“Really?”
Liam took another large draught of the madeira. “Yes.”
“In what?” Finn asked.
Liam blinked and said, “Transportation. Railroads out west, electric trolleys on the east coast.”
“I take it you’re not at the shipyard anymore.”
Liam hesitated. “Strangely enough, I am.”
Finn felt better about his friend. Many a man would give up honest work under such circumstances.
“I don’t have the same position, though.”
“Oh? No longer making models?”
Liam grinned. “That’s old school, right?”
Finn was surprised. “Yes, you’re right. Where I was, they thought that was barbaric. Engineers, architects, draftsmen, that’s the proper way. So what do you do?”
“I’m the yard’s master builder, directing those engineers, architects, and draftsmen.”
Finn flinched. “How is that possible?” he blurted out before he realized how rude that sounded. Yet he knew Liam’s training was basic compared to the university studies he’d undergone. Liam was more of a woodworker than anything.
However, his friend didn’t look offended. “Yard seniority, partly. We lost some key people on theGarrard.” He paused. “Like yourself. Then some left for other yards, Goat Island is big, and there’s Brooklyn, of course, and even down to Norfolk. Gilbert left, too. He’s a consultant at the Navy shipyard in Charlestown. But I’m still at Kelly’s.”
“So you check the plans and mark them up?”
Liam chuckled and finished his glassful, then poured another.
“No, I basically shuffle papers from one fellow to another and sign when necessary. Pay is decent.”
Finn was feeling a little sour, thinking of the choices he’d made that had caused him to lose Rose and his job and have no foreseeable future in Boston. He had nothing but a degree and a six-inch scar on his leg.
They were called in to dinner as Finn was thinking how different his life would have been if he’d let Liam remove him from the manifest as he’d offered to do. By the time he had taken a seat at Liam’s highly polished dining table, Finn realized how guilty he would have felt if he hadn’t been on board to see for himself that no one could save that ship and those men and boys. He shook his head.
“What is it?” Liam asked, as a course of fish soup was set before them, steaming and fragrant.
“Choices,” Finn said. “Paths we choose.”
“I’m glad you came to see me,” Liam said, tackling his soup with gusto.
“I went to the yard, too,” Finn told him
Liam paused with his spoon midway between the bowl and his mouth, then he slurped his soup off the spoon and smiled broadly.
“I’m sorry I missed your visit. I bet they were surprised to see you.”
Finn tasted a few spoonfuls, surprised at how hungry he was.
“Surprised is not the word. I didn’t see anyone I knew. Walsh was away from his desk, and there was a new secretary to old man Kelly, a bug-eyed fellow—”
“Marty,” Liam said, grinning. “Good chap.”
“I suppose,” Finn shrugged. “He took me to see Kelly, who wasn’t sure he knew me at first, then when I told him who I was and what I thought of theGarrard, he nearly took my head off with anger and said I’d never work at the yard again. Or at any local yard for that matter.”
“What? That’s outrageous,” Liam said. “Why would he do that?”
