Chapter 9: The Market

Linwood did not come in.

He stood in the doorway with the dawn behind him.

He looked at the two of us in the belly of the boat, and then at the blanket I was clutching to my chest.

"I wouldn't dream of saying a word," he said. "I've no need."

He turned and walked back up Mill Row with his hands folded behind him.

Tiernan had already climbed out of the hull, naked, with his jaw like a fist.

"Hen, I'll kill him."

"You'll put your jeans on," I said. "And you'll do nothing."

"He took a photo of us."

"I know."

"He's going to use it."

"I know," I said again. "Let him."

I didn't feel brave.

I felt like a woman standing at the top of a long, cold stair.

But I'd stood on a dais once already, and the sky hadn't fallen.

By noon on Saturday, the whole harbor had it.

Joslyn brought it to the wharf with her coffee and her jaw tight.

"They're saying it at the Trust counter. They're saying it by the bait house."

"Saying what?"

She shut her mouth.

"Joslyn."

"That the Pascoe girl's working off the note." She stared at the planks. "In both Hallowell beds."

I put down the trap I was mending.

My fingers were steady.

I was a little surprised at that.

"Who told them?"

"Guess."

I wiped my hands on my bibs.

The Saturday market ran along the town pier from nine to one.

It had tables of oysters and wool socks and smoked fish, and a bluegrass band on a flatbed truck.

Half the harbor would be there.

"Come with me," I said.

"Where?"

"To prove something."

Two hundred people looked up as I walked onto the pier.

I felt it, the little ripple of heads, the sudden drop in the band's tempo.

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