Chapter 15 #2
“Mimi talks because Dean doesn’t. Somebody has to.” He picks up the bucket again. “Come on. I’ll show you the rest of the place before I take you to see the CEO. Fair warning: he’s in a mood. Dock permits got denied again. Malcolm’s playing hardball.”
We walk the property. Colter points out the vegetable garden Henry tends, the greenhouse where Shea grows herbs for the resort kitchen, the treehouse Bodhi built when he was sixteen that’s now Hazel’s domain.
He talks about his siblings the way people talk about weather---as facts, as forces, as things that simply are.
Bodhi, carrying the weight. Shea, holding the center.
Piper, building her quiet kingdom of books.
Wren, figuring it out one mistake at a time.
Zade, gone so long he’s half ghost. Knox, fighting fires somewhere in Montana and calling when he can.
It’s the most anyone has ever told me about themselves without being asked, and Colter does it like he’s describing the furniture.
We’re crossing the yard toward the shed when a massive shape detaches itself from the porch shadows and lumbers toward us. A Newfoundland mix, black as oil. She knows exactly how big she is and does not care whether I’m ready for it.
“Babuska.” Colter crouches. The dog walks into his chest and leans, hard, until Colter braces himself against her weight.
“Family therapy dog. Unofficial. She showed up the same week Dot did. Coincidence, probably. Or Mom’s running a relocation service for displaced animals from beyond the grave. Hard to say.”
Babuska turns her enormous head and looks at me. Her eyes are dark and calm and older than they have any right to be. She doesn’t bark. Doesn’t wag. Just looks, the way Dot looked, like she’s taking inventory.
“Hey,” I say.
Babuska walks over and presses her head against my thigh. Just stands there, leaning, her weight warm and solid and impossible to ignore. I scratch behind her ears and she sighs, a sound that comes from somewhere deeper than a dog’s lungs should reach.
“She does that,” Colter says. “Finds the person who needs holding up and holds. Doesn’t ask permission. Doesn’t take no for an answer. Hazel calls her the leaning tower of fluff.”
I stand there with a hundred-pound dog leaning against my leg and Evangeline’s journal in my bag and the certain knowledge that I am about to walk into a conversation that will undo whatever peace this barn has given me.
Bodhi’s office is in the shed behind the main house.
Not a shed, really---a converted outbuilding, clapboard and tin roof, windows that actually open.
Inside, it’s all function: desk, filing cabinets, a whiteboard covered in numbers and dates, a coffee mug that says WORLD’S OKAYEST UNCLE in fading letters.
Bodhi sits behind the desk with his phone to his ear and his free hand massaging his temple. He sees us through the window and his expression does not change, but his shoulders go tight. Rope taking on weight.
He hangs up. Sets the phone down. Looks at Colter, then at me.
“You brought her here.”
Not a question. A statement of fact, delivered with the flat disappointment of a man who has run out of surprises and isn’t happy about the shortage.
“Scarlett’s got something,” Colter says. “About No Name. Evangeline’s journal. I thought you’d want to hear it.”
“I thought I made it clear that our family business stays within the family.” Bodhi doesn’t raise his voice.
Doesn’t need to. The room is small enough that his quiet fills it completely.
“Especially when that business involves land owned by Haven Holdings and a feud that has very real financial consequences for everyone at this table.”
Colter holds up both hands. “She found a cave, Bodhi. On Gull Shit Rock. From Evangeline’s actual diary. I’m not the enemy here.”
“You’re not helping, either.” Bodhi turns to me. “What do you want, Ms. Crawford?”
Ms. Crawford. Three days ago I was Scarlett at his dinner table. Now I’m Malcolm’s reporter again, and the distance between those names is exactly the width of the dock where Dean told me I don’t belong.
“I need permission to search No Name Island,” I say. “The east side. There’s a fissure in the rock that Evangeline describes in her journal. She met Thomas there. She wrote about it six months before she disappeared, and it’s the only place in the whole journal she sounds happy.”
Bodhi leans back in his chair. The springs creak. “And you think there’s treasure in this fissure.”
“I think there might be evidence. Something that proves what really happened. Malcolm’s archive is curated.
He left out everything that complicated his version.
No Name isn’t on any of his maps. It’s been edited out completely.
” I pull the journal from my bag. “Evangeline wrote about it. In detail. Coordinates, descriptions, the weather. She wasn’t making it up. ”
“And you want to go dig around on private property based on the diary of a woman who died a hundred and thirty years ago.”
“I want to look. Before Malcolm does. Or before someone else does.” I set the journal on his desk. “Your uncle won’t take me. I asked. He said no. But the island belongs to you, not him. You have the authority.”
Bodhi’s eyebrows move, barely. Either he’s surprised I know the difference or he’s annoyed I said it out loud.
“Dean said no.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question is simple. The answer is not.
“He doesn’t trust me,” I say. “He thinks I’ll turn this place into content and leave. He’s not wrong to worry about it. I’ve done it before. It’s what I’m good at.” I meet his eyes. “But I’m not working for Malcolm anymore. Not the way he thinks I am. Not after what I heard on Main Street.”
Bodhi goes very still. “What did you hear on Main Street?”
“Malcolm wants to use your dock permits as content. Your family’s financial troubles. He framed it as David and Goliath. The struggling Havens versus the thriving Merricks.” The words taste bad. “He said it was gold. Exclusive access to vulnerability. I told him I wouldn’t do it.”
The shed is quiet. Outside, a crow calls. Somewhere past the trees, the water moves against the shore.
“You told Malcolm Merrick no.” Bodhi says it like he’s checking the math.
“Yes.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Gus Pemberton.”
Bodhi looks at me for a second longer than the question needed. “Gus Pemberton gave you a Merrick family document.”
“He said he’d had it forty years and forgot what was in it.”