Epilogue #2
"So sell it to her."
"It feels weird. Selling the harbor." He glances at his own arm, the dawn breaking up his skin. "It used to be a thing I drew on a wall so I wouldn't lose my mind. Now people pay for it."
"That's not weird," I tell him, and I take his hand, the one with charcoal under the nails, the one I made beautiful. "That's just what happens when somebody finally picks up the bottle."
He looks at me, and the gallery noise falls away for a second the way it does sometimes, the whole crowded room narrowing down to just the two of us, the way it used to narrow in the studio after close.
"You did that," he says, low. "You know that, right?
I'd have died on that cell wall. I'd have drawn the harbor till I forgot I could and then I'd have stopped drawing and I'd have been somebody else, somebody worse, and you walked into a clubhouse to ink a memorial piece and you caught me staring and you raised one eyebrow and the whole rest of my life happened because of that eyebrow.
" He shakes his head. "Whole wall's got my name on it.
People are paying for the harbor. And it all started because you let a prospect watch you work and didn't tell him to get lost."
"I told you to get lost constantly."
"You did. I just didn't listen. Best decision I ever made, not listening to you."
"Don't make a habit of it," I say, and kiss him, in the middle of the gallery, under both our names, and the gallery owner pretends not to notice and Theo absolutely does notice and for once doesn't say anything about it, just drinks his good wine and lets his sister kiss the man he handed the leather to.
We sell the collector the wall. We shake hands and exchange cards and promise her first look at the spring series, and somewhere in there I watch Kieran become a person who does this now — a person who sells his harbor to strangers and doesn't apologize for the price — and I think about the kid who said it's nothing about the best drawing I'd seen in a year, and I think: he's still in there, he'll always be in there, but he's not running the show anymore.
The man's running the show now. The one who knows it's not nothing.
Later that night, much later, when the gallery's emptied and the wine's gone and we're walking the boardwalk home with the carousel dark and the water moving the way it always moves, Kieran tells me Declan's hiring.
"At the yard?" I say. The boat repair yard, south end of the marina, where Declan's run the operation alone for fifteen years — forty-four years old and weathered to driftwood, the elder of the club, a man so settled in his solitude it's practically a personality.
"He never hires. He says people slow him down. "
"He posted for a mechanic. Briggs saw it. Said somebody's coming in tomorrow to interview." Kieran grins. "Apparently she's already half-decided she's got the job."
"She?"
"Some marine mechanic from down the coast. Twenty-six, Briggs said. Showed up at the yard today unannounced, took one look at the engine Declan's been fighting for a week, and told him what he was doing wrong." Kieran's grin widens. "In front of his guys. Declan went the color of a stop sign."
I laugh out loud on the dark boardwalk. "Oh, no."
"Oh, yes. Briggs says she walked in with a toolbox and oil all over her coveralls like she owned the place, looked Declan dead in the eye, and asked when she starts.
Declan says, 'You haven't got the job yet.
' And she says —" Kieran does an impression, deadpan, hands in his pockets, "'We both know I have.
' And then she hired herself, basically, just stood there until he caved, and Briggs says Declan spent the whole rest of the day staring at the engine she fixed like it personally insulted him. "
"How does Briggs know all this?"
"Briggs was there dropping off the runabout.
Says it was the best thing he's seen all year.
Says Declan's been the same grim driftwood-looking statue for fifteen years and this woman walks in, doesn't know who he is, doesn't care who he is, fixes his impossible engine in twenty minutes, and tells him his whole diagnostic process is sentimental.
" Kieran's laughing now, the easy laugh he never had when I met him, the one that took a year of daylight to grow.
"Sentimental. To Declan. The man who once spent a whole funeral talking about a carburetor.
She called his engine work sentimental and walked out and he hasn't said a complete sentence since. "
"What's her name?"
"Josie. Just Josie, Briggs said. No last name, or didn't give one.
Twenty-six, hands like she's been turning wrenches since she could walk, and apparently allergic to being impressed by anyone.
" He shakes his head. "Declan's interviewing her tomorrow.
Officially. Even though she already told him she's got the job and even though he already knows she's right. "
"He's done," I say. "He just doesn't know it yet."
"He's so done. Briggs is already running odds." Kieran grins down at me. "I put twenty on her having the keys to the yard by summer."
"Forty-four years old," I say, shaking my head, "and a twenty-six-year-old in coveralls walks into his yard and rearranges his whole face."
"Sound familiar?" Kieran says.
I stop walking. I look up at him in the dark, the harbor cover-up just visible under his rolled sleeve, the man who walked into my shop four months a stranger and never left.
"Shut up," I say, and kiss him.