The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel by Patry Francis Page B

activity. Gus didn’t come. Hallie wondered if she had imagined what had passed between them? Had he only told her his secrets because he was vulnerable? Or had it been the Jack Daniels after all?
    Though she once abhorred the gossip in the office, she now listened obsessively to the speculation about Codfish. Would there be a funeral? How was the family holding up? Would he be buried in Provincetown? All of that ended when word of the suicide note got out.
    “It was more like the list of orders he used to leave for the guys,” Diane Cleve announced in the waiting room. Fatima had invited the crew from the Good Fortune , including Diane’s husband, Bobby, to hear the note read. The office fell silent as she recited Codfish’s final requests.
     
    1.  Cremate the body.
    2.  No ashes are to be preserved.
    3.  No mass or memorial.
     
    She paused before she recited number 4, the only personal piece of the note: I loved her.
    The note was signed and dated the way he once formalized his business correspondence:
     
    Captain Gustavo Silva
    The Good Fortune
    Provincetown, Massachusetts
     
    “Nothing addressed to his son?” someone asked when Diane finished.
    “Nothing,” she said with finality.
     
    A fter learning about the note, Hallie was so addled that when she answered the office phone, she drew a blank. She was jerked back to the present when the caller spoke to someone in the background. “I’ve been dialing the same number for ten years now. It’s got to be Dr. Nick’s.”
    “Yes, it’s Nick’s ,” Hallie managed to get out before the woman hung up. “We’ve just been, um, having some trouble with the line this morning.” When Aunt Del looked up sharply, Hallie disappeared into the bathroom, where she pulled out the Camels she’d impulsively picked up at Lucy’s Market that morning. She locked the door and lit one up.
    With the first inhalation, her afternoon with Gus returned. The heat, the rough lettering of Maria Botelho’s name, the dry salty wind in her nostrils. But most of all the saudade in his eyes. No, she hadn’t imagined it. She hadn’t imagined any of it. With the phone ringing in the background, Nick’s nurse, Leah, pummeled the door. “What the hell are you doing in there, Hallie? It’s a zoo out here.”
    “Be right out,” Hallie said. She took one more puff from the cigarette before she flushed it and sprayed the narrow space with a scent that smelled like baby powder. Just to be safe, she opened the window.
     
    G us didn’t call or show up that day or the day after that, but a week later, when Hallie had almost given up watching for him, he walked into the office.
    “I guess there’s no chance you can get off,” he said, as if they were already in the middle of a conversation.
    Hallie glanced around the room where every seat was filled. “You’re kidding, right?”
    Old Tony Poillucci tapped his cane on the floor impatiently. “This was a place of business the last I checked—not a high school social. Make your dates on your own time, Silva.”
    But Gus didn’t seem to hear him. “I know you’re busy, and that it’s the worst possible time, but—” Then, as if he’d reached the top of a mountain, he took a long, deep breath.
    “But?” Hallie repeated.
    “But I stayed away as long as I possibly could—to the minute.”
    Ignoring the jangling phone, the charts piled high on the desk, and Old Tony, who was waiting to make an appointment, Hallie stood up and led Gus by the hand onto the porch.
    “Your family needed you; and I figured you wanted some time alone, too,” Hallie said. She couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult his days had been since they’d talked in the cemetery.
    “That’s not the reason,” Gus said. He looked downward for a long minute before he met her eyes. “You know when I told you I could never do anything for my mother again?”
    Hallie nodded.
    “Well, I was wrong. There was one thing I could do for her. One last thing she