Chapter 23: The Forty-First Letter

I had not been to my father's grave in six years.

I had told myself it was the distance.

On Tuesday I closed the bakery at noon, and Declan drove me to Portland without being asked.

He didn't say anything on the road.

The cemetery sat on a hill above the ferry terminal, where you could see the boats go out.

Dad had picked the plot himself, years before, because he liked to watch them.

I walked the rows with my hands in my coat pockets.

I found the stone by the angle of the light.

HAVERHILL.

Under it were the words FERRY MECHANIC and the dates.

There was nothing else, because I'd had no money for more.

I stood there for a while.

Then I saw the flowers.

They were small and yellow, in a jar sunk into the grass.

They had been put there that week.

"Who did that?" I asked.

Declan stood behind me with his hands behind his back.

"I did," he said.

I turned around.

"The fourth year, the investigator found his name in the county records."

He swallowed.

"I couldn't find you, but I could find him. I drove up on the anniversary of the day he died. I've come every year since."

"Every year."

"I never knew him. I felt I ought to say so."

"What did you say?"

"That I was sorry, to start. That I was looking for his daughter, and that I'd find her."

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