Chapter 20: Eve

On the night of the nineteenth my father went to sleep at Joslyn's, with a bottle of his good whiskey and a look I chose not to read.

He said the wharf would hold without him for one night.

Tiernan came down the dock at nine with a duffel and a thermos.

I was already on the Ada P., in the wheelhouse, with the little diesel heater ticking and one lantern lit.

I had not been on her at night since the week my mother died.

"You picked the boat," he said, stepping over the rail.

"I wanted a place nobody else owns."

He stowed the thermos and sat across from me on the bench by the chart table.

The harbor slapped at the hull.

"Tell me," he said.

He didn't mean the boat.

I had practiced it on the water all week, hauling traps in the cold with Joslyn pretending not to listen.

None of it was in my mouth now.

"I'm choosing you," I said.

He closed his eyes.

"Not because Rainer is less."

"He's the most honest man I've ever met, and he loves me in a way I'll be grateful for the rest of my life, and he has never asked me for one thing."

"Hen."

"Let me finish."

"I chose you before the note ever came into the room, and I am tired of acting as if I hadn't."

"Then the note came into the room."

"You kept it off the bed, and you held your tongue for months while it cost you, and I never once had to say no to you."

"Rainer would have burned the note for me, and he'd be right to, and I would have owed him my whole life for it."

"You stood in a room with that note in it and asked me for nothing."

"That's what I need, a man who can stand next to the thing and not use it."

"I'll tell the harbor tomorrow, after he reads his figure."

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