Chapter 4: Over the Bait Shop

"Yes," I typed back. "Why?"

Three dots came and went twice.

Then, "Not by text. I'm at the studio over Dill's Bait & Tackle on Marlin Street. I open at seven."

"Why would I come?"

"Because you asked a question in that dining room and my mother didn't answer it."

I looked at Teagan.

She was pretending to watch the road.

"Go," she said. "Take the cat. He's an excellent character witness."

At seven the next morning I climbed the outside stairs of the bait shop with Mustard riding my shoulder.

The stairwell smelled of worms and coffee.

The door at the top was propped open with a cinder block.

The studio was one long room with tall windows and the harbor spread out below.

Prints hung on clotheslines across the ceiling.

Fishermen's hands.

A woman laughing on a ferry deck, with her face turned away.

A child asleep inside an overturned dinghy.

None of them were posed, and every one of them looked like the person had forgotten the camera was there.

Elias stood at a long table with a mug in each hand.

He'd lost the cap, and the left side of his jaw had a nick where he'd cut himself shaving.

"I made you tea," he said. "I wasn't sure what you'd take."

"Just tea is fine."

"Then it's the right one."

He held the mug out.

Mustard stood up on my shoulder, looked at him, and made a sound.

"He doesn't like strangers," I said.

"I'm not a stranger. I'm Gavin's brother."

"That's worse," I said, and he laughed.

It was a short, surprised laugh, the kind that sounded rusty from disuse.

Mustard leaned down from my shoulder, sniffed his sleeve, bit the cuff once, and jumped onto the table.

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