Chapter 19: His Last Offer

Linwood's message came by a boy on a bicycle, folded once, in blue ink.

The kitchen door at ten, Miss Pascoe. I have something to give you that you will not want to hear in front of my sons.

I told Tiernan and I told Rainer, and I went.

Rainer was already inside the house, in the back hall, with his hand on the swinging door to the kitchen.

I had asked him to be.

The Harbor House pantry was a narrow room of glass-fronted shelves, crystal on every one, smelling of lemon oil and silver polish.

Linwood stood among the decanters with his hands folded.

"You've lost weight," he said. "The wharf doesn't suit you."

"The wharf suits me fine."

"It will not be yours in six days."

He took a long envelope from his blazer and laid it on the shelf between us.

"A deed. The Pascoe wharf, free and clear, in your name alone."

"The note forgiven in full, the penalty struck, the writ withdrawn at noon today."

"Your father may fish till he dies."

My heart gave one hard knock.

"What does it cost?"

"Almost nothing. On the twentieth, you name Rainer."

"And you learn," said Linwood, "to be grateful."

I looked at the envelope.

"Grateful."

"A man like my son has been lonely a very long time, my dear."

"A wife who knows what she has been given finds her way up the stairs without being told."

"Gratitude is the warmest thing in a house, and it is a thing a woman pays, in the end, in the only coin she has."

The pantry went very quiet.

I could hear the kitchen on the other side of the swinging door, the spoons, the hiss of a pot, someone laughing at a joke about a bad egg.

"Say the last part again," I said.

"I think you heard it."

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