Chapter 5: Chowder

Linwood Dyer's kitchen in Spruce Head smelled of haddock and onions and woodsmoke.

I had been happy in it more often than anywhere else in my adult life.

I stood in the doorway holding the pie my mother had made me carry, and the happiness hit me before I could stop it.

The farmhouse sat above the water with its bait shed and its wharf below.

The Dorcas Jean rode at her mooring in the last light, white and square and chipped around the rails.

Linwood was at the stove in an apron that said KISS THE COOK, and Eben was setting four places at the table with a bandage on his right hand.

"Seven stitches," Eben said, without looking up. "Before you ask."

"I wasn't going to ask."

"You were thinking it."

"I was thinking it was a clean cut and it should heal," I said, "if you don't haul with it."

"I'll haul with it."

"Then it'll open," I said.

"Then you can sew it up again, Cyr."

Linwood turned from the stove and looked at us both with his thin, delighted face.

"Sit, you two. Yvette's coming, she's bringing bread."

"Ma's coming?"

"I invited her," said Linwood. "She didn't say no."

My mother arrived ten minutes later in her good blouse with a loaf of bread and a lipstick I hadn't seen in years.

She kissed Linwood on the cheek.

Linwood went pink to the top of his white hair and fussed with the ladle.

I looked at Eben across the table, and Eben looked at me, and neither of us said a word.

We ate the chowder.

It was thick and peppery, with salt pork and potato and a little sherry in it, and I had two bowls.

My mother and Linwood argued about the proper way to make a pie crust, and Eben ate with his left hand and asked for nothing.

I knew how he ate.

I knew he sprinkled pepper over everything before he tasted it, and that he saved the best piece of haddock for last.

I knew too many things about him, and none of them would stay put.

"Bernadette," Linwood said, over the pie. "Do me a favor. Check my pressure."

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