Chapter 12: The Invitation

Winifred's study had a fire, a leather chair and a wall of locked glass cabinets.

She sat in the chair, and Dermot stood by the door.

I did not sit.

Rafe stayed by the window with his arms folded.

"Start," I said.

Winifred folded her hands on her cane.

"Twenty-three years ago, Dermot Keane came to my back door at four in the morning," she said. "He was soaked to the skin."

"He had a child under his coat."

I looked at Dermot.

"I was fishing off the Flats side," he said. "I heard the splash."

"I found ye hanging on a mooring net in the dark, blue and not crying."

"I knew she was a Saltonstall the moment I saw her face," Winifred said. "She had your mother's eyes."

"You took me in?" I whispered.

"I did not."

The room went still.

"Eugene had told the household that night that the girl and her mother were both drowned," Winifred said. "He had seen it. I believed him."

"Then Dermot appeared with you alive."

"And you hid me."

"I was afraid," she said.

I had never heard a Saltonstall say that word.

"Rafe's father saw my son at the pier. He told me the next morning."

"I knew in one breath what Eugene had done."

"And I knew he'd do it again if he learned the child had lived."

"So you gave me to a gangster," I said.

"I gave you to the one man in the harbor my son was afraid of."

Dermot cleared his throat.

"She paid me, Maeve," he said. "Every month. Enough to raise ye right. I'd have done it for nothing."

"You never told me."

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