Midnight Bayou

Don’t think because I’m an old man I’m a pushover.”
    “You gave her money.”
    Ray glanced away from the road briefly and looked into eyes the same color as his own. “That’s right. That’s what she understands, from what I can see. She never understood you, did she, boy?”
    Something was gathering inside him, a storm he didn’t recognize as hope. “If you get pissed off at me, or tired of having me around, or just change your mind, you’ll send me back. I won’t go back.”
    They were over the bridge now, and Ray pulled the car to the shoulder of the road, shifted his bulk in the seat so they were face to face. “I’ll get pissed off at you, and at my age I’m bound to get tired from time to time. But I’m making you a promise here and now, I’m giving you my word. I won’t send you back.”
    “If she—”
    “I won’t let her take you back,” Ray said, anticipating him. “No matter what I have to do. You’re mine now. You’re my family now. And you’ll stay with me as long as that’s what you want. A Quinn makes a promise,” he added, and held out a hand, “he keeps it.”
    Seth looked at the offered hand, and his own sprang damp. “I don’t like being touched.”
    Ray nodded. “Okay. But you’ve still got my word on it.” He pulled back onto the road again, gave the boy one last glance. “Almost home,” he said again.
    Within months, Ray Quinn had died, but he’d kept his word. He’d kept it through the three men he’d made his sons. Those men had given the scrawny, suspicious and scarred young boy a life.
    They had given him a home, and made him a man.
    Cameron, the edgy, quick-tempered gypsy; Ethan, the patient, steady waterman; Phillip, the elegant,sharp-minded executive. They had stood for him, fought for him. They had saved him.
    His brothers.
    T he gilded light of the late-afternoon sun sheened the marsh grass, the mudflats, the flat fields of row crops. With the windows down he caught the scent of water as he bypassed the little town of St. Christopher.
    He’d considered swinging into town, heading first to the old brick boatyard. Boats by Quinn still custom-made wooden boats, and in the eighteen years since the enterprise had started—on a dream, on guile, on sweat—it had earned its reputation for quality and craftsmanship.
    They were probably there, even now. Cam cursing as he finished up some fancywork in a cabin. Ethan quietly lapping boards. Phil, up in the office conjuring up some snazzy ad campaign.
    He could go by Crawford’s, pick up a six-pack. Maybe they’d have a cold one, or more likely Cam would toss him a hammer and tell him to get his ass back to work.
    He’d enjoy that, but it wasn’t what was drawing him now. It wasn’t what was pulling him down the narrow country road where the marsh still crept out of the shadows and the trees with their gnarled trunks spread leaves glossy with May.
    Of all the places he’d seen—the great domes and spires of Florence, the florid beauty of Paris, the stunning green hills of Ireland—nothing ever caught at his throat, filled up his heart, like the old white house with its soft and faded blue trim, which sat on a bumpy lawn that slid back into quiet water.
    He pulled in the drive, behind the old white ’Vette that had been Ray and Stella Quinn’s. The car looked as pristine as the day it had rolled off the showroom floor. Cam’s doing, he thought. Cam would say it was a matterof showing proper respect for an exceptional machine. But it was all about Ray and Stella, all about family. All about love.
    The lilac in the front yard was smothered with blooms. That was a matter of love, too, he reflected. He’d given Anna the little bush for Mother’s Day when he was twelve.
    She’d cried, he remembered. Big, beautiful brown eyes flooded with tears, laughing and swiping at them the whole time he and Cam planted it for her.
    She was Cam’s wife, and so that made Anna his sister. But inside, he thought now, where it counted, she was his mother.
    The Quinns knew all about what was inside.
    He got out of the car, into the lovely stillness. He was no longer a scrawny boy with oversized feet and a suspicious eye.
    He’d grown into those feet. He was six-one with a wiry build. One that could go gawky if he neglected it. His hair had darkened and was more a bronzed brown than the sandy mop of his youth. He tended to neglect that as well and, running a hand through it now, winced as he recalled his intention