"Look, I'm not going to beg. Just try to understand, okay? Between Jill starting to date and the fishery, too, Barbara Jean had her hands so full that she didn't have any time left over for me."

"And Linville did?"

"She was the one who encouraged me to get into politics. My career was going nowhere till then. I was just a small-town attorney, tending to the legal needs of my father-in-law's business. h.e.l.l, Deborah, half my outside clients were court-appointed."

He got up and freshened his drink. "Sure I can't-?"

"No."

"You don't make it easy, girl."

"News flash, Chet: not every 'girl' is in your world to smooth things over for you."

He sighed. "I don't see what the big deal is. n.o.body got hurt. The Janson estate got every penny it had coming. If I hadn't let Mr. Janson sell it to Linville-"

I arched my eyebrows. "Let him sell? A man in a coma?"

"Then you do know everything," he said, with a sick look on his face.

"I think so. Yes."

"All the same," he argued, "the old inn was falling down. It couldn't stand to wait another year while the heirs finished bickering. By that time, the roof would have fallen in and they'd have gotten a lot less than Linville paid."

"A preservationist and a humanitarian," I gibed.

Chet flushed. "You think I haven't kicked myself a hundred times since then? Especially when Linville started after Neville Fishery. She'd never put the screws to me. That wasn't her style. But just knowing that I was the one who gave her the start that she built on has been pure h.e.l.l these last six months."

"I can believe that," I said.

Encouraged, he leaned forward. "What I did was wrong. I admit it. But don't think it hasn't eaten at me all these years. I know people say I go too easy on white-collar defendants sometimes, but whenever some poor slob comes up before me embezzling a few thousand, or cheating on his taxes, I have to think that there but for the grace of G.o.d. Everybody's done things they're ashamed of, Deborah. Haven't you?"

"Of course."

"Not that it's an excuse. But when you know how much some people are getting away with and what you've done hasn't really hurt anybody-" He sighed, set his drink on the wide arm of his chair, stretched his long legs straight out till he was nearly horizontal, and in a tone so low I almost couldn't hear, he muttered, "Shared shabbiness."

"What?"

"That's what I call it. When we tell ourselves everybody's doing it and most are doing worse. The small shabby things we do that make us not point the finger at someone else. A shared complicity. But every time we do it, a little more decency leaks away from us, a little more glory gone from our world. Take Andy Bynum. He actually apologized to me, but he said he couldn't figure any other way to get Linville to keep her mouth shut about commercial fishing in close. Said blackmailing me like that wasn't half as bad as signing Ritchie Janson's signature."

I stood and as if I'd jerked a string, Kidd started up from the landing.

"What are you going to do?" Chet asked.

"You don't bring down a fellow judge," the pragmatist reminded me. "Not if you want to be known as a team player."

"Right is right," said the preacher inexorably.

Shared shabbiness or holier than thou? I didn't like either choice.

He read the decision in my eyes and leaned back in his chair with his own eyes closed.

"I'm sorry, Chet," I told him.

And I was.

a a a "Why don't you head straight on down Front Street?" said Kidd. "I'll buy you a beer at the Dock House and we'll look at all the rich people in their boats and I'll tell you about the time I found a fish trap at a creek off Kerr Lake."

"Okay." I didn't trust my voice to say more.

"Hey, you're not crying because you're going to unseat that sorry b.a.s.t.a.r.d, are you?"

"No." We both knew I was lying.

"Okay," he said. "So what happened was I had to sit on that fish trap for three solid days before anybody came to check on it."

He spotted the tissue holder over the sun visor on his side and handed me a couple without breaking his narration. It was very long and very complicated. Something to do with a six five, three-hundred-pound gorilla of a man who brought along three little young'uns when he came to empty his illegal fish trap. The story lasted all the way till we were seated at a small table on an upstairs porch overlooking the marina, and by that time I was resigned to doing the right thing and was ready to, if not laugh, at least relax.

To my bemus.e.m.e.nt, I spotted Lev on the deck of the Rainmaker with Catherine Llewellyn's young son in his arms. Claire Montgomery's hand puppet seemed to be entertaining them both as the Llewellyns themselves arrived with a couple of large suitcases. I realized they must be getting ready to leave.

Poor Lev, I thought, picturing the rest of a life co-opted by Catherine Llewellyn. No doubt she'll allow him one-night stands, but I also have no doubt that she'll make very, very sure (ever so solicitously, and for his own good, of course) that he never again gets entangled by someone who could disengage him from her orbit.

Already Lev was taking on the outlines of a Proust novel-something I know that I read and absorbed, yet can no longer remember why, nor even if, I actually enjoyed it.

"See somebody you recognize?" Kidd asked.

"No," I said. "No, I don't."

15.

My life flows on in endless song.

Above earth's lamentation,

I hear the sweet tho' far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

Thro' all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing.

It finds an echo in my soul-.

How can I keep from singing?

-Anonymous.

"All things considered," said F. Roger Longmire when he finally got through to me next morning, "I'm gonna tell Judge Mercer's chief to find someone else to sub for Mercer next week. Harrison Hobart can still sit in for you in Dobbs if you want to take a couple of days off."

"That's okay," I told him. "I'll be fine by Monday, but thanks, Roger."

While we'd talked, Kidd had cleaned the bathroom and swabbed down the kitchen floor. There was nothing else to do except finish packing and run the vacuum over the carpet in the rest of the cottage. Sue keeps the place like a dollhouse and no way was I going to leave it less than pristine.

Kidd was so anxious for us to get going that he'd already brought in the rocking chair from the porch and had to lift it up while I vacuumed underneath.

"Won't have to be this fussy at my place," he said as I stashed the vacuum in the closet.

I doubted that. Last night, when he was talking me into finishing the weekend at his cabin on the banks of the Neuse near New Bern, he'd described it with such pride of ownership that it wouldn't be too many notches below Sue's standards.

"Long as you have clean sheets," I said.

We loaded the cars-we'd retrieved his from Sh.e.l.l Point last night and would caravan back to New Bern-and I walked out to turn off the water and lock up the pump house.

I glanced over toward Mahlon's house where all was silent. Mickey Mantle had gone roaring out alone on his truck an hour or so ago. I couldn't tell if Effrida was inside there or not, but I spotted Guthrie sitting at the very end of the ramshackle pier gazing over the water to Shackleford Banks and I walked down to join him.

He didn't look around though he must have felt my footsteps along the rickety planks.

"I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye," I said.

The empty skiff was tied up to the piling beside him and it bobbed up and down in the gentle waves. I guess it really was his now.

"I never did get you a real mess of clams," Guthrie said.

"Next time," I said. "Guthrie, I'm really sorry-"

"Me and Daddy, we're going to finish the boat and fish her like Grandpap wanted us to do." There was a fiercely dogged look on his face. The wind whipped his sun-bleached hair straight back and I saw that his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. "Daddy says we'll take her up around Norfolk when she's finished. Maybe even hire us on a couple of men and go fish off New Jersey. You'n catch more fish up there in one day than you can in a whole week down here 'cause the water's colder. We're gonna do real good."

I wanted to hug him like one of my nephews. Instead, I held out my hand and he shook it solemnly.

"Don't you worry," he said. "We're gonna do fine."

At the cottage, Kidd was waiting at the wheel of his car.

I turned the key in the new lock we'd installed, then got into my car and switched on the ignition.

At the end of the driveway, as I waited for Kidd to pull out onto the road, I glanced back in my rearview mirror. Sunlight sparkled on the water, blue sky gleamed through the empty windows of the unfinished trawler, and out on the landing, Guthrie sat motionless with his face to the sea.

end.