Chapter 8: The Local Hands
In May, the spring thaw revealed that the timber pilings beneath the cottage's boat dock had suffered winter ice damage.
Emma hired a local independent boatbuilder and marine carpenter named David Mercer to repair the structure.
David was thirty-six, a tall, broad-shouldered man with sun-weathered features, calm sea-grey eyes, dark hair dusted with cedar shavings, and an unhurried, deeply respectful demeanor. He had spent ten years as a harbor pilot before opening his custom wooden boat workshop near the harbor.
David arrived every morning at 8:00 AM in a clean, older pickup truck, working quietly with hand mallets, brass bolts, and heavy white oak timbers.
Whenever Clara was napping on the screened porch, David worked with manual hand tools to keep the noise minimal.
""That's good red oak we’re setting into these granite beds, Dr. Vance,"" David noted one afternoon as Emma brought him a glass of cold iced tea. ""Built to take the nor’easters for the next fifty years. The sea will push, but this dock won't budge.""
Emma sat on the wooden bench, watching his strong, capable hands.
""I spent four years living in a house made of imported marble, David,"" Emma smiled softly. ""And it collapsed in an evening.""
David paused, wiping his brow with a clean bandana, looking at her with quiet, perceptive understanding. ""Stone is hard, Emma, but it's brittle. It shatters when the earth shifts. Timber has give. It breathes with the tide. You’ve built an honest home here. You don't have to worry about the roof falling.""
Emma felt a warm, quiet flutter in her chest—a feeling completely different from the sharp, anxious adrenaline of Boston.
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David saw her not as an ornament to be displayed, but as an equal whose quiet strength he deeply respected.
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