Slow and cautious at first. Drawing back to look nervously around the gardens, then back at each other, wide-eyed and trembling. Minor’s hand came out of O’Hara’s hair, moving to the side of his face, thumb stroking a cheekbone. His other arm, the wounded one, started to come up. A flicker of pain crossed his face.

O’Hara smiled then, and in perhaps the most tender gesture Kennet ever saw between two human beings, O’Hara picked up Minor’s weak left arm and gently helped it onto his shoulder. As he pressed his mouth against Minor’s scarred wrist, another rippling shiver went through him.

Then they were kissing again, this time as though the world could end and they’d take no notice.

Now it was Kennet who peered into the night. Empty palm still in the air, he stared straight through the two men, his gaze boring into the dark beyond. This, he knew, was how Hook felt when he first glimpsed O’Hara and Jock stealing a furtive, secret moment that could quite literally get them thrown in jail.

Screw guarding the perimeter, Hook had said. I just wanted to guard them.

As he kept watch, Kennet imagined a little bird flying circles around Minor and O’Hara, too. Singing as they kissed. As they became Erik and Boyd, each hearing his name, feeling the hair stand up on arms and napes in response.

It was a golden, gargantuan moment. Fierce and fragile. Too immediate and now to be folded into memory and become won.

Kennet would destroy anyone and anything that dared disturb it.

October 1945

Juicy Fruit

The construction of the new attic room soothed Kennet’s soul more than boatbuilding. When immersed in the precision of measuring and marking, the hands-on creation, the purpose, the job, he thought of little else.

Sometimes his brothers or O’Hara came up to lend a hand. Kennet enjoyed side-by-side laboring, but found he especially liked working alone.

Well, not entirely alone. Occasionally he was joined by a short, rather useless apprentice.

“Good thing you work for free, kid,” Kennet said.

“Nee,” Xandro said.

“Nyck.”

“Nee.”

“Close enough.”

Kennet carefully sanded odds and ends of wood smooth, and gave them to Xandro to bang together, stack and chew on. Remembering how Ingrid used to keep Trudy contained, Kennet lined an orange crate with a blanket and popped the boy inside with his blocks, his tin measuring cups and clothes pegs. These simple toys, the radio and Kennet’s company were all Xandro needed. Plus a bit of whatever Kennet was having for lunch.

“You’re a lousy assistant,” Kennet said over a couple cookies and a glass of milk. “But you’re nice company for a working man.”