Chapter 36
Kate stood in front of the church looking at the orange leaves falling on the lawn. The branches swayed slightly, and with it a cool air chill. She pulled her black sweater coat close and Ben wrapped his arms around her.
“We should go inside. I think they’re ready to start.”
Kate nodded and followed Ben into the church. The Congregational Church was full, fishermen and townspeople, inn guests who'd extended their stays, summer people who'd driven up from Boston. Pop had touched more lives than Kate realized.
She and Ben joined her siblings in the front pew. She wore her mother's pearl necklace and the black dress that she’d worn for Lillian's funeral. Two funerals in one year. Too much loss, too many secrets revealed, too many endings.
Behind them, the church was standing room only. Mrs. Porter and her book club. Charlie Brennan and the other fishermen. The Murphy family, and Margaret, an old friend of her father’s.
The minister spoke about tides and seasons, about Daniel as a young man who'd chosen love over an easier life, who'd built a family and a business with his own hands, who'd weathered storms both literal and metaphorical.
Tom gave the eulogy, his lawyer's composure cracking only once when he talked about Pop teaching them to bait hooks with patience, not force.
“He was a quiet man,” Tom said. “But his love was loud.
It was in every repaired shutter, every early morning, every lesson about reading the weather.
He didn't say much, but he showed up. Every day, he showed up. Even after our mother died, even after...” Tom paused, thinking of Lillian's confession about the sabotage, “even after dealing with things he kept private, things he never spoke of, he showed up for us.”
After the service, they buried him beside Elizabeth. The headstone was simple: “Daniel Perkins, 1966-2025, Husband, Father, Fisherman.”
The reception was at the inn. Marcy and Rosa had prepared food for a hundred, and it seemed like more came.
People shared stories the siblings had never heard.
Pop helping rebuild the harbor after a storm.
Pop teaching kids to fish for free. Pop quietly paying for groceries when families were struggling.
There were so many who attended the reception, people filled every room and even more spilled out onto the porch and lawn.
“Your father helped me buy my first boat,” an old fisherman told them. “I was twenty-two, had nothing, but he gave me a small loan. Said every man deserved a chance to work the water if that's what called to him.”
Kate tried to understand comments like that when she knew her father had little money.
“He never said much,” Mrs. Murphy added, “but after your mother passed, he'd check on the elderly folks during storms. Never announced it, just showed up with supplies.”
Margaret approached Kate near the end of the reception. She handed Kate a photograph of Pop when he was a teenager. “He loved your mother completely,” she said quietly. “Even when things were hard, even when her family...” She trailed off. “He chose her every day. That's rare.”
Kate smiled. “You knew my father?”
Margaret nodded. “A long time ago. I thought you’d want this picture.”
Kate looked at the photo. “Look at him, he’s so young and doesn’t have a care in the world.” She looked at Margaret. “Thank you for this.”
“You’re welcome,” Margaret said and then turned and walked away.
By evening, only family remained. The siblings sat in the kitchen, exhausted, surrounded by casserole dishes and sympathy cards. Ryan and Ben stayed for a while but then left when there wasn’t much more to say or do.
Kate sat at the kitchen table, her mother’s documents and bank passbook in front of her, and her father’s letter to her, Tom, James and Dani.
“The lawyer comes Monday,” Tom said. “For the will.”
“Is there anything to inherit?” James asked.
“The inn's mortgage-free. That's something. Some life insurance. His tools, the truck.”
Kate stood abruptly but then sat back down, not sure how to explain what she’d found in the attic. “I need to tell you all something. Last month, after the Hartwell-Chen wedding, I went upstairs to the attic. I wanted to look for Mom’s wedding dress.”
“Why would you do that?” Dani asked.
Kate shrugged. “I don’t know, I just felt like looking for it. That’s not the point. I opened that big trunk that had so much of her stuff. I don’t know what I was looking for, I think I just wanted to be close to her.”
Dani sat next to Kate and placed her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I’ve had moments like that, too.”
Kate smiled and continued, “At the bottom of the trunk was a bunch of school stuff of ours, report cards, handmade birthday cards we made in school, lots of drawings we did as kids. But then, in this large envelope, I found something else.”
As Tom and James joined them at the table, Kate pushed the envelope toward the middle of the table. Tom grabbed the papers and bank passbook, and read the letter aloud, their mother's words filling the room:
My dear Katherine (I know it will be Katherine),
I'm writing this the day I declined Woods Hole. You're just a flutter in my belly, barely real, but already you've changed everything. Your father doesn't know yet. I found out this morning…”
Tom's voice wavered as he read about their mother's abandoned dreams, her choice of love, the money deposited into the bank for her unborn child.
“A hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars,” James whispered, holding the bank passbook, “She saved that?”
“When they could barely pay the mortgage some months,” Tom added, stunned.
Dani cried. “She wanted you to have what she couldn't.”
Kate shook her head, “No. Mom deposited the thirty-thousand, Pop’s been adding to it for years. I think grandfather would have provided even more if he hadn’t died so suddenly. Pop deposited a few hundred dollars a month, but the deposits stopped a year ago.”
“When his illness got worse,” Dani answered.
Kate nodded. “I think so.” She held the other envelope in her hands and then looked around the room. “I think we should read Pop’s letter now, what do you all think?”
Everyone agreed.
Kate opened the envelope with trembling fingers, and read the letter aloud:
My dear children,
If you are reading this, it means my memory has taken me further than I wished to go, and I am no longer able to tell you the things I should have told you long ago.
I hope you will forgive me for writing instead of saying these words out loud.
I wanted them to come from the part of me that is still steady, still whole, still your father.
There is something you deserve to know. Something that shaped our family long before you were old enough to understand it, and something I have carried alone for many years. I never told your mother, and I never told any of you, because I believed it was my burden to hold so she wouldn’t have to.
I knew what your grandmother Lillian did to my business.
I knew she spoke to the captains and the marina men behind my back.
I knew she questioned my work, my skill, my reliability.
I knew she influenced banks and pushed people to take their boats elsewhere.
She was respected in this town, and her word carried weight.
It didn’t take long for the work to dry up, and I understood exactly why.
Elizabeth loved me. She believed in me. But she was tired, overwhelmed, and hurting in ways she never let anyone see. The pressure she felt came from trying to hold both her mother and me together, and that was a burden no one should have to carry.
Your grandmother’s interference wasn’t your mother’s choice. And it was never her fault.
I didn’t tell her what I knew because I wanted to protect her—from the truth, from the ugliness, from the final break it would have created between her and Lillian. She had already lost so much. She needed her mother, even if she didn’t always want to admit it. I couldn’t take that from her.
I thought I was doing the right thing, keeping the peace where I could, absorbing the blows so she didn’t feel them. Maybe that was a mistake. Or maybe it was the only way I knew how to love her.
There is something else you deserve to know.
Your grandfather, Elizabeth’s father, was a good man.
A kind man. And he believed in his daughter’s marriage more than anyone else in the family did.
When the two of us were very young, he gave us the money to buy Whaler’s Landing.
Quietly, without fanfare, and without Lillian’s knowledge.
He said he wanted Elizabeth to have something of her own, and he wanted me to have a chance to build the life I dreamed of with her.
He asked only one thing of me: take care of her. And I tried. With everything I had.
Your grandmother found out eventually. The anger she directed at him was something I had never seen before in a person.
Words were said that couldn’t be unsaid.
Their marriage never survived it, though he never regretted helping us.
He died a few years later, and I think one of his last comforts was knowing he’d helped his daughter and grandchildren have a place to call home.
I tell you all this not to burden you, but to free you.
You come from a long line of people who loved fiercely but didn’t always know how to show it. Some made mistakes so deep they echoed through generations. Some tried to fix those mistakes quietly, without recognition. Some carried regrets they never had a chance to speak aloud.
You, my children, do not have to carry any of it.
Don’t let bitterness be your inheritance.
Don’t let old wounds decide your future.
Don’t let the wrongs of the past become the map you use to build your lives.
Instead, love openly, give freely, help where you can, apologize when you should, and forgive, always forgive, even when forgiveness feels like the hardest thing in the world.
I was proud of you every day of your lives. I still am. Whatever you become, wherever you go, and whomever you love, you will carry the best of your mother and me with you. You are the proof that love was worth the cost.
I may forget many things as the years go on, but I will never forget that being your father was the greatest honor of my life.
With all my heart,
Pop
The room was silent except for crying. Four siblings absorbing their father's last coherent words, the revelation that he'd known about Lillian's sabotage all along.
“He knew,” Tom said, stunned. “About Lillian. He knew and never said a word.”
“To protect Mom,” Dani whispered.
“All those years of silence,” James said. “Carrying that alone. Lillian didn’t deserve his kindness.”
Kate looked at her siblings. “No, but Mom did. Mom saved for my education while we struggled. Pop knew about the sabotage and said nothing. They both carried these secrets thinking they were protecting us.”
“Or each other,” Tom said quietly. “Do you think Mom told Dad she’d been accepted to Woods Hole?”
Kate shrugged. “We’ll never know. If I had to guess, I bet Mom never told him she was accepted and sealed this envelope. He honored her wish to give the contents and the bank account to me.”
They sat with that for a moment, the weight of their parents' love, expressed in silence and secrets and sacrifice.
“What will you do?” Dani asked Kate. “With the money?”
“I’m not sure. I’d love to apply to the Master of Science in Marine Sciences program at UNE. If I apply now, I might get accepted before the end of the year.”
“Katie, that's what you must do. I think it’s wonderful!” Dani hugged her.
“Mom would be so proud,” Tom added.
“But it won't be enough,” Kate said. “The money. I have no idea how much the money will cover, but it doesn’t hurt to look into it.”
“Whatever it is, Katie, I'll cover the rest,” James said firmly.
“Katie, you saved us. You saved the inn. You held everything together. Let us hold you up for once,” Tom said.
Kate stood and pulled James into her arms. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. This is what Mom and Pop would want. We're together. We're okay. The inn will go on.”
“Red sky at night,” Kate whispered.
“Sailor's delight,” her siblings responded.