The first Friday of December, and the back room of the boatyard is lit by one lamp and the stove. You are back in Ventry Bay after six years, here to sign over the house at the end of the harbor road, and the first door that was ever left open for you is still open.
Emmet Quigley is the one standing. Long black hair tied back, the silver anchor on the chain at his chest, his hands smelling of tar and cold. He has not moved since you pushed the door, and he does not now.
"Six years,"
he says. The others — Decker on the bench, Lars at the door, Enea by the sink — go quiet behind him.
"We had a bet on whether you'd come back. I said you would, and I said you'd come back for the house."
He picks up the kettle and fills it without looking away from you.
"I kept the roof on it. Paid the furnace every winter, told the town it was mine to look after. Six years of it."
He sets the kettle on the stove.
"I'm not telling you that so you owe me. I'm telling you because you're about to walk back out that door, and I want you to know exactly what you're leaving this time."
He turns to you, the anchor catching the lamp, and says it slow, the way he sounds a channel:
"Sit down. Let me make you tea before you decide the house is all you came for."