Chapter 1

I went out fishing with my father and we ran into a storm. The boat went over.

My wife, Linda, got to the only life jacket.

My legs were tangled in the net, and I was going down.

She was six or seven feet from me. I reached for her.

She looked at me once, then turned away and buckled the jacket around my father instead.

I cut myself out of the net a second before my lungs gave out.

When I finally dragged myself onto the beach, the first thing I did was walk into the county clerk's office and file for divorce.

Linda sobbed like her heart was tearing in half. "I saved your father, Jack. And now you're throwing me away? Where's your conscience?"

Chapter 1

My father was shaking with rage. "You ungrateful little bastard! If it weren't for Linda, I'd be at the bottom of that channel right now. You divorce her and you can get the hell out of the Sutton family!"

Everybody in the village called Linda a saint and called me heartless.

I still wanted the divorce.

Linda dropped to her knees in front of me. "Jack, it happened so fast. I could only get to one of you. That was your father!"

I pulled my arm out of her hands and looked at her.

"He's your father. He isn't mine."

...

"I want a divorce."

I hadn't even dried the seawater off me before I walked into the county clerk's office and put my petition down on the desk.

Before Dale Ferris could get a word out, Linda came through the door with my father, Frank Sutton, right behind her.

Linda went white. She dropped straight down onto her knees.

"Jack! What do you think you're doing?"

I didn't look at her. I kept my eyes on Dale.

"That's a divorce petition. Are you taking it or not?"

Linda crawled over and got both hands around my soaked pant leg.

"Have you lost your mind? I saved your father! I just saved his life!"

"There was one life jacket and the boat was coming apart. Was I supposed to stand there and watch him drown?"

I looked down at her.

"He's your father. He isn't mine."

My father spoke up behind her. "Jack, are you trying to put me in the ground?"

My stomach turned over. I jerked my leg free of her hands.

"I want the divorce."

She stared up at me like she'd never seen me before.

"Jack, what kind of man are you?"

Dale finally came back to life and slapped his palm flat on the desk.

"What is wrong with you? Your wife saves your father's life and you come straight in here to divorce her?"

I wasn't going to argue with him. I turned toward the back offices, looking for somebody with the authority to take the petition.

Linda scrambled after me and caught my sleeve.

"Say something, Jack! Your father's an old man. Those waves were huge. I could only reach one of you!"

Her crying pulled people in from every corner of the building. Inside a couple of minutes the lobby was packed three deep.

"Isn't that Frank Sutton's boy? Didn't they just come off the water?"

"That's him. His wife saved his father and now he wants to leave her."

"God above. What kind of man does that?"

Thomas Sutton, my father's uncle, pushed through the crowd on his cane. His hand shook when he pointed it at my face.

"Your mother died young. Your father raised you with his own two hands. Do you have any idea what that cost him?

"Your wife saved his life. You can't even thank her, and now you want a divorce?

"How did this family produce something as rotten as you?"

His spit landed on my cheek. I left it there.

"This marriage ends today."

"You—" Dale snatched the petition off the desk and threw it at my face. "You're a disgrace, Jack. This office is never approving that."

The paper drifted down onto the muddy floor.

I bent, picked it up, and brushed the dirt off it. Then I turned and looked at every person in the room.

"I'll be back tomorrow."

Chapter 2

"Jack, please!

"Your father's too old for this. You'll kill him!

"If you have to hate somebody, hate me. I shouldn't have left you out there. But he's still your father!"

Linda started hitting herself in the face with both hands, hard enough that the sound carried.

Blood came out of her nose and ran down over her mouth.

More people crowded in through the doors.

Two young fishermen shoved forward and grabbed a shoulder each, their faces tight with anger.

"Are you even a man, Jack? Look what you're doing to her. She saved your own father!"

I looked at the woman on the floor, bloodying herself for an audience, and felt nothing at all.

The face I'd once thought was the warmest thing in my life just made me sick now.

My father shuffled up to me and picked a length of wood off the floor by the wall.

"I know you hate me, son.

"I wrecked my back hauling crates on that pier so you'd have a house and a wife. I've carried those injuries ever since. Now I'm old and I'm useless and I'm nothing but a weight around your neck.

"If you hate me that much, beat me to death with it. I won't hold it against you."

The crowd sucked in a breath.

"Poor Frank. His own boy's driven him to this."

"That kid's heart is made of iron."

I looked at the stick and laughed.

"Hit you? I wouldn't dirty my hands."

I kept my eyes on him.

"You keep telling everybody you wrecked your back for me. Why not break your legs while you're at it? Then you can lie in bed the rest of your life and let your precious daughter-in-law wait on you hand and foot. Isn't that what you want?"

The room went off like a match in a fuel tank.

"Did you hear that?"

"He just wished broken legs on his own father. God'll settle up with him for that."

My father's face changed. He stepped in and slapped me across the mouth.

"You worthless little bastard!

"How did I raise something like you?"

My lip split. I tasted blood.

Ray Cole came shoving through the crowd with his face like a storm front.

"Have you got no respect left at all? For the law, for your elders, for anybody? I'm going to count to three, and then you're going to apologize to that woman."

Several young men grabbed hold of me. Hands crushed down on my shoulders and somebody kicked in the back of my knee, trying to put me on the floor.

I set my teeth and caught myself on both palms and wouldn't go down.

"Are you going to apologize or not?" Ray shouted.

I threw their hands off. "Why would I?"

"Because you've walked out on every duty a son and a husband has. That woman risked her life for your father. You don't own up to it right now, we'll take you down to the boathouse and let the co-op board deal with you."

Linda lunged at me, crying so hard she could barely get the words out.

"Just say you were wrong. Please, Jack!"

I shook her off.

"Not a chance. I'm getting this divorce."

Chapter 3

The crowd came apart.

"He's set on putting that old man in an early grave."

"Seventy years I've lived here. I've never seen a son this shameless."

Thomas's cane shook in his grip.

"If your mother could see you now, she'd come up out of her grave to curse you!"

Ray Cole slapped his thigh.

"A man like that has no business fishing out of our harbor."

He called across the room to Dale Ferris.

"Pull his offshore license. As of today Jack Sutton doesn't set foot on a boat out of this harbor."

Dale nodded right away. "I'll file it this afternoon. We don't need his kind here."

The next few days were about as bad as days get.

Ray read a statement over the co-op's radio channel every morning and every evening, and by the second day other people had started reading their own.

"Jack Sutton has walked out on his family and repaid the wife who saved his father with cruelty..."

"Every decent person in this harbor has an obligation to condemn behavior that poisons a community..."

Somebody nailed a copy of it to the harbor office door, and it stayed there.

An older woman spat at me on the road.

"Ungrateful trash."

It caught me on the cheek.

A group of boys hid behind a wall and threw stones. Most of them hit my back. One caught the back of my head hard enough to black out my vision for a second.

When I got home there was one word painted across my front door in red. MONSTER.

The windows were smashed in. Rotten vegetables and dead fish were scattered all over the yard.

A reporter came out from the county paper to interview Linda, the harbor's new hero.

He set her up on the dock with the boats behind her and asked her to walk him through it.

Linda cried beautifully for him.

"The wind was screaming and the waves were so high. There was only one life jacket. Jack's young and he's strong. His father's an old man. I knew if I didn't get to him, he was going to die."

"So you gave the life jacket to your father-in-law without hesitating."

"Yes. I wasn't thinking about myself at all. I just knew I had to save Dad."

The reporter turned and spotted me standing back from the crowd.

"Is that Jack Sutton?"

Ray Cole nodded and dropped his voice. "That's him. The ungrateful one."

The reporter came over with his pencil already moving.

"Mr. Sutton, is it true you intend to divorce the woman who saved your father's life?"

I met his eyes.

"Yes."

He frowned. "Are you jealous that your wife went for your father instead of you?"

I smiled at him.

"Of course I'm jealous. My father's got a daughter-in-law so devoted she'd trade her own husband's life for his. Who wouldn't envy a blessing like that?"

"What are you saying about me?" Linda's face went scarlet. Her whole body was shaking.

"You're spreading filth!" Frank came at me swinging, and it took three men to hold him back.

By the next morning the radio had new material.

"Jack Sutton has openly admitted he's jealous of his wife's courage..."

"That kind of small, selfish thinking has no place in this harbor..."

That evening my oldest friend, Ben Marsh, sat down beside me on the front steps and handed me a bottle.

"Give them what they want, brother. Apologize."

He sighed.

"A wife like that is hard to come by. You let her go, you'll regret it the rest of your life."

I looked at the man I'd learned to fish beside, who'd taken every scraped knee and every hiding right along with me.

"You think I'm wrong too?"

"I'm not trying to hurt you," he said. "But your dad's an old man. What was Linda supposed to do? You're taking it too personally."

I put my head down and laughed once. "You're right. I am taking it personally. I just can't stand my father."

Chapter 4

My refusal to see reason finally used up whatever patience the old men in this harbor had left.

Thomas called an open hearing outside the old Sutton boathouse and told everyone to be there.

The yard in front of it was packed shoulder to shoulder.

Ray Cole stood up on the loading platform with a sheet of paper in his hand.

"Jack Sutton. Do you admit what you've done?"

I stood in the middle of the crowd and said nothing.

"Your wife saved your father's life. Instead of thanking her, you filed for divorce.

"You're walking that old man straight into his grave."

Linda knelt down near the platform, wiping at her face.

"We've been married six years, Jack. Have you forgotten all of it?

"Have you forgotten our first winter? You came in off the water burning up with fever, and I sat by the stove all night making you tea and broth. I stayed awake until my eyes were red.

"Have you forgotten last year, when that line tore your hand open? I warmed the ointment between my palms before I put it on because I was afraid the cold would hurt you."

Her voice broke on every one of them. The older women around her were dabbing their eyes.

When they turned to look at me, the contempt had hardened into something closer to hate.

"That poor girl picked the wrong husband."

"Why doesn't lightning just take him?"

My father beat his fists against his chest and sobbed.

"This is my fault. I failed to teach my son how to be a human being.

"I wrecked my back earning the money for his house and his wedding.

"Now he's grown and he's decided his old father is dead weight."

The insults came at me from every direction.

"Rotten little bastard!"

"Ungrateful trash!"

"He's not even human!"

Thomas leveled his cane at me.

"Today you're going to stand in front of your father and your wife and apologize, and you're going to mean it."

Several young men rushed me before he'd finished the sentence. They locked their hands around my shoulders.

I turned my head and saw Ben among them.

The tired concern he'd shown me on my front steps was gone. All that was left was the blank certainty of a man doing justice.

He drew his leg back and kicked in the hollow behind my knee.

"Down!"

My leg buckled. I threw both hands out and caught myself before I hit the dirt.

Somebody kicked me again.

Thomas raised his cane.

"You won't do it, I'll teach you manners in your dead mother's place!"

I was inches off the ground.

With everything I had left, I tore free of them and shouted it out over the whole crowd.

"That man is not my father!"