The Space Between
Chapter twenty-four
Margot was in the pavilion, rebuilding the vendor layout for the third time since the theft, when Evan walked in and told her she needed to cancel the fireworks at the gala.
“Cancel it?” She looked up from the tape lines on the floor. “We already lost the collection. The fireworks are the one thing left that closes this expo on something people will remember. I cancel that, and we robbed ourselves of the ending too.”
“The pier is sixty yards from the marina. The marina is where Cass was attacked yesterday.” He braced a hand against the doorframe. “You want two hundred people on a pier in the dark, three days after someone stole a hundred and seventy thousand dollars and put Cass in the hospital?”
“I want to do my job.”
“Your job doesn’t include putting people at risk.”
“My job is to run this expo. The fireworks happen unless Elaine says otherwise.” Margot stood and brushed tape dust from her knees. “I can’t cancel events because you have a bad feeling.”
“I walked the route last night.” His voice was level, controlled. “Breaker panel to display case to waterline to boat. Five minutes. I timed it. It works, Margot. Every second of it. And now he’s escalating.”
“I know he’s escalating.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
“Because the moment I start canceling events, this expo dies. And everything I’ve spent the last two weeks building dies with it.” Her voice was louder than she wanted. She could hear the edge in it, the panic underneath the professionalism. “This is all I have, Evan.”
His face closed off. “A bad feeling is what kept me alive in the Coast Guard. Ignoring one is how people drown.”
The pavilion went silent.
She had no answer for that. But she wasn’t going to be pushed. “We’ll increase security. Elaine wouldn’t take kindly to a cancellation this late.”
“I doubt she’d want to put people at risk.”
They stood on opposite sides of the empty display platform. Ten feet of bare floor between them.
She looked away. He had a legitimate concern. But to cancel the preview would do significant damage to her career. Besides, the threat was directed at her, not at the public, wasn’t it?
Turning her gaze back to him. “You don’t get to tell me how to do my job. I have spent two years putting my career back together after someone I trusted destroyed it. I am not going to let this expo fail because you’re afraid.”
The word hung in the air. Afraid. She saw it hit him. Saw his jaw tighten and his hands go still. She’d crossed a line. The instant the word left her mouth, she’d have given anything to pull it back.
“Evan, I didn’t mean…”
“Yeah.” He took a step back. “You did.”
He turned and walked out.
The pavilion held his absence the way a struck bell holds sound.
She stood alone among her tape lines...
On her knees, she pressed a curling piece of tape back to the floor, smoothing it flat with her thumb until it held. Then she did the next one. Then the one after that. Her hands wanted a task and she gave them one, the way she’d done the night David’s name came off the company door.
It didn’t work this time. The tape held fine. She was the thing that wouldn’t sit flat.
The layout remained half-fixed when she finally gave up on it. She straightened and went to find the one person at Harbor’s Hope who would tell her the truth whether she wanted it or not.
She found Jolene in the housekeeping office. “I said something terrible to Evan.”
Jolene didn’t look up from her whiteboard. “What did you say?”
“I called him afraid.”
Jolene’s marker stopped moving. She turned. “Of all the words you could have picked.”
“I know.” Margot’s voice was small. “He was right about the fireworks, and I didn’t want him to be right, because that would mean admitting I can’t control this.”
“You know what you need to do.”
“Apologize.”
“Apologize.” Jolene picked up her marker. “You’ll find him at the dock. He always goes to the dock.”
He was at the end of Dock Three, feet over the water, compass in his hand.
Margot walked the length of the dock. Her footsteps were loud on the planks, and she was aware of every step, aware that he could hear her coming and hadn’t turned, aware that the last words between them had been Yeah. You did. and the sound of his boots walking away.
She sat down beside him, leaving a foot of space between them. The harbor was golden in the late light. The boats rocked in their slips. The air smelled like salt and warm wood and the faintest trace of diesel from the charter fleet.
“I’m sorry.” No preamble. No explanation. Just the words.
He turned the compass in his fingers. She watched his hands and remembered the stairwell, the calloused palm, the steady grip. The way he’d let go the moment she was on her feet. The way she’d wished he hadn’t.
“You weren’t wrong about everything. The expo needs to keep running. Canceling creates panic.”
“But I was wrong to call you afraid. That’s not what you are.” She pulled her knees up. “You’re trying to stop something bad from happening again. I couldn’t hear it because I was too busy holding everything together.”
“That’s what you do. You hold things together. It’s what makes you good at your job.”
“It’s also what makes me impossible to work with.”
“You’re not impossible.” He looked at her for the first time since she’d sat down. “You’re difficult. There’s a difference.”
She almost laughed. Almost. The sound caught in her throat and came out as something closer to a breath.
“I overreacted too.” He sighed. “The fireworks, the pier, the crowd. It’s not just about this expo. It’s about the last time there was a crowd near the water at this resort.”
He didn’t say Lauren’s name. He didn’t have to.
“He’s not just a thief, Evan.” Margot looked at the water. “He planned this for months. He tested Cass to see what she knew, and when she got too close, he hurt her for it. And he’s still here, adjusting lights and making people laugh, and nobody knows except us.”
He looked at the compass. Then at her. The almost-smile was gone. His jaw had loosened, and the careful blankness he wore most days had gone with it. Whatever he kept behind his face, he wasn’t keeping it now.
“That’s why I pushed about the fireworks. About all of it. I’m not afraid of Caleb. I’m afraid of what happens if we don’t stop him and someone else gets hurt.” He paused. The compass turned in his fingers. “Someone specific.”
She heard what he wasn’t saying. “We make a good pair.” She chuckled. “I control too much. You carry too much.”
“Maybe that’s why this works.”
She looked at him. He was looking at the water, but the corner of his mouth had moved. The almost-smile. The one she’d started to need.
“Are we okay?” she asked.
“We’re okay.”
They sat on the dock until the sun touched the horizon and the chapel bell rang six times across the water. The space between them narrowed. Then vanished, her shoulder against his, warm and solid.
When they finally stood, his hand found hers. Not the stairwell grip. Not the handshake. Just his fingers lacing through hers, easy and unhurried. They stood like that for three heartbeats. The harbor turned from gold to rose. A pelican crossed the channel in a long, low glide.
Then he let go, and she let him, and they walked back toward the resort in the last of the light, neither of them saying a word.