Chapter 23: What the Old Man Is Left

Rainer turned back to the lectern with the ash still on his cuff.

"I have a motion before this quorum rises," he said into the microphone.

"The Trust's notes on this waterfront are cancelled to the figures in the chairman's private ledger."

"What remains transfers to a cooperative, owned by the families who signed them, one vote to a household."

"I move it, and I'll sit for the vote."

The older trustees looked at each other.

One of them swallowed.

"Seconded," he said, hoarsely, and the other said, "Aye."

"You cannot," Linwood said.

It was the first thing he had said in five minutes, and it came out thin.

"I just did," said Rainer.

He uncapped the black fountain pen and signed the paper on the lectern.

Then he held the pen out across the front tables to the man in the yellow slicker.

"The co-op needs someone to sign the first page."

The man stared at it.

His hand shook as he took it.

Then he wrote his name under Rainer's, slowly, and the room came apart in noise.

At three that afternoon, I walked up the Harbor House drive with four of them.

The yellow-slicker man carried a county notice of attachment.

The grey woman carried her pocketbook and the white-bearded fisherman carried nothing.

Joslyn carried a lobster cracker, for reasons she did not explain.

The front door stood open.

Nobody had shut it since the night before.

In the long dining room, under the chandelier, the table was still laid for twenty.

Linwood sat alone at its head, in his gold-buttoned blazer, with his hands folded on the white linen.

Along the kitchen wall stood the whole staff, in their coats.

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