Inner Harbor Read Online Free PDF Page A

only shrugged. “I’ll get by.”
    â€œIf 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?”
    â€œYou’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.

T WO
    P HILLIP 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.
    Belowdecks her cabin was a woodworker’s pride, Cam’s for the most part, Phillip mused. Glossy cabinets were fashioned of natural wood, hand-fitted and custom-designed with sleeping room for four close friends.
    She was sound, he thought, and she was beautiful. Aesthetically charming, with her fluid hull, glossy decks, and long waterline. Ethan’s early decision to use the smooth-lap method of planking had added hours to the labor but had produced a gem.
    The podiatrist from D.C. was going to pay handsomely for every inch of her.
    â€œWell. . . ?” Ethan, hands in the pockets of his faded jeans, eyes squinting comfortably against the sun, left it an open-ended question.
    Phillip ran a hand over the satin finish of the gunwale, anarea he’d spent many sweaty hours sanding and finishing. “She deserves a less clichéd name.”
    â€œThe owner’s got more money than imagination. She takes the wind.” Ethan’s lips curved into one of his slow, serious smiles. “Good Christ, she goes, Phil. When Cam and I tested her out, I wasn’t sure he was going to bring her back in. Wasn’t sure I wanted him to.”
    Phillip rubbed a thumb over his chin. “I’ve got a friend in Baltimore who paints. Most of the stuff he does is strictly commercial, for hotels and restaurants. But he does terrific stuff on the side. Every time he sells one, he bitches about it. Hates to let a canvas go. I didn’t really understand how he felt until now.”
    â€œAnd she’s our first.”
    â€œBut not our last.” Phillip hadn’t expected to feel so attached. The boatbuilding business hadn’t been his idea, or his choice. He liked to think his brothers had dragged him into it. He’d told them it was insane, ridiculous, doomed to fail.
    Then, of course, he’d jumped in and negotiated for the rental of the building, applied for licenses, ordered the necessary utilities. During the construction of what was about to become Neptune’s Lady, he’d dug splinters out of his fingers, nursed burns from hot creosote, soaked