Chapter 21: Roz's Terms

The dock house burned to the frame before the fire trucks stopped it.

Clem had hired a man to find me eight months before my parents ever knocked on my door.

I had the carbon copy with her name on it in my pocket, and I did not need it to know she had planned all of this.

When Nolan drove me back to the pier at nine in the evening, the roof was coming down.

It was the only home I had known from seven to twenty-six.

My bedroom had been under that roof, and Fergus's chair, and the table where he taught me to count cargo.

My second stood beside me with his face black from smoke.

"Nothing's left, boss," he said.

"Something is."

I put my hand against my jacket, where Fergus's cap lay folded with the paper stitched in its lining.

I had opened it in the car.

It was a single ledger page in Fergus's blocky hand.

*Pier Four cannery. Fire. Paid by G.D. to a hired man. Cash. The girl's mother inside.*

Under it, in a different pen:

*I carried the note. I wouldn't carry the match.*

Clem had burned the wrong house.

She had not known what Fergus kept in his hat.

By eleven I was in my warehouse with the lights on.

I had moved the crate table to the middle of the floor, and I had set out chairs.

Seven union heads came first, in their good coats.

Then the foreman who had carried the coffin.

Then, at ten to midnight, the doors rolled open again, and old Askew walked in with his cane.

Nolan walked beside him.

His mother walked on the other side, in a gray coat, with her chin up.

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