Chapter 2 #2
“Still my uncle.” He shrugs. “Age doesn’t change that.”
It doesn’t, but the reminder of my place in this family—the uncle raised more like a brother, who never quite fit either role—sends a familiar ache through my chest. Henry was twenty-one when I was born, already married to Lana, already building his own life.
I became an uncle at two years old when Bodhi was born.
“Where’s Bodhi?” I ask, steering us back to the point.
“Office. Same as always.” Colter picks up the feed bucket again. “Want me to walk you over? Make sure Noodle doesn’t ambush you on the way?”
“I can handle a goose.”
“Yeah? I seem to remember him chasing you into the pond.”
“That was one time.”
“And it was hilarious.” He starts walking toward the main house, and I fall into step beside him.
Radar falls into step beside us. The farm smells like hay and animals and the green damp of spring growth.
Noodle has gone back to patrolling around his pond.
Bacon the pig roots near the vegetable garden, his stubby tail wagging.
Colter’s done good work here. Better than anyone expected when Henry handed him the reins after the old foreman retired—he’s always been the troublemaker of the family, the class clown, the one who couldn’t sit still.
But he’s found his footing here, and the farm shows it.
We pass the chicken coop, and a dozen hens scatter and cluck as Radar trots by. Colter whistles something cheerful under his breath, the kind of tune that makes you want to smile even when you’re determined not to. I keep my face neutral.
“Dad says you’ve been sleeping on the boat again,” Colter says, casual as anything.
“Your dad needs to mind his business.”
“Dad’s business is you.” Colter shrugs. “You’re his baby brother. He worries.”
“I’m fine.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Uh huh.” He doesn’t push it, which is one of the things I appreciate about Colter. For all his nosiness, he knows when to back off.
I hear his kid before I see her—that bright, piping voice that carries across fields like a bell.
“Great-Uncle Dean!” Hazel shrieks, and she comes tearing around the corner of the barn at full speed, pigtails flying, a smear of something green across her cheek. She launches herself at me, and I catch her on instinct, her small body colliding with mine like a warm, paint-stained missile.
“Hey, kid.” I hoist her up onto my hip. She smells like grass and sheep and the grape lollipops Colter bribes her with. “What’s on your face?”
“Art,” she says, like it’s obvious.
“Right.” I look at my brother, who follows at a more leisurely pace. “Art.”
Henry holds up his hands, which are also paint-stained. “I plead the fifth.”
Hazel pats my cheek with a sticky hand to get my attention. “Great-Uncle Dean, did you know geese don’t have teeth?”
“I did know that, actually.”
“But Noodle has teeth in his heart.” She says this with the absolute conviction of a five-year-old who has made up her mind about something. “That’s why he’s mean. His heart-teeth hurt.”
I blink at her. “His heart-teeth.”
“Uh-huh.” She nods solemnly. “Aunt Piper told me. She says sometimes people’s hearts have teeth too, and that’s why they’re mean sometimes. But it’s not their fault. The teeth just grow there, and they can’t help it.”
I look at Colter, who shrugs like “Don’t ask me; I’m just the dad.”
“Piper’s pretty smart,” I say carefully.
“She’s the smartest.” Hazel wriggles, and I set her down. She immediately grabs my hand and starts pulling me toward the sheep paddock around the back of the house. “Come on. I’ll show you Dot’s new sweater. It’s purple.”
“I actually need to—”
“Nope.” She tugs harder. “You have to see it first. It’s important.”
Colter’s laughing behind me. “She’s got you, Uncle Dean.”
“Don’t call me—”
“Great Uncle Dean!” Hazel corrects him. “Because he’s the greatest uncle!”
“Don’t let Uncle Knox hear you say that,” Colter calls after us. “You’ll hurt his feelings.”
“Uncle Knox is a good uncle,” she confides to me in a stage whisper. “But he’s not here like you are, so that makes you greater.”
Ask me, the kid’s logic is airtight.
And I’m glad nobody has ever corrected her assumption that I’m her great-uncle because I’m awesome and not because my brother is her grandfather.
I end up spending half an hour with Hazel, admiring Dot’s hand-knit purple sweater and listening to her explain why the sheep prefers purple to the blue one Mimi made her last month. I only manage to extract myself when Henry rescues me.
“Come on, kiddo.” He scoops Hazel up and settles her on his hip with the ease of a man who’s been doing it for decades. “Let Great-Uncle Dean go talk to Uncle Bodhi. He’s got grown-up stuff to do.”
“Is it about the lady?” Hazel asks.
I freeze mid-step.
Henry’s eyes cut to me, and I see the question there—the same one Colter had. The island’s already talking. Of course it is.
“What lady?” I ask, keeping my voice casual.
“The one who fell in the water.” Hazel tugs on Henry’s flannel collar. “Patty Sue told Mimi at the diner, and Mimi told Grandpa, and Grandpa told me.”
Patty Sue Okafor. I should’ve known. The Driftwood Diner is the island’s central nervous system, and Patty Sue runs the information exchange from behind her order pad like a five-star general.
“She didn’t fall in,” I say. “Her suitcase did.”
“I hope you saved it.”
I feel like I’ve been graded by a five-year-old and found slightly wanting. “I did.”
“Good.”
Henry sets her down. “Go find your dad, kiddo. I heard him say something about lollipops earlier.”
She squeals, and then she’s gone in a streak of pigtails and bare feet.
Henry watches her go, then turns to me. The amusement fades from his face. He scratches the back of his neck, a gesture he’s had since we were kids. “It’s good to see you, Dean. Come back for dinner?”
“Can’t. Got tours all evening.”
Something that looks uncomfortably like disappointment flickers across his face. “Next time, then.”
I nod, and he turns to follow Hazel. The ache in my chest sharpens. I should make time. I know I should. But the water calls, and the water doesn’t ask questions or want things from me.
I head toward the office, a converted shed behind the main house that Bodhi claimed years ago when he took over running the family businesses.
The path is worn smooth from years of foot traffic—Bodhi’s mostly, though Colter and Henry use it too.
The shed used to be where Dad stored his tools and fishing gear.
Now it’s got a desk, a laptop, filing cabinets, and a whiteboard covered in Bodhi’s neat handwriting.
The door’s propped open with a brick. I knock on the frame and step inside.
Bodhi’s at his desk, head bent over a spreadsheet, dark wavy hair falling across his forehead. He’s got that look—jaw tight, shoulders up around his ears, the particular stillness that means he’s been sitting in one position for too long. He doesn’t look up when I enter.
“Door’s open,” he says.
“It is. I’m already in it.”
He glances up, and something in his face shifts. The tension loosens a fraction. “Dean. Didn’t expect you today.”
“Need to talk.”
He leans back in his chair, and it creaks under him. He’s lost weight since the last time I really looked at him—which was probably too long ago. His button-down hangs looser across his shoulders, and there are shadows under those Haven blue-gray eyes that I don’t like.
“About?”
I drop into the chair across from his desk. It’s the only other chair in the room, a folding one with a cracked vinyl seat that I’ve been telling him to replace for two years. “Reporter showed up this morning. Scarlett Crawford. The one from that viral coffee meltdown.”
Bodhi’s eyebrows go up. He sets down his pen and leans forward, elbows on the desk. “Malcolm’s reporter?”
“Seems so. She booked a tour with me for this afternoon.” I rub the back of my neck, feeling the familiar tension building there. “She’s staying at the Tidewater Resort.”
“Damn it.” Bodhi stands and paces to the small window that looks out over the lower pasture. His shoulders are up again, that defensive posture he gets when he’s thinking through a problem. “How’d she find you?”
“Abel booked her. Didn’t know who she was at first.” I pause. “She nearly fell into the harbor. I caught her.”
Bodhi turns, studying me with those sharp Haven eyes that miss nothing. “You caught her.”
“Her suitcase went in. She was about to follow it.” I keep my voice flat. “I pulled her back. That’s it.”
“That’s it,” he repeats, like he doesn’t believe me.
“That’s it.” I hold his gaze until he looks away first.
He sighs and drops back into his chair. “Malcolm’s been trying to get a reporter out here for years. Ever since those treasure hunt rumors started circulating.” He picks up a stress ball from his desk and squeezes it. “What’s her angle?”