The houseboat creaked softly with the movement of the water, a slow, uneven rhythm that felt unfamiliar but not unfriendly. Every sound carried differently out there—the slap of water against steel, the distant hum of insects, the occasional shift of wood as the cabin adjusted to its own weight.
It should have felt unstable.
It didn’t.
It felt… honest.
Like nothing was pretending to be better than it was.
At sunrise, June got to work.
Walker brought tools. A portable pump. Buckets. Sealant. Old rags that had seen better decades.
“First rule,” he said, stepping onto the deck. “You don’t fix what you can’t see.”
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