The Yacht Owner Thought My Dock Slip Was Easy to Take. He Had Not Met Tommy Pruitt

“We’re giving the slip to Gordon,” Kendra said. She said it the way you’d mention the weather. “The Aurelia needs a berth with power and water, and D-14 is the only one big enough on this side of the marina.”

I was halfway through a piece of pecan pie. I set the fork down on the plate, careful, the way I used to set down a coffee cup on a rocking deck. Dale was looking at his hands.

“Dale,” I said. “Is this your idea?”

“It’s not really an idea, Dad. Gordon’s been talking to Marisol. It’s already handled.”

“Handled,” I said.

Kendra gave me a smile. She was a polished girl, polite to a fault, and I did not hold it against her that she thought a 24-foot center console was a small thing. To her it was. To me it had been the only thing in thirty-one years that stayed where I left it.

I had rented slip D-14 at Bayou Crest Marina since January 1995, at four hundred and twelve dollars a month. I had kept Second Watch there through my retirement from the Coast Guard, through the hurricanes, and through the spring Joan died. I had never once been late with the check.

“I’m not going to argue about it at the table,” I said. “Tell Gordon I appreciate the thought.”

That was the wrong thing to say, because it sounded like I was giving in. I wasn’t. I was just tired, and I did not want to turn my son’s supper into a fight.

Four days later a long white envelope came in my mailbox. It was from a law office in Destin, signed by a man I had never met. It said I was to vacate slip D-14 at Bayou Crest Marina no later than November 30, 2026.

The letter was dated October 27. I read it three times at the kitchen counter. Then I walked out to the driveway, and there were two men from a moving company loading my patio furniture onto a truck.

“Who sent you?” I asked.

“Your son, sir. He paid for the crew through Friday. He said you’d want your things handled careful.”

Dale had not called me. He had not asked. He had simply decided I could not handle my own boat.

By afternoon Second Watch was sitting on a trailer in my driveway, her cover off and her bow pointed at the street like she was waiting for orders. I stood on the concrete and looked at her for a long time.

Then I drove to the marina.

The office smelled like coffee and sunscreen. A young woman with her hair pulled back looked up from a desk piled with files. Her nameplate said Brianna.

“Mr. Mabry,” she said, and her face softened. “Marisol’s not in today. I’m sorry. The paperwork came from outside counsel, and she hasn’t been briefed on it yet.”

“Is that right,” I said.

“It is. I can tell you that much.”

I thanked her and walked back out to the truck. At the marina gate I stopped for the cable arm, and that was when I saw them: two men with a measuring wheel and a clipboard, walking the empty dock beside my slip, marking off a space as if it already belonged to someone else.