Phillip yearned desperately for a cigarette. The image conjured by Ray’s word made fresh sweat pop out on his forehead. “I can take care of myself.”

“Son, they’ll pass you around like canapés, and you know it. You talk a good game and you fight a good fight, but some things are inevitable. Up to this point your life has pretty much sucked. You’re not responsible for that. But you are responsible for what happens from here on.”

He fell into silence again, clamping the pole between his knees before reaching for a cold can of Pepsi. Taking his time, Ray popped the top, tipped the can back, and guzzled.

“Stella and I thought we saw something in you,” he continued. “We still do,” he added, looking at Phillip again. “But until you do, we’re not going to get anywhere.”

“What do you care?” Phillip tossed back miserably.

“Hard to say at the moment. Maybe you’re not worth it. Maybe you’ll just end up back on the streets hustling marks and turning tricks anyway.”

For three months he’d had a decent bed, regular meals, and all the books he could read—one of his secret loves—at his disposal. At the thought of losing it his throat filled again, but he only shrugged. “I’ll get by.”

“If all you want to do is get by, that’s your choice. Here you can have a home, a family. You can have a life and make something out of it. Or you can go on the way you are.”

Ray reached over to Phillip quickly, and the boy braced himself for the blow, clenched his fists to return it. But Ray only pulled Phillip’s shirt up to expose the livid scars on his chest. “You can go back to that,” he said quietly.

Phillip looked into Ray’s eyes. He saw compassion and hope. And he saw himself mirrored back, bleeding in a dirty gutter on a street where life was worth less than a dime bag.

Sick, tired, terrified, Phillip dropped his head into his hands. “What’s the point?”

“You’re the point, son.” Ray ran his hand over Phillip’s hair. “You’re the point.”

Things hadn’t changed overnight, Phillip thought now. But they had begun to change. His parents had made him believe in himself, despite himself. It had become a point of pride for him to do well in school, to learn, to remake himself into Phillip Quinn.

He figured he’d done a good job of it. He’d coated that street kid with a sheen of class. He had a slick career, a well-appointed condo with a killer view of the Inner Harbor, and a wardrobe that suited both.

It seemed that he’d come full circle, spending his weekends back in this room with its green walls and sturdy furniture, with its windows that overlooked the trees and the marsh.

But this time, Seth was the point.

TWO

PHILLIP STOOD ON the foredeck of the yet-to-be-christened Neptune’s Lady. He’d personally sweated out nearly two thousand man-hours to take her from design to finished sloop. Her decks were gleaming teak, her bright work glinted in the yellow September sun.