Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
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I pulled up to the school just as the last bell rang, parking in the visitor’s lot alongside other waiting parents. Keeley’s tail thumped rhythmically against the backseat as kids began streaming out of the building in noisy clusters. Peyton emerged with her backpack slung over one shoulder, her long legs eating up the ground as she made her way to my Jeep. Even from here, I could see the tension in her shoulders.
“Hey.” She slid into the passenger seat, immediately reaching back to scratch Keeley’s ears. The dog’s happy whine filled the car as she pressed into Peyton’s touch.
“How was school?” I tried to keep my tone casual, still learning how to navigate these regular conversations with a teenager.
“Fine.” The response came with a restless fidget that I recognized all too well from my own school days—the constant shifting, the way her knee bounced against the dashboard.
“You look like you’re about to crawl out of your skin.” I watched her from the corner of my eye as I pulled away from the curb.
“Just tired of being inside all day.” She pressed her forehead against the window, her breath fogging the glass. “The walls start closing in after a while, you know?”
I made a quick decision, turning toward the beach access road instead of home. “How about we take Keeley for a walk? Get some fresh air before heading to the Brewhouse for a snack?”
Her whole face lit up, tension melting away. “Really?” The way she perked up reminded me of a wilted flower finally getting water.
“Really.” Movement and food. It always worked for me. Sometimes the simplest solutions were the best ones.
Ten minutes later, we were strolling along the shoreline at Osprey Beach, Keeley running ahead to chase seagulls. The salty breeze whipped our hair around, and the late afternoon sun painted everything in warm gold, and the temperatures felt more like March than early February. The beach was nearly empty this time of day, just the way I liked it.
“Thanks for this. I needed it.” Her voice was soft, almost lost in the sound of breaking waves.
“I remember what it was like, being trapped inside all day.” I watched her skip a shell across the incoming waves with perfect form. Just like Ford used to do. The memory flashed through my mind like a sandpiper darting in and out of the waves. “Your dad taught me how to do that.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
“Yeah?” She searched for another suitable shell, her movements precise and deliberate, just like his. “What else did he teach you?” There was a hunger in her voice that made my heart ache.
“How to fish. How to body surf.” I smiled at the memories, remembering long summer days when the air was thick with humidity and possibility. “How to hot wire a car, though we never actually did it. Your dad was always better at the theory than the practice when it came to troublemaking.”
She laughed, and it was so much like Ford’s laugh. “Did you teach him anything?”
“How to make the perfect s’more. How to lie convincingly to his moms.” I grinned, thinking of all those nights we’d spent around beach bonfires. “How to sneak out without getting caught. Though honestly, I think Mama Flo and Mimi just pretended not to notice half the time.”
“Sounds like you were trouble together.”
“The worst.” But the best kind of trouble. The kind that had made growing up on this island magical.
I leaned over to bump Peyton’s shoulder with mine, noting how she didn’t flinch away. “How’s it going with you two?”
“It’s weird.” Peyton kicked at the sand, sending a spray of tiny grains into the air. “He’s trying so hard. Like, sometimes I catch him just staring at me like he can’t believe I exist. Yesterday, he spent twenty minutes telling me about his high school track medals, then got all flustered when he realized I might not care about that stuff.”
“That’s probably exactly what he’s thinking. Ford’s always been the type to overthink everything.”
“He asks about Mom a lot.” Her voice went quiet, almost lost in the sound of the waves. “I get why, but…”
“But it hurts to talk about her.”
She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself like she was trying to hold everything in. “And I feel guilty because I can see it upsets him that he didn’t know about me. That Mom never told him. Sometimes he gets this look on his face, like he’s trying to do math in his head, probably figuring out where he was when different things happened.”
“That’s not on you, kiddo. None of it is.”
“I know. He says that, too.” She bent to pick up another shell, turning it over in her hands and running her fingers along its ridged surface. “He’s different than I expected. Better, maybe. I thought he’d be… I don’t know. More of a jerk about the whole thing.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. From Mom’s letters, I thought he’d be… I don’t know. More like a kid? But he’s so responsible . Always checking if I’ve done my homework, making sure I eat breakfast.” Her nose wrinkled. “He tried to give me a curfew. And he’s always asking where I’m going and who I’ll be with, like some kind of helicopter parent.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Welcome to having a parent who gives a damn. Trust me, it’s better than the alternative.”
“Yeah.” She tossed the shell into the waves, watching it disappear beneath the foam. “That’s new. Like, really new.”
The raw honesty in her voice made my heart ache for this kid who’d clearly been taking care of herself for way too long. “Your mom didn’t?”
“She did her best. But she worked a lot. When she was there, she was really present, you know? But I was on my own a lot of the time.” Peyton shrugged, her shoulders hunching slightly, as if trying to make herself smaller. “It’s just different with Ford. He’s always there. Wanting to know things. Trying to figure out what I like to eat and what shows I watch and stuff. Yesterday he actually sat through three episodes of this stupid reality show I like, just because I was watching it.”
“That bothers you?”
“No. Maybe? I don’t know.” She kicked at the sand again, sending a spray of it toward the water. “It’s just a lot sometimes. But I… kind of like it too? Like, sometimes I want to tell him to back off, but then when he’s not around, I sort of miss it. Miss him. Is that weird?”
“Not even a little bit.”
We lapsed into silence for a bit. I scooped up a piece of driftwood and hurled it for Keeley. As she streaked off after it, Peyton asked, “Did you and my dad ever date?”
The question shouldn’t have surprised me, but it still made my stomach twist into a knot. “No. We were only ever friends.” Except for one night when I’d believed we’d become more. But I was definitely not thinking about that. I’d spent ten years not thinking about that.
“Sarah said you hated him.”
I stopped at that, my hand freezing mid-throw with another piece of driftwood. “What?”
“It was something else I heard at school. That you hadn’t talked to him in like a decade.” She scuffed her toe in the sand, not quite meeting my eyes. “People talk a lot about everybody around here.”
Why the hell was that getting talked about by middle schoolers? Small town gossip was one thing, but this felt way too personal to be making the rounds at the local junior high.
I didn’t want to lie to this kid. My conscience wouldn’t allow it, even if it might’ve been easier. “I don’t hate your dad.” That had always been true, even during the darkest moments when I’d wanted to.
“Then why the not talking to him?”
Keeley returned with the stick, dropping it at my feet and looking between us with those soulful eyes.
I had to consider how to answer the question in a way that wasn’t going to damage the relationship Peyton was building with her father. The last thing she needed was more reasons to doubt him. “He did something that hurt me deeply.”
She frowned, her brows drawing together in that way that made her look so much like Ford it made my chest ache. “On purpose?”
Oh, I wanted to believe it had been, in those dark nights when anger and hurt had been my only companions. But I knew better, had always known better, deep down. “No, not on purpose. But it hurt me all the same.”
“Did he apologize?”
Such a simple and obvious question from such a young soul. I’d lost count of the number of times Ford had tried over the years—in person, in texts, in emails that I’d never opened. I could have thrown him under the bus, listed every perceived slight and mistake, but that didn’t seem fair. Not now, not to his daughter. “I’ve never really let him.”
Peyton absorbed that, her eyes taking on that analytical gleam I was starting to recognize. “I mean, it sucks that he hurt you. But he was, what, like twenty? Boys are dumb for a long time . Testosterone poisoning.”
I couldn’t stop the snort laugh that burst out of me at her matter-of-fact assessment. “You’re not wrong.”
“I’m just saying, maybe he regrets being dumb. It doesn’t change that he hurt you, but it seems like that would matter. To me it would, anyway. Like, if someone I cared about was really sorry and kept trying to make it right.”
Her simple interpretation left me speechless. I’d just been schooled by a thirteen-year-old, who somehow managed to cut straight through all my carefully constructed defenses with the ruthless logic of youth.
Did it matter? I didn’t know, but I had to acknowledge—to myself anyway—that I’d missed Ford. Having him back in my life, even in this weird way, was making me realize exactly how much. The timber of his laugh, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, how he still ducked his head when he was uncomfortable. All of those tiny details were at once a comfort and an attack.
I didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t want to examine too closely why my ribcage seemed to shrink every time I thought about it.
“C’mon.” I shook off the uncomfortable train of thought. “Let’s head back to the Jeep. You need anything before we head to the Brewhouse? Water? Snacks? A bathroom break?”
“Maybe a trip to the library, if there’s time? We got assigned a paper on piracy in the region, so I figure’d that’s the best place to start.”
“Not a bad option, but actually you probably want the island museum. Monty’s husband, Peter, volunteers there pretty often, and I know they’ve got a lot of exhibits on local pirate stories.”
“Oh, that sounds great.”
The island museum was quiet this time of day, the late afternoon sun slanting through the windows. Peter looked up from the desk as we walked in, his face brightening.
“Bree! What brings you by?”
“Hey Peter. This is Peyton. She’s doing a paper on local piracy.”
His eyes lit up. “Ford’s daughter? Monty mentioned you’d just moved to town.” He came around the desk to shake her hand. “Welcome. You’ve come to the right place. We’ve got quite the collection of artifacts and documents from the colonial period.”
I wandered over to the gift shop area while Peter led Peyton toward the exhibits, pointing out specific displays that might help with her research. The rack of maps caught my eye—reproductions of historical charts marked with shipwrecks and supposed treasure locations.
“These are new.” I pulled one down to examine it. The artwork was actually pretty impressive, with detailed illustrations of ships and sea creatures. “Way better than the cheesy ones they used to sell. See, look, the paper’s even artificially aged.”
“Oh, that’s a new program we’re trying,” Peter explained. “A bunch of local artists made their own renditions of local treasure maps. Aren’t they cool?”
Peyton joined me, peering at the map in my hand. “Are any of these real?”
“The shipwrecks? Most of them. The treasure… That’s more complicated.” I handed her the map. “But if you want the real stories behind them, Pop knows them all. He’s covering at the Brewhouse today. He loves telling the tales of Blackbeard and the other pirates who used to hide out in these waters.”
“Really? Like, actual historical stories or just tourist stuff?”
This kid wasn’t interested in being snowed. Good for her.
“Both. But he knows which is which. He’s lived here his whole life, studied all the history. Just maybe don’t get him started unless you’ve got some time to spare. He can talk about this stuff for hours.”
“That would actually be perfect for my paper.”
“Then let’s head over there. I need to check on things, anyway.” Noting the way she still stared at the map, I made a snap decision. “Want it?”
She started to put it back. “No, that’s okay.”
I snatched it back. “Every Hatterwick resident should get her own treasure map. It’s a rite of passage.”
Peter nodded with a faux serious expression. “She speaks the truth.”
“Do you like this one? Or would you rather have one of the others?”
Peyton seriously considered all the selections before making her choice. I hid my smile as I paid for the map, and we headed out to the parking lot. My skin prickled as I reached for the driver’s side door, the hair on the back of my neck standing at attention. I felt weirdly exposed out here in the open. As if someone was watching us from behind one of the scraggly live oaks, or maybe from a parked car. Paranoid, I did a slow sweep of the area but saw no one suspicious lurking in the shadows of the museum’s side garden or near the dumpsters.
“Something wrong?” Peyton’s question snapped me back to the present.
It was just a case of the heebie jeebies because David Galef's killer hadn’t been caught. The whole island was still on edge about it. “Nah. I’m fine. I think I’m just hungry.” The excuse was weak, but it was better than admitting I was jumping at shadows.
“Me, too! Can we have fries for a snack?” Her face lit up at the prospect of food, reminding me that teenagers were basically bottomless pits.
“We can have anything you like.” I forced myself to relax, focusing on her enthusiasm rather than my paranoia.
“Sweet!”