The Arrangement novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Study

I walked down the hall barefoot in the T-shirt I slept in.

The study door stood open a hand's width.

Caspar sat behind a huge desk with a brass lamp on.

He wore a black sweater and pajama pants, and his bare feet were flat on the floor.

In front of him lay an unrolled chart of Narragansett Bay, brown at the edges, with a coffee ring on the corner.

He didn't look up.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I tried not to wake you."

"You folded the quilt."

"I always fold things."

I came around the desk and sat on the edge of it, close enough that my knee touched his arm.

I told myself it was a public touch.

We were in the old man's house, and the old man had been watching us all weekend.

"This was his," I said.

"He drew it himself when he was twenty-two. He stuck a pin in every wreck he knew."

Caspar pointed at a pinhole off the island.

"That one is the rock where my father's skiff went over."

"The Marigold."

"They towed her home. She's still in the boathouse."

He smoothed the chart with one finger.

"My father went out in October. I was twelve. I watched him go from the dock."

His voice stayed level.

It was how I knew it cost him.

"The last time I talked to Grandfather," he said, "I told him he'd picked Clive over me for four years, and I was done."

"Was it true?"

"Yes. And he said, 'You're right. I was wrong. Come home.' And I said I'd think about it."

He pressed the heel of his hand to one eye.

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