Chapter 24: Her Name on the Door

The sign painter came to the dock office on a Tuesday morning with a ladder and a can of black enamel.

The old sign still hung over the door.

*DUNLEAVY DOCKS. EST.*

It had hung there since before I was born.

Three weeks had passed since the night in the warehouse.

Gerard had stood before a judge and pleaded guilty to the Pier Four fire.

He had no lawyer from the family, because the family had no money.

Clem would stand trial in the spring for the Marigold, the forgery, the dock house and the cook's arm.

Lenora's statement was in the file beside them both, forty pages, signed in her own hand.

I had read it once and not forgiven her.

I had put it in a drawer I did not lock.

The dockers had come early.

Two hundred of them stood in the yard with coffee in paper cups.

They had come to watch a sign come down.

The foreman stood at my elbow in his Sunday jacket.

"You sure about the name?" he asked.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Folks figured you'd go back to Dunleavy. It's your blood. It's your father's company."

"It's my company," I said. "My father never built a thing in his life except a lie."

He grinned in his gray beard.

"Aye. That's what I told them."

The painter set his ladder against the wall.

He looked at me from the third rung.

"Ma'am, what do I put?"

I had practiced the answer on the way over, and now I found I did not need to.

"Rainey," I said.

"Just Rainey?"

"Rainey Harbor Company. Pier One to Pier Twelve."

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Chose the Wrong Daughter from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.