I sipped the coffee. It was hot. Cabot had stopped somewhere on the way and gotten it fresh.
“How’s the leg?” he asked.
“Sore, but the painkillers are helping.”
He drove well within the speed limit. I watched the dark road run under the headlights while the harbor passed by on the left.
“Eleanor sent me a note,” Cabot said.
“Already?”
“Yesterday afternoon. It was hand-written. One of the agents dropped it at my hotel for me on their way off the island."
“What did it say?”
Come back in March. I’ll be ready.
“That’s the entire note?” I asked.
“SignedE.H.No envelope. Just folded once and slid under my hotel room door.”
I drank some more of the coffee.
“She’ll have you back.”
“In March. I’ll do the long piece then.”
“Will Maria be in it?”
“Maria is the piece.”
The terminal came up on the right. Cabot took the staging lane and rolled past the booth with a nod to the attendant, who’d already raised the gate. He pulled into a spot near the gangway and killed the engine.
“Nineteen minutes,” he said. “I’ll get the bags.”
I worked my way out the same way I’d worked my way in, except in reverse. Farrow was already at the passenger door before I’d swung my good leg out. He held one crutch while I set the other. Then he handed me the second.
The gangway was longer than I remembered. The ferry crew had a kid in a high-visibility vest at the bottom. He looked at me, at the crutches, and at the bag Cabot was carrying.
“Sir, we have an elevator if you’d prefer.”
“Gangway’s fine.”
“Sir—”
“He’s fine,” Farrow said in a calm voice. “Give him room.”
The kid stepped back.
I took the gangway at my own pace. The metal flexed under my crutch tips. My right thigh throbbed once at the third stair and quieted. I kept my eyes on the deck plate ahead of me and let the cold off the harbor blow across my face. The crutches weren’t the problem. The problem was that moving through space used to be the thing I didn’t have to think about, and now I had to think about it constantly. Eight weeks, the surgeon had said. Ten at the outside. After twelve, I’d be running again.
“There’s a spot on the main deck, port side, sheltered behind the bulkhead. The wind’s coming from the north. Crew uses it. You’re welcome to it,” said the kid.
“Thanks,” Farrow said.
Cabot came up behind us with the bags. The three of us followed the crew member.
We had a molded plastic bench. The wind broke around us. The crew member produced a blanket from a steel cabinet. Cabot took it and said nothing when he draped it across my legs after I sat.