Chapter 10 - The Door He ClosedRoy stared at the water.
“You should’ve come back when things got bad.”
Maggie nearly laughed.
“To do what?”
“I would’ve helped.”
“If I quit?”
Roy did not answer.
Maggie sat beside him on the dock.
For several seconds they watched fish move below.
Then Roy asked:
“How bad did it get?”
Maggie told him.
The oxygen crash before sunrise.
Seventy-three fish buried behind the shed.
The ammonia problem.
The broken pump.
Selling her bicycle.
Selling six hundred carp early because keeping the original number would have put the rest at risk.
The storm.
The clogged overflow.
Walking to the diner.
Sleeping under a leaking roof.
Roy listened.
Each detail made his original certainty feel smaller.
“I thought selling those fish meant you were giving up.”
“So did everybody.”
“You weren’t?”
“No.”
“What were you doing?”
“Fixing my stocking mistake.”
Roy frowned.
“You made mistakes.”
“Lots.”
“And still made it work.”
Maggie looked at him.
“That’s what everybody keeps getting wrong.”
“What?”
“The first plan didn’t work.”
Roy glanced at the pond.
“Looks like it did.”
“No.”
Maggie pointed toward the aeration system.
“The first plan almost killed more fish.”
She counted.
“I changed feeding. Changed density. Changed aeration. Changed overflow. Changed how often I tested. Changed buyers.”
She paused.
“The only thing I kept was the question.”
“What question?”
“Can that flooded ground produce something useful?”
Roy rubbed his hands.
“You always were stubborn.”
Maggie shook her head.
“Stubborn would have been keeping four thousand fish just because four thousand was the number I wrote down first.”
Roy considered that.
Then almost smiled.
“So I’m stubborn.”
Maggie said nothing.
She did not need to.
Roy became serious.
“I shouldn’t have pushed you out.”
“No.”
“I was angry.”
“I know.”
“I was scared you’d lose your father’s money.”
“I know.”
“You were seventeen.”
“I still am.”
Roy blinked.
Of course she was.
A year had not yet reached her eighteenth birthday.
Hardship had made Maggie look older in his mind.
Not in fact.
“You’re still a kid,” he said quietly.
Her jaw tightened.
Roy immediately raised his hands.
“Not like that.”
“Then how?”
He searched for the right words.
“You shouldn’t have had to prove this much just to be listened to.”
Maggie looked away.
That was closer to the apology she had wanted months earlier.
Roy stared toward the pond.
“I wish you’d called me about the pump.”
“I know.”
“I could’ve fixed it.”
“That wasn’t the problem.”
“What was?”
Maggie lifted the notebook.
“I needed somebody who thought the problem was worth solving.”
Roy looked down.
That sentence hurt.
A truck entered the lane.
Frank Miller got out.
“Maggie! Restaurant called. Wants double Friday’s order.”
Roy turned.
“Double?”
Maggie asked Frank:
“How much exactly?”
He told her.
She immediately shook her head.
“No.”
Frank looked surprised.
“They’re paying cash.”
“I can’t harvest that much without cutting too deep into the remaining stock.”
Roy stared.
“You’re turning down money?”
“Yes.”
“You have the fish.”
“I want fish next month too.”
Frank laughed.
“I’ll tell them.”
He left.
Roy looked at Maggie.
Months earlier she had been trying to prove a pond could work.
Now she was protecting a business that already did.
Roy stood.
“I should go.”
Maggie nodded.
He walked toward his truck.
Halfway there he stopped.
Turned.
“What are you doing next year?”
Maggie pointed toward another low area beyond Mrs. Bell’s pasture.
“Maybe another pond.”
Roy’s farmer instincts activated.
“You’d need—”
He stopped himself.
Maggie raised an eyebrow.
Roy smiled awkwardly.
“I was about to give an opinion.”
“I noticed.”
“Maybe I should ask first.”
“That would be new.”
Roy laughed.
Then drove home.
One week later, before sunrise, Maggie heard a truck at the gate.
Roy stepped out.
May you like
He was wearing work gloves.
And carrying an empty feed bucket.
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