy with a wrench long before she came to live with her mom and dad, but she had to admit that Faye deserved some credit for helping her fine-tune her skills.

Amande loved that boat because it represented freedom, the same reason that most Americans worshiped their cars, but the difference between her and a run-of-the-mill teenage driver was that she’d gotten her first boat before she was twelve. Amande felt like she’d always been free. She loved her home and she loved her family, but she stayed with them because she wanted to be there, not because she wasn’t free to go. Her parents understood this, because they approached the world in the same way. This was the reason they hadn’t already killed each other.

No, that was too dark. They would never have killed each other, but Amande might well have left by now if she hadn’t believed there was a chance that her parents would eventually understand her. And if she didn’t believe that once they did understand her, they’d still love her for who she was.

It always made her happy to pilot that junky boat out into the wild blue somewhere. Weirdly, she couldn’t do that right now, because something was on her seat. She deftly snapped Michael into his life jacket and settled him in his usual spot on the deck beside her seat. Then she took a second to study the small box that was sitting where her butt should be.

The evening was late and the sun was low. Its rays struck the shiny object at a shallow angle, but they illuminated it well enough. A frilly white bow adorned the package’s cobalt-blue wrapping paper. Somebody had left her a present. Was it weird that she wasn’t even sure who it was from?

It could be from Nate, but he seemed to limit himself to trying to buy her drinks and dinner. She might have said yes to dinner, but he was altogether too focused on buying her liquor, as if buying a woman alcohol was the coolest thing you could do when she wasn’t old enough to buy it for herself.

Thad had flashed some concert tickets at her just a day before, when Nate wasn’t looking. And what if she’d said yes? How long would it take him to admit to his richer and cooler friend that he’d cut him out of a date with the girl he liked?

It peeved her that Thad was trying

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