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"It wasn't what I had incrabs froaffed His thick orange fisherlowed in the sun "You can trust ood steamers here and plenty of sooks"

Ethan glanced at the wire pot full of crabs, auto size and number But it wasn't the catch that mattered, not here, not now "You want me to trust you, but you don't explain"

Ray glanced back, tipping up the bright-red cap he wore over his draed at his hair, teased the caricature of John Steinbeck gracing his loose T-shirt into rippling over his broad chest The great A he would work for food, but he didn't look too happy about it

In contrast, Ray Quinn gloith health and energy, ruddy cheeks where deep creases only seeorous man in his sixties with years yet to live

"You've got to find your oay, your own answers" Ray smiled at Ethan out of brilliantly blue eyes, and Ethan could see the creases deepen around them "It means more that way I'm proud of you"

Ethan felt his throat burn, his heart sq

ueeze Routinely he rebaited the pot, then watched the orange floats bob on the water "For what?"

"For being Just for being Ethan"

"I should've come around more I shouldn't have left you alone so much"

"That's a crock" Now Ray's voice was both irritated and i to pissafter oing off to live in Europe—and even Phillip for going off to Baltimore Healthy birds leave the nest Your mother and I raised healthy birds"

Before Ethan could speak, Ray raised a hand It was such a typical gesture, the professorinterruption, that Ethan had to smile "You missed them That's why you wanted to betheot them back now, don't you?"

"Looks that way"

"And you've got yourself a pretty sister-in-law, the beginnings of a boatbuilding business, and this…" Ray gestured to take in the water, the bobbing floats, the tall, glossily wet eelgrass on the verge where a lone egret stood like aSeth needs Patience Maybe too much of it in some areas"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Ray sighed gustily "There's so you don't have, Ethan, that you need You've been waiting around and et it You don't ain"

"What?" Ethan shrugged andI need, and what I want"

"Don't ask yourself what, ask yourself who" Ray clucked his tongue, then gave his son a quick shoulder shake "Wake up, Ethan"

And he had awakened, with the odd sensation of that big, familiar hand on his shoulder

But, he thought as he brooded over his first cup of coffee, he still didn't have the answers

Chapter One

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"got us some nice peelers here, cap'n" Ji theclaws—and had the scars on his thick hands to prove it He wore the traditional gloves of his profession, but as any waterman could tell you, they wore out quick And if there was a hole in them, by God, a crab would find it

He worked steadily, his legs braced wide for balance on the rocking boat, his dark eyes squinting in a face weathered with age and sun and living He hty, and Jim didn't much care which end you stuck him in

He always called Ethan Cap'n, and rarely said more than one declarative sentence at a time

Ethan altered course toward the next pot, his right hand nudging the steering stick that most waterman used rather than a wheel At the saear levels with his left There were constant sress up the line of traps

The Chesapeake Bay could be generous when she chose, but she liked to be tricky and make you work for her bounty

Ethan knew the Bay as well as he knew hiht he knew it better—the fickle est estuary For two hundred miles it flowed from north to south, yet it measured only four miles across where it brushed by Annapolis and thirty at theon Maryland's southern Eastern Shore, depending on its generosity, cursing it for its caprices

Ethan's waters, his ho with flatland rivers with sharp shoulders that shium and oak

It was a world of tidal creeks and sudden shallohere wild celery and widgeongrass rooted