Chapter 22: Singles

I opened the front door in Knox's sweatshirt, and the street was full of grocery bags.

Preston stood on the step with two of them.

Desmond stood behind him with a duffel, and Austin stood behind Desmond with a single sandwich bag.

On the sidewalk below them, Gran leaned on her cane in her good pearls.

It was 6:12 in the morning.

"I called them yesterday," she said. "I told them to bring singles."

"Why singles?" I said.

"Because I wanted to see it done properly, Vinnie," Gran said. "Pier, 7:10. Get dressed."

By 7:10 the Sunday crossing had sixty people on the pier, and I do not know who told them.

The man with the bicycle was among them, with a coffee.

The woman in scrubs who had cried at the roses stood beside him.

Knox stood by the gangway chain in his work jacket, with his arms folded and his face perfectly flat.

I had the laminated card in my hand.

I had borrowed a pen on a string from the ticket booth.

"One at a time," I said. "In order."

"Order of what?" said Preston.

"The order in which you look closest to tears."

Desmond went first, because he was already crying and had his duffel open.

He set the duffel on the pier and unzipped it.

It was full of one-dollar bills in rubber-banded stacks of a hundred.

"Thirteen hundred and sixty," he said, miserable. "I got it at the bank."

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