When He Finally Found Her, She Was Already Married novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Supper for Three

Davis invites Declan to supper. Posy shows him a drawing of Mama Steph's lucky ring, and he knows the band.

Davis makes chowder when he is nervous, and that night the pot was big enough for eight.

I set four bowls on the kitchen table and told myself it was a normal night.

Declan arrived at six on the dot, in a dry coat, carrying a loaf of bread from the grocery store.

He held it out to me.

"I know you'd never serve this," he said. "I didn't want to come empty-handed."

"It's from the bag aisle," I said.

"It was the best they had."

Posy took the bread from him and examined it with great seriousness.

"It's sliced already," she said. "That's cheating."

"I think you're right."

"Do you want to see my room?"

"Posy," said Davis from the stove. "Let the man sit."

"I'd like to see it," said Declan.

He followed her down the hall, and I stood in the kitchen with a ladle in my hand and listened to him ask about every single drawing on her wall.

He asked where the purple horse lived, and why the sun had a mustache.

Then he asked if the boat in the corner was a pirate boat or a fishing one.

"It's a fishing boat," Posy said, offended. "Pirates are mean."

"Then I'll leave my sword at home."

Davis came and stood beside me.

"He's good with her," he said.

"He's good at making people like him."

"That's a gift, Steph, not a crime."

He took the ladle out of my hand, because I had been gripping it hard enough to bend the handle.

At supper Posy sat between us and sang the whole menu to the tune of a song she had made up.

Davis asked Declan about the shipping business, and Declan kept his answers short.

Containers, mostly. A fleet of nineteen ships. A family firm that was getting too big for the family.

"You run it?" Davis asked.

"I used to. I stepped back five years ago."

"To do what?"

"To look for someone."

He didn't look at me when he said it.

I reached for the bread basket at the same moment he did.

Our fingers touched on the cloth.

I pulled my hand away first.

His knuckles were rough where they used to be smooth, and his fingers had shaken.

That meant nothing.

He was tired, and I told myself that was all.

"I'll get the pie," I said, and stood so fast the chair scraped.

Posy ate hers in four bites and asked if there was another.

"There's always another," Declan said, and she beamed at him.

I washed dishes while Davis put Posy in the bath.

Declan dried.

He had offered, and Davis had said "Take him, Steph, he's a guest who wants to be useful," and left the room with a look I couldn't read.

Declan took the plate I handed him.

The towel in his hands moved slowly over the same circle.

"You never answered my question," he said.

"I answered every one you asked."

"I asked if he's good to you."

"You didn't ask that."

"I'm asking now."

I turned off the tap.

"He's the best man I know," I said. "He took in a woman who didn't have a past and gave her a house with a porch."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's the answer."

He set the plate in the rack very carefully.

"Then I'll be good to him too," he said. "I promise you that, whatever happens."

I didn't know what to say to that.

From the bathroom came a splash and a squeal and Davis's voice saying "Posy Marie, that's the cat's towel."

Posy came running down the hall in her pajamas with her hair in a wet towel and a sheet of paper over her head.

"Mr. Declan! Mr. Declan, look, I made you a present!"

He crouched to take it.

It was a drawing in crayon.

A woman with brown hair and a big smile stood in a yellow kitchen, and a pie sat on the table.

Around her neck, drawn carefully in gray, hung a string with a small circle at the bottom.

"That's Mama Steph," said Posy. "And that's her lucky ring. She keeps it hidden but I saw it. It's not for wearing. It's just for luck."

The room went very quiet.

I didn't move.

Declan looked at the drawing for what felt like a full minute.

Then he lifted his eyes to my collar, where the cord ran under the neck of my shirt and out of sight.

He didn't ask.

He folded the paper in half, then in half again, and put it into the inside pocket of his coat, over his heart.

"Thank you, Posy," he said. "I'll keep it safe."

Davis came out of the bathroom with a towel over his shoulder.

"Everything all right?"

"Everything's fine," Declan said.

He went to the door, put on his coat, and nodded to my husband.

Then he looked at me, and his gray eyes were wet in a way that he did nothing to hide.

"Goodnight, Mrs. Ferris," he said.

It was the first time he had used the name, and he said every syllable of it slowly.

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