Chapter 5: Sunday Dinner

Linwood Hallowell seated me between his sons.

The dining room at the Harbor House held a table for twenty and had been laid for four.

Candles, a roast, a decanter of something the color of old pennies.

I wore the one dress I'd brought, a navy wool thing from my mother's closet, and my boots, because nobody had told me not to.

"Rainer to your right," Linwood said, lifting the carving knife. "Tiernan to your left."

"You can see them both without turning your head."

"Does it come with a catalogue?" I said.

Tiernan made a small noise into his water glass.

Rainer cut his meat and did not look up, but one corner of his mouth moved.

Linwood laid a slice of roast on my plate with great ceremony.

"Rainer has never missed a payment in his life," he said. "He's a creature of the ledger."

"And Tiernan has never made one. He builds little boats nobody buys and rents my cannery for a dollar a year, to prove a point."

"It's a good point," Tiernan said pleasantly.

"It is a poor investment."

He passed the potatoes.

"Now, Miss Pascoe, let me ask you what a woman in your position should ask. Which of them will keep you?"

"I keep myself."

"Then you will have no trouble at all being a Hallowell."

Under the table, a boot touched mine.

It was Tiernan's, warm through the leather.

I didn't move away.

On my other side, Rainer's knife went on cutting.

I pressed my boot back against Tiernan's for a moment.

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