Chapter 15: Six Steps Back

Padraig's POV

Celia called me at ten past four on Thursday and did not say hello.

"She's been in Marguerite's study," she said. "She found the binders and the invoices. She knows who built it."

I was standing where I had stood for two days, at the end of Pell Street with my back to the house.

"Is she hurt?"

"She's furious, which is better. She's asked for you to be on the wharf at seven tomorrow."

"Asked for me, or told Finbar to tell you?"

"She asked for you, Padraig. In those words."

I did not say anything for a while, because I couldn't.

I got to the wharf at six and stood at the landward end of the planks with my hands out of my pockets.

The harbor was the colour of a nickel, and the pilot boats were going out.

She came down the pier at seven in her mother's watch and a grey coat, walking fast, and she stopped on the board that had broken under her.

It had been replaced with new pine.

I stopped six steps short of her and stayed there.

I had decided in the night that I would stay there until she told me otherwise, however long it took.

I had also decided what I would say if she asked me to go, and it was nothing.

She looked at the water, and then at my hands, and then at the middle of my coat, because she still could not hold my face.

"You thought I'd hate you," she said. "When I knew everything."

"Yes."

"Is that why you hid it?"

"It's one of the reasons."

"Then you were wrong about me," she said. "I'm not going to hate you for it."

"I started it. That's mine to answer for."

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