THE GRANGE HALL · SATURDAY NIGHT

The engagement party was supposed to be small. In Port Ellery, nothing is small. By eight o'clock there were ninety people in the Grange hall, paper lanterns strung from the rafters, the lobster pots stacked in the corner with candles in them, which had been Angie Stalcup's idea and which Chief Lynch had already asked her twice to blow out.

Kimberly Kennard danced with Eric Posey to an old song on a borrowed record player and thought, for exactly three minutes, that everything was going to be all right.

"Your father's here," Eric said into her hair.

"He came." She could hardly believe it herself. Theodore Kennard sat at the end of the long table by the door, in his good gray suit, with his arms folded, like a man waiting for a bus he didn't want to get on. He had not touched Helen Posey's chowder. He had not said one word to Helen Posey. But he had come.

Across the room, Helen poured coffee and watched him. And Charlotte Kennard, who was supposed to be talking to Reverend Shotwell about the flowers, watched Helen watch him, and said "Mm-hmm" to everything the reverend said, and didn't hear any of it.

Valerie Kennard, in red, as always, held out her glass to her husband. "Christopher. Isn't it sweet? The cannery and the lobster boat. Like a song."

"You've had enough," Christopher said quietly.

"Oh, darling." Valerie smiled at her father-in-law across the room. "Not nearly."

At nine o'clock the Grange door opened, and the harbor master stood in the doorway with the fog behind him, holding his cap in both hands. Nobody had invited him. Nobody had seen him at a party all year. He looked around the room once, slowly, the way a man looks at a house he used to live in, and his eyes stopped on Helen Posey.

Helen's coffee pot hit the floor.

By the time Angie came running with a mop, the doorway was empty.

THE POST OFFICE · THE DAY BEFORE

Loretta Pugliese had been postmistress of Port Ellery for twenty-six years, and she did not read other people's mail. She did, however, read envelopes. It was impossible not to.

"Something from Portland, Charlotte," she said, sliding it across the counter. It was thick, and white, and in the corner it said CASCO BAY LABORATORIES in small blue letters. "Medical, is it? Nothing wrong, I hope."

Charlotte Kennard took the envelope, put it in her handbag, and snapped the bag shut.

"Mind your stamps, Loretta," she said pleasantly, and left.

Loretta watched her go. Then she picked up the phone.

THE CANNERY WHARF · 2:00 A.M.

Lee Callen had walked the night rounds at Kennard Packing for thirty years, and in thirty years he had seen plenty: kids with beer, a moose once, a man from the state who tried to sneak a look at the fish house without an appointment. He had never seen the harbor master in a rowboat at two in the morning, shining a flashlight on the pilings under the north wing.

"Help you?" Lee called down, and swung his own light right in the man's face.

Leland Palmquist didn't even blink. He was a big, quiet man with a white beard, and he sat in that little boat like he'd been born in it.

"No," he said. "Just looking. I used to know this wharf."

"That so? When?"

But the harbor master only dipped his oars, and the tide took him out into the fog without another word.

The next morning, Lee told Mr. Kennard. Theodore listened, and his face went dark, and he picked up the phone and called his lawyer in Bangor. "I want to know everything about that man," he said. "Where he was born. Where he's been. Everything."

THE WARFORD HOUSE · SATURDAY, LATE

Pamela Warford took her earrings off and put them in the dish, and said, "Doug, I have to tell you something, and you're not going to like it."

Doug was already in bed. "Is it about your mother?"

"It's about Charlotte Kennard. Back in July she came into the clinic and asked me how long it takes to get results from one of those tests. You know. The kind you do when you want to know who somebody's father is. She said it was for a friend."

Doug sat up. "Pam."

"And Loretta called me yesterday and said something came for her from a lab in Portland, and..."

"Pam. Stay out of Kennard business."

"Kennard business!" She turned around. "Doug, you are Kennard business. You've been the man's foreman for nine years. My brother is marrying his daughter in one week. My mother is serving his wife chowder. Everybody in this whole town is Kennard business!"

She went out. The bedroom door slammed so hard the earring dish fell off the dresser.

THE OVERLOOK ON ROUTE 1 · SUNDAY MORNING

Valerie Kennard sat in her silver car at the scenic overlook, with sunglasses on and the phone pressed to her ear.

"No, he hasn't signed. He won't sign. But he won't have a choice by October, believe me." She listened. "Because I know my father-in-law, that's why. And I know what's in that cannery's books." She listened again, and smiled. "Tell Montreal to be patient. Small towns burn out fast."

She hung up. Below her, Port Ellery lay in the sun, white houses and blue water and the cannery's long gray roof, looking like a postcard of a place where nothing bad could ever happen.

THE KENNARD HOUSE, THE SEWING ROOM · SUNDAY NIGHT

The house was asleep. The wedding dress hung on the back of the sewing room door in its long plastic bag: Charlotte's own dress, from 1954, ivory satin with seed pearls, taken in for Kimberly by hand, every stitch of it, over the whole summer.

Charlotte sat under the lamp with the envelope from Portland in her lap. She had carried it in her handbag for three days without opening it.

She thought about the letters in the attic. My dearest T. I will wait for you at the end of the wharf. She thought about the way Theodore had sat at the end of the table tonight and not looked at Helen Posey. Not once. A man had to try very hard not to look at someone that many times.

She opened the envelope.

She read the first page, and then she read it again. Then she put her hand over her mouth, and she sat very still for a long time, while the clock in the hall struck one.

At last she folded the pages, slid them back into the envelope, and buried it at the bottom of her sewing basket, under the extra lace.

She looked up at the wedding dress hanging on the door.

"Oh, Teddy," she whispered. "What did you do?"

~