Chapter 3
Nora sat on the seawall by the dinghy racks for an hour, because there was nowhere else to sit.
Her crew had been reassigned by ten. Petey Marsh, twenty-two, who had run the launch twice all summer under her eye, had her route and her radio and a new confidence in his shoulders. The members went up the lawn in linen and straw hats. A truck delivered two hundred white roses. Somewhere in the ballroom, someone was tuning a piano.
At half past twelve, a navy sedan with state plates parked in the commodore's spot.
The woman who got out wore a navy suit in that weather, which told Nora everything. She carried a leather folder and reading glasses on a chain, and Cass Ferreira, the office manager, walked her in the side door like a guest. Bitsy met her at the threshold with a glass of water and the christening program, and shook her hand for a long time.
Alma Reyes. Attorney general's charitable trusts unit. She had called on Thursday to say she would be in Newport and could do a preliminary walkthrough of the foundation's records ahead of the October review.
Nora had written to that office twice in two years. Both replies had been polite and identical: the unit conducts reviews on its own schedule.
At one o'clock, Nora found Bitsy on the terrace with two board members and a florist.
"I'd like a hearing," Nora said. "Before four. Five minutes in front of the board."
Bitsy set her glass down. She did not raise her voice, and that was worse. "You had thirty-one years to explain yourself," she said, "and you chose this morning not to."
The florist kept arranging peonies. The board members looked at the harbor.
"Five minutes," Nora said.
"Enjoy the day, Nora." Bitsy smiled at her the way you smile at a caterer. "You're not on the schedule."
At half past one, Nora went into the office and asked Cass for the club's launch log - the rental book she had kept for the foundation's launches, three decades of it, the record that showed which boats went out, when, and who paid.
Cass didn't meet her eyes. "Mrs. Coyle took it up to the foundation office. For the review."
Nora stood in the doorway a moment. The shelf where the log had lived for thirty-one years held a tide chart and a stapler and a coffee ring.
"Of course," she said.
She walked down the dock past the Petrel with Petey at the wheel, and she did not look at him, and he did not look at her. At the head of the dock sat the harbormaster's shed, gray shingles, one window, a desk with a tide chart taped over it. Nobody had thought to lock the shed, because the shed held nothing anybody wanted.
In the bottom drawer, under a folded chart of Narragansett Bay, lay an oilcloth log.
Nora set it on the desk and opened it. The pages were ruled in her own hand, three decades of weather and moorings and launch runs. Two-thirds of the way through, the entries changed. The heading on the page read TRUSTEE EXHIBITS, and beneath it, numbered in pencil:
1. Carbon, PO 2019-114. 2. Rental ledger extract, 2019-2025. 3. Trust instrument, ΒΆ 7(c). 4. Certificate of trust, October. 5. Order confirmation, printed.
Below the last line, in the same pencil, she had written one word.
Four.
She closed the log. Two years of letters and patience and counting. The auditor was inside the building with a folder and an October review. The room would be full at four.