Chapter 17
On the last day of 1999, the day that was to have been Daddy’s wedding day, we conspired to keep him busy. After a fortifying lunch of split pea soup and hunks of sourdough bread, I contrived to look so pitifully inept that he volunteered to clean the ashes out of both fireplaces. Then I walked him from our house all the way to Mother Earth with him complaining the whole way, “What? You afraid I can’t take care of myself, Hannah?”
We were on Maryland Avenue at the time, just passing the entrance to Galway Bay. I thought about the cheerful bar inside and about all the other friendly Annapolis watering holes Daddy used to frequent and said simply, “Yes.”
Ruth welcomed her shift as caretaker. She gave Daddy a quick lesson in cash register management — reassuring him that its com
