“Sit,” I tell him, and he does, heels banging the chair rungs. “Today you learn the art of porridge diplomacy.”
“What’s that?” he asks.
“It’s when you make something warm and simple and everyone stops arguing long enough to eat.”
“Does it work on Nana?” His eyes flick toward the doorway, where my mother stands in a sharp housecoat, deceptively neutral.
“Sometimes,” I say. “If you add sugar.”
My mother enters, kisses Liam’s hair, nods to me. “Good morning, Son.”
“Mother.” I slide a bowl to Liam, another to the spot beside him. When Aoife slips in a minute later, ponytail high, face scrubbed, I pour a third and hold it out. She hesitates, then takes it. Her fingers brush mine. Heat travels up my wrist like a message.
“I can make eggs,” she says.
“I have porridge,” I answer. “You can criticize it.”
She tries, but fails. “It’s… not terrible.”
Liam digs out a river in the middle and floods it with maple. “Mam says this is illegal.”
“Your mother is correct,” I say. “Eat it anyway.”
He grins, and for a few minutes the room is only spoons against bowls and the soft sound of a child inventing a story about a pirate ship that runs on oatmeal. My mother listens without interrupting, which is her way of saying she understands more than she lets on. When Liam squeals about raisins being cannonballs, Aoife glances at me and laughs despite herself. It lands between us like a cobblestone laid clean and true. I take the moment and put it away where I keep the other fragile things.
By eight I’m in a coat at the east garage. The cold has teeth. My driver opens the back door, but I wave him to the passenger seat and take the wheel. We head for the water. The day hangs low and pewter. The harbor is a slab of tin that bends where the wind tells it to bend. At the docks the cranes stand like praying mantises picking at the ribs of ships. Men in knit caps andfluorescent vests stamp on the boards and shout, all vowel and grit. It smells of diesel and rope and the iron in blood.
Kieran waits with a clipboard like a prop he never reads. “Morning, Dec.”
“Show me.”
He leads me past stacks of containers and coiled line. A forklift bleats in reverse. Somewhere a dog barks at the sea like it owes him money. The problem is simple, which means it’s the kind that turns complicated if you let pride at it. A pallet of sealed cases, miscount by two. A Lithuanian crew swears they came off the freighter in full. A Southie stevedore swears he counted twice. The union steward has the flinty look of a man who will escalate to lawyers for the pleasure of it.
I listen. I keep my hands in my pockets and my voice level. I ask the Lithuanian foreman—Mantas—what he did after he stamped the manifest. He shrugs, lights a cigarette, offers me the pack. I refuse. I turn to O’Rourke, who is already red at the ears. He says he won’t be called a liar on his own pier.
“We don’t call names on my pier,” I say. “We fix mistakes.”
“It’s theft,” O’Rourke mutters.
“Maybe.” I hold out a hand. “Keys.”
He frowns, then he hands them over. I pop the lock on the nearest container, climb the ladder, and swing the doors wide. The breath of cold air is as sweet as a slap. Inside, teak crates sit in neat rows like choirboys. I pick one at random, pry the lid with a crowbar, nudge aside the false top with the edge of my boot. Under marble tiles wrapped in foam, twelve sealed cylinders rest in straw. Someone thought a layer was enough to hide the center. It often is. It isn’t when I am on the ladder with cold air in my lungs and a bad mood.
“Twelve and twelve,” I say. “Count them.”
They do. In the third crate the cylinders number ten. O’Rourke blanches. Mantas swears in two languages. I let them.Then I take the crowbar from my man and hand it to O’Rourke. “You’ll pay the difference and the time,” I tell him. “You’ll also buy Mantas lunch for a week.”
“That’s not?—”
“You’d rather I asked your wife to cut you a smaller slice of ham?” I ask, mild.
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Good,” I say. “Fix it.”
On the way back down the catwalk, Kieran whistles low. “How’d you know it was the third crate?”
“I didn’t,” I say. “But I knew if I picked the first, they’d both accuse me of choosing it.”
