Read Chapter 5: The Letter From France

The letter found him at the dock office, slipped between the pages of a shipping manifest like a piece of forgotten trash. Bert Higgins, the night clerk, handed it over with a grunt and a jerk of his thumb. "Came with the afternoon mail boat. France postmark."

Jack took it without a word. The envelope was thin, creased down the middle, the paper yellowed at the edges. His name was written in a looping, half-familiar scrawl that he hadn't seen in five years. He shoved it into his coat pocket and walked out into the salt wind without opening it.

Frank was waiting by the pier gate, rolling a cigarette between his fingers. "You look like you swallowed a nail."

"Just tired." Jack kept moving, boots ringing on the wet planks. Behind him, the *Evelyn Frost* sat low in the water, her crew already dispersed. The evening shift had come and gone. Rain was threatening from the east, a gray curtain dragging across the harbor.

Frank fell in step beside him. "You got the money for the boat?"

"Not yet." The lie came easy. He'd had it for three days now, hidden in a tin can beneath his floorboards. Five hundred dollars in greasy twenties and tens, courtesy of the O'Malley brothers and his father's signature on a line he'd never read. Jack tried not to think about that part.

"You said you'd have it," Frank said.

"I said I'd have a plan. The plan's coming together." Jack felt the letter burn against his ribs. He wanted to read it. He wanted to throw it into the harbor.

They reached the end of the pier, where the water slapped against the pilings and a pair of gulls squabbled over a dead fish. Danny O'Brien was there, sitting on a coil of rope with his cap pulled low, tossing pebbles into the surf. He looked up when they approached and gave a small, nervous wave.

"Kid's got good instincts," Frank muttered. "Shows up early, stays late. Doesn't ask questions."

"Yet."

Frank glanced at him. "You buying that boat or not? Because I got a cousin in Quincy who can get us rum at cost, but only if we can move it faster than a skiff."

Jack watched Danny. The boy threw another pebble, then wiped his hands on his trousers and stood. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Skinny as a rail, with the hollow look of someone who'd grown up on dock wages and stolen bread. Jack saw himself in that look. It was why he'd stepped into the fight last week, and why he'd put a hand on the kid's shoulder afterward and told him to report to Pier 14 in the morning.

"Tomorrow," Jack said. "I'll show you the boat tomorrow."

Frank let out a breath. "You got it, then. The money."

"I said I'd have it."

"You also said you'd find a source. We still don't have a source."

"We will." Jack turned from the water. "The *Meridian* comes back in Thursday. I got three men to check before then."

He didn't mention that all three men had been working the *Evelyn Frost* that week, and that each one had given him a smooth, practiced story when he'd asked about loose cargo. Harrigan had laughed and clapped him on the back. Sutter had offered him a drink. The third man, a quiet hauler named Vince Poole, had gone pale and said he didn't know what Jack was talking about.

Jack would have bet on Poole. But Poole had disappeared two days ago, and no one knew where he'd gone.

The letter crackled against his chest.

"I'll see you at the Lamp tonight," Frank said. "Gus is running a special. You should come."

"Maybe."

Frank studied him a moment, then shrugged and walked off toward the streetcar line. Jack waited until he was out of sight before pulling the envelope from his coat.

The paper was thin enough to see through. He unfolded it, one crease at a time.

The handwriting inside was shaky, cramped, nothing like the bold, confident script Patrick had used to send letters from the front. Jack remembered those letters—all bravado and black humor, descriptions of the mud and the rats and the French girls who'd wink at him from behind café windows. Patrick had loved the war, or at least he'd loved the version of himself that the war had made. He'd written Jack twice a month, every month, until the official notice came in the spring of 1918.

*We regret to inform you—*

Jack had held that telegram at the kitchen table while his mother wept and his father stared at the wall. He'd folded it neatly and put it in his pocket. He hadn't cried. He'd gone to work the next morning and hauled cargo for twelve hours straight, and when the foreman had asked him what was wrong, he'd said nothing.

Now he read the words on the page.

*Dear Jack,*

*I don't know if this will reach you. I don't know if you'll want it to. They tell me I've been in the hospital for three years, but I don't remember much of it. The doctors say I was found near Amiens with my whole company dead around me and a piece of shrapnel in my skull. They say I should be dead too. Some days I think I am.*

*I've been writing this letter for a month. They say I'm better now. They say I can go home soon. I don't know if home is still there. I don't know if you're still there. I don't know if you're still my brother.*

*I'm sorry I've been gone so long. I'm sorry for the things I can't remember. I'm sorry you had to get the telegram. I'm sorry you had to tell Ma.*

*Please write back. Please tell me if there's anything left.*

*Your brother,* *Patrick*

Jack read it twice.

The second time, he noticed the small detail at the bottom of the page, written in the same shaky hand but smaller, almost an afterthought: *The army says I'll get a pension. I'll need somewhere to stay when I land. I thought maybe—*

He stopped reading.

The wind picked up, carrying the smell of rain and diesel fuel. Jack looked out over the harbor, where the lights of the city were beginning to flicker on, one by one. Somewhere out there, a dozen boats were running rum down from Canada. Men were getting rich. Men were making their names.

Patrick was alive.

Jack folded the letter, not along the original creases but in a new, smaller square. It fit in the palm of his hand. He looked at it for a long moment.

Then he took out a match, struck it against the railing, and held the flame to the corner of the paper.

The envelope curled and blackened. The letter caught, flared, and was gone in less than a breath. He dropped the ashes into the harbor and watched the current take them.

"Who was that from?" Danny had come up beside him, quiet as a cat.

"No one." Jack's voice came out flat. "Something from the union. Wrong address."

Danny nodded, accepting it without question. He looked out at the water, then back at Jack. "The boss says you got a new boat."

"News travels."

"I could help," Danny said. "Unloading, loading, whatever you need. I'm not afraid of the water. I grew up on it."

Jack looked at him. The kid was eager, hungry, desperate to prove himself. Jack recognized the look because he'd worn it himself, every day for the past month. He remembered what it felt like to want something so badly that you'd burn your own bridges to reach it.

"I'll keep it in mind," he said.

He left Danny at the pier and walked through the narrow streets toward the rooming house where he'd lived since his mother died. Two rooms, a shared bath, a window that looked out on the roof of a fishmonger's shop. He kept the tin can beneath the loose floorboard, and tonight he opened it and looked at the money for a long time.

Five hundred dollars. Patrick would need money when he came home. He'd need a doctor. He'd need someone to tell him that the world he'd left was still there, that the people who loved him hadn't moved on.

Jack closed the floorboard. He stood up, buttoned his coat, and went out to find the O'Malley brothers.

Their office was above a bar on Blackstone Street, a narrow room with a rolltop desk and a photograph of a dead man on the wall. The elder O'Malley—Tommy, the one with the scarred lip—was smoking a cigar and reading a racing form. He didn't look up when Jack came in.

"You got something for me?"

"I need to know the boat's ready by Friday."

Tommy O'Malley finally looked at him. "You got the money?"

Jack reached into his coat and pulled out the envelope. He set it on the desk. Tommy opened it, flipped through the bills, and gave a slow, approving nod.

"You're a serious man, Malloy. I like that." He put the money in his pocket and slid a piece of paper across the desk. "My brother's got a boat for you in Charlestown. Roger Hailey. Tell him Tommy sent you."

Jack picked up the paper. "I'll be there at dawn."

"See that you are." Tommy drew on his cigar. "And Malloy—this ain't a charity. The loan starts accruing interest next month. You miss a payment, and we'll have a conversation about it. You understand?"

"I understand."

Jack walked out into the dark, the slip of paper burning in his pocket. Behind him, the door clicked shut. Somewhere in the city, a ship was coming in with cargo he couldn't see. Somewhere in France, a brother he'd buried was learning how to walk again. And Jack Malloy, twenty-three years old, with five hundred dollars in somebody else's pocket and a hull that wasn't his yet, was looking at the whole crooked world and deciding what to take from it.

He didn't look back.