Chapter 13: The Offer

Theo's POV

Ruth's letter to me was one page, in blue ink, on the cream paper she used for thank-you notes.

I read it on the dock at six in the morning, while Delia slept below deck with her head on my folded jacket.

Theo, it began. You never asked me for a single thing, so I will keep this short.

I knew you were waiting. I watched you wait for five years at my Sunday table, and you ate my pot roast every time.

I am sorry. I would say it a hundred times if I had them.

I held the page a long moment before I read on.

She will be angry for a week, Ruth had written. When she is angry, do not leave the boat.

I looked at the water.

I had walked off the Gull Rock the afternoon before with my jacket in my hand.

Ruth had known me better than I knew myself, and she had done it from the other side of a grave.

The last paragraph was the one I read twice.

Walter will come to you with money. It is the only tool he has ever trusted on a person.

It will be a lot. Say no for your own reasons, Theo, not for mine.

I folded the page into my shirt pocket, over my heart, and went to find out how much a lot was.

Walter did not make me wait.

He was sitting on the stern of his own boat at the marina's last slip, in a windbreaker, with a thermos at his feet.

He had the look of a man who had slept in his clothes and shaved anyway.

"Theodore," he said. "Sit. I've been expecting you."

"You've been expecting me for six years."

"Fair."

He poured coffee into the thermos lid and held it out.

I did not take it.

"I'll be brief." He set the lid on the deck. "I want my daughter back. I think you want a life without my family in it."

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