"Tom, no." Dana spoke for the first time. "It's done. I did it. The time's done. You stand up in front of the Board of Maritime Pilots and tell them, and what happens? You lose your license, and that doesn't give me back one day. Not one. And you're the one who's sober, and you're the one with the house she grew up in—"
"It isn't done," Nora said, lifting her head. Her eyes were swollen. Her voice was perfectly steady. "Not for me. Not for him." She looked at her father. "There's a man in Seaside with one leg who thinks he knows who did it to him. That's not done either."
Tom nodded slowly. "I'll go see him," he said. "Marcus. Before I call anyone. He should hear it first."
"And Mom's record," Nora said. Renee heard the word Mom and something moved in her chest, and then she realized Nora had said it the way you'd say it in a courtroom, a term of art, and also not that way at all. "It's a felony. She can't get a lot of jobs. She can't live in a lot of places. You know that, right? There's a clemency process. The governor can pardon. I read about it. You'd have to swear to it. In writing. Under oath."
"I'll swear to it," Tom said.
"I don't want—" Dana began.
"I know you don't," said Nora. "But you don't get to hold it by yourself anymore." And she looked at Renee, as if Renee had said it first.
Renee had said almost exactly those words in the truck, and Nora could not possibly have heard them. It took her a moment to understand that Nora was guessing, from the floral tape and the wet blazer and the fact that the two of them had come through those doors together. Guessing the shape of it. She was a very good guesser. She always had been.
Tom turned to Renee then, finally. He had been not looking at her the whole time, and now he looked, and she saw him get ready for it the way he'd get ready on a ladder when the ship's hull rolled toward him.
"I don't know what I'm going to do," Renee told him. It was the truest thing she could find. "I don't know what eight years were. I'm going to have to figure that out, and you can't help me with it, and I don't want you to try right now." She swallowed. "I know I'm not going home with you tonight. I'm going to sleep at the shop."