Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Scarlett
That is the whole of my difficulty.
It isn’t. I know it isn’t. I have a rental car and a passport and eight million people waiting on a post, and Evangeline Merrick had a wedding date and a father with a settlement in his safe. The comparison is insulting to her.
I trace my finger along the coordinates I’ve penciled onto the hotel stationery. The east side of No Name Island. A fissure. A chamber.
Three days since Dean told me I don’t belong here.
Three days of avoiding the marina.
I fold the stationery and tuck it into the journal.
My phone sits silent on the nightstand. No calls from Malcolm.
No texts from the production company. Just the analytics dashboard he sent, the graph spiking, the comment section filling with plans and questions and the bright, borrowed enthusiasm of people who’ve decided someone else’s history is their adventure.
I should call him. Tell him the north shore is a dead end. Tell him the real story is somewhere else.
I don’t.
Instead, I pack the journal into my bag, zip my jacket, and walk out to the rental car parked behind the Tidewater.
The long way to the farm takes me past the harbor.
I don’t look at the marina. I keep my eyes on the road and my hands at ten and two and I tell myself this is about the story, not about the man who runs the boats, not about the kiss on the porch or the argument on the dock or the way his voice went raw when he said I can’t protect everyone.
Bodhi Haven owns No Name Island. Not Dean. The land records are clear---the north shore parcels belong to Haven Holdings, and the smaller offshore islands are included. Gull Shit Rock is Bodhi’s to permit or deny. Dean runs the boats that go there, but the island itself answers to his nephew.
If I want to search that fissure, I need Bodhi’s permission.
Not Dean’s.
The farm appears at the end of the gravel drive, red barn and white house unchanged, fields rolling down to water.
No demon goose in sight. No Noodle charging the tires with wings spread and malice in his heart.
The place is quiet. Midmorning on a weekday, and the Haven machine is running somewhere out of sight---Shea at the resort, Piper at the bookstore, Henry and Bodhi wherever men like them go to worry about permits and docking rights and the arithmetic of keeping a family afloat.
I park beside the barn and sit for a minute with the engine off. The last time I was here, Dean kissed me on the porch and then told me it was a mistake, and I ate two pieces of Wren’s pie and pretended not to notice the way Mimi looked at us when we came back inside.
Now I’m back, and he’s nowhere, and the air through the open window smells like hay and animals and something cooking that makes my stomach clench with a hunger I didn’t know I had.
I get out. Grab my bag. Close the door quietly, like someone might hear.
“Hey! You came back!”
Colter Haven jogs around the corner of the barn with a bucket in one hand and a grin that takes up half his face. No pretense. No caution. Just genuine, unfiltered delight at the sight of me, like my showing up unannounced at his family’s farm is the best thing that’s happened all week.
“Hi.” I smooth my jacket. “I’m sorry to drop in without---”
“Don’t be sorry. Be hungry. Shea left a pan of something in the oven that I’m pretty sure is still edible.
” He sets the bucket down and wipes his hands on his jeans.
“You just missed the morning chaos. Hazel’s at school.
Dad’s at the south dock arguing with the county about something I’m pretending not to understand.
Bodhi’s in his office doing CEO things and looking like he hates every minute of it.
” He squints at me. “You look like you’ve been reading something interesting. ”
I blink. “How can you tell?”
“The bags under your eyes. The way you’re holding that bag like it’s got something alive in it.
And also Piper texted the family chat that you’ve been camped at Brine and Bean for three days with a really old book and a notebook you won’t let anyone see.
” He shrugs. “We have a group chat. It’s mostly memes and complaints about Bodhi’s meeting reminders, but sometimes there’s actual information. ”
Of course they have a group chat. Of course Piper told them. Of course Colter knows exactly why I’m here and has decided to be nice about it anyway.
“It’s Evangeline’s journal,” I say. “The woman who started the feud. She wrote about meeting Thomas Haven on No Name Island. There’s a cave. Or a fissure. She called it a chamber.”
Colter’s grin doesn’t fade. It sharpens. “No shit?”
“I was hoping to talk to Bodhi about it.”
“Yeah, you were.” He picks up the bucket and jerks his chin toward the barn. “He’s on a call till eleven, so you’ve got forty minutes to kill and I’ve got sheep to feed. Come on.”
“I can wait in the car.”
“You could.” He’s already walking. “Nobody’s ever done it, but you could.”
I follow him because following Colter Haven is what you do. He moves through the world like water moves downhill---no hesitation, no calculation, just forward momentum and the certainty that whatever’s at the bottom is worth the trip.
The barn is bigger inside than it looks.
Warm, hay-scented, shafts of light cutting through high windows onto a floor swept clean.
A radio plays quietly from somewhere---classic rock, turned low.
Colter leads me down a center aisle past stalls and tools and the organized chaos of a place where useful things live within reach.
“Most of the livestock is out pasture this time of year. Got a few boarders in the back---neighbor’s horse, couple of goats that belong to Hazel’s friend’s family.
The sheep are out except for Dot, who follows people around like a furry therapist and has opinions about pacing.
” He sets the bucket on a hook. “Dot! Customer!”
Something shuffles in the back corner. A sheep ambles into the light. Not large, not small, just a sheep---wool the color of dirty snow, dark eyes, a face that expresses nothing and everything at once. She stops three feet from me and stands there, perfectly still, and watches.
“Dot,” Colter says. “This is Scarlett. She’s having A Day. Be nice.”
Dot doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Just stands there with the patient immobility of something that has never hurried in its life and doesn’t plan to start now.
I crouch. Dot allows this. Her wool is coarse under my fingers, warm from the barn air, and she smells like hay and animal and something earthy I can’t name.
I scratch behind her ear the way I would a dog, and she leans into it, just barely, the way a boulder might consent to being touched if it were feeling generous.
“She’s our emotional support livestock,” Colter says.
“Showed up one day, no tags, no owner, just walked into the barn like she’d been here forever.
Dad says it was Lana. Mom always wanted sheep.
Dot’s her way of checking in.” He shrugs.
“Could be true. Could be I’m making it up to impress you.
Hard to say with Havens. We’re all a little nuts about the people we’ve lost.”
My chest loosens. Just a fraction. A knot giving because somebody stopped pulling.
“Your mom would have liked you,” Colter says. He’s filling a water trough, not looking at me. “She had a thing for strays. Human ones especially. Mimi says that’s why she married Dad. He was the biggest stray on the island, and she couldn’t help herself.”
“Your dad doesn’t strike me as a stray.”
“Wasn’t always a Haven. Changed his name when he married Mom.
Kinsella before that. Dock family. Hard workers, not much else.
Dad was different. Mom saw it. Married him anyway, which pissed off her mother so thoroughly that Alexandria didn’t speak to her for two years.
” He grins. “Worth it, though. They were stupid about each other. The kind of stupid that makes everyone else uncomfortable because it’s so obvious they’d rather be nowhere else. ”
I think of Dean. The only Kinsella left at the dinner table. The one who didn’t get the choice.
“Dean’s like that,” Colter says, like he’s reading my mind.
“The stubborn kind. Holds onto things until his hands bleed, then pretends the blood isn’t his.
” He sets the bucket down. “He’s been worse since you showed up.
Grumpier. More present, which is its own kind of alarming.
Usually he’s on the boat or on the dock or somewhere we can’t find him.
Last three days he’s been everywhere. Fixing things that aren’t broken.
Checking weather reports every ten minutes.
Captain’s picked up seven new phrases, all of them variations on fuck this. ”
I stare at the floor. The barn dust is fine and golden in the light.
“He didn’t mean it,” Colter says. “Whatever he said. He says things he doesn’t mean when he’s scared, and he’s been scared since the day you fell in the harbor.”
“Your uncle is many things, Colter. Scared isn’t one of them.”
“Dean?” Colter laughs. The sound bounces off the barn walls.
“Dean’s the most terrified person I know.
He’s just better at hiding it than most. Coast Guard’ll do that to you.
Teaches you to look calm while everything’s coming apart.
” He sobers. “Something happened out there. Nobody knows what. He came home different. Won’t talk about it.
Won’t let anyone help. Carries it around like it’s his to carry alone, and the weight of it is killing him by inches, and the worst part is he thinks he deserves it. ”
The barn goes quiet. Dot shifts her weight. The radio plays something with too much guitar.
“I shouldn’t have told you that.” Colter scratches the back of his neck. “Forget I said it. Family habit. We overshare. Drives Bodhi insane.”
“It’s okay.” My throat is tight. “I already knew most of it. Mimi talks.”