Chapter 21: Paid in Full

Kate's POV

By eleven forty-five on Sunday the boardwalk in front of Flanagan's was packed from the rail to the door.

Lucy had posted the time and the place at breakfast.

By noon there were forty thousand watching, and half of them seemed to be standing on the planks.

Lucy ran the phone on a stick, wearing her best Flanagan's T-shirt and her biggest gold earrings.

"Smile at the lens," she told me. "It likes you."

"It likes everybody."

"Then be charming."

My father stood in the doorway of the bar in his apron, with his arms crossed and a clean towel over his shoulder.

He had put on a tie underneath it.

Malachi was at the end of the bar rail with his back against a post, hands in his pockets.

He hadn't tried to stand next to me.

He had asked me that morning where I wanted him. I had told him anywhere I could see him, and he had picked the post.

At noon exactly a black car stopped at the curb.

The crowd opened without being asked.

Dane got out of the back seat in jeans and a plain gray jacket, with a floor man at each elbow.

His hair wasn't right. He hadn't shaved. There was a paper folded in his left hand.

Somebody in the crowd booed. A man laughed, and then a lot of people did.

He walked up the boardwalk between them with his eyes forward, and he stopped in front of my father.

"Norman," he said.

My father didn't answer.

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