Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Scarlett
I walk into the Driftwood at ten in the morning with a notebook, a pen, and a plan to be invisible, and Patty Sue Okafor demolishes all three before I’ve found a seat.
“There she is. The famous one.” She’s already pouring coffee into a mug that wasn’t on the counter a second ago, and the smile on her face says she’s been waiting for me. “Cream, no sugar, right? Dean’s order.”
“Coffee’s fine. Thanks.” I didn’t tell her my order, but I’m not surprised she knows. This island has about as much privacy as a goldfish bowl.
“First time in the Driftwood, hon?”
I’ve been here four days. Four days, and everyone has already assigned me a camp—the Merricks’ reporter, the one Dean fished out of the harbor, the one Mimi invited to dinner. But I nod and say, “First time.”
“Sit anywhere you like. The booth in the back corner’s the warmest.”
It’s also the farthest from the door, which means if I want to leave, I’ll have to walk past every single person in the diner, and every single person in the diner will stop talking to watch me do it.
I pick a different booth. Middle of the room. I can see the door.
Patty Sue watches me sit and doesn’t argue. She sets the coffee down and leans in. “The land transfer you’re asking about. 1895, right?”
My stomach drops. I haven’t asked a soul about it yet. Not on record. Not out loud.
“I read Malcolm’s proposal.” She shrugs. “He submitted it to the zoning board last month. Public record. You’re welcome.”
She walks away before I can say thank you, and I sit there with my mouth open and my coffee steaming and the unsettling knowledge that Port Haven has been reading my mail before I’ve sent it.
My phone buzzes. Malcolm.
Checking in. Any progress on the north shore piece? The historical society has a complete set of maps if you need them.
I set the phone face-down and don’t answer.
I open my notebook to a fresh page. Port Haven, Day 4. The Driftwood. 10:17 AM.
The bell above the door jingles, and Mimi Haven walks in like a windstorm looking for something to knock over.
Her dark curls are pulled into a messy bun with a streak of purple running through the left side. Same leather jacket from the farm, same combat boots, and she has her miniature schnauzer tucked under one arm like a football. The dog’s ears perk when he spots me.
“Well, fuck me sideways,” Mimi says, loud enough that the family by the door turns to stare.
So that’s where Captain picked up the phrase.
“Look who it is. Patty Sue, move her.”
“I’m fine here—”
“Nobody’s fine in the middle of the room.” Mimi points at my booth. “You’re a sitting duck. Back corner. Now.”
The schnauzer barks once, seconding the motion.
Patty Sue appears with a fresh pot. “She’s right, hon. Back corner’s the interview spot. That’s where Donna sits for her morning coffee. That’s where I put new arrivals who need watching.”
“I don’t need watching.”
“You’re Malcolm Merrick’s reporter in a Haven-owned diner.
You need watching.” Mimi slides into the booth across from me without waiting for an invitation.
The schnauzer settles on the bench beside her, paws on the table, and stares at my toast with naked longing.
“This is Sprocket. He’s a chaos gremlin. Ignore him.”
“Ignore who, you or the dog?”
She grins. “Both, ideally. But since you’re here, and I’m here, and this coffee’s not going to drink itself, let’s talk about why you’re not in Malcolm’s fancy archive digging through his version of history.”
I set my pen down. “How do you know I’m not?”
“Because you’re here.” She taps the table. “Smart reporters talk to people. Dumb ones talk to paper. You’re smart. I clocked that at dinner.”
The mention of dinner sends heat into my cheeks, and I pick up my pen again to cover for it. “I came to ask about the 1895 land transfer. Malcolm says the Havens bought the north shore that year, right after Evangeline Merrick died.”
“Honey.” Mimi leans forward. “You can ask about the land transfer in a minute. First, you’re going to tell me why your lips were swollen when you and Dean came back inside after dinner.”
Heat climbs my neck so fast I can feel it in my ears.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit.” She snaps her fingers at Patty Sue, who materializes with two fresh mugs without being asked. “The farmhouse walls are thin. The porch is not soundproof. And Colter has the ears of a fucking bat.” She pours cream into her coffee and stirs. “So. Spill.”
I look at my notebook. I look at Mimi. I look at Sprocket, who has given up on my toast and is now trying to lick the salt shaker.
“He kissed me. Then he said it was a mistake.”
Mimi sets her spoon down. “I told him he’s an idiot.”
“But he’s right. It was a mistake.”
“Honey.” She reaches across the table and pats my hand.
Her rings are cold against my skin. “Dean Kinsella doesn’t kiss women.
Full stop. He turns them down. He walks away.
He sleeps on his boat and talks to his dad’s parrot and that comatose dog of his and pretends that’s enough.
For him to put his hands on you and mean it—” She stops.
“He meant it. I guarantee you he meant it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because somebody needs to, and God knows he won’t.”
I should redirect. I have a list of questions in this notebook, color-coded, and not one of them is about Dean Kinsella.
“Why doesn’t he?” I ask.
Mimi settles back into the vinyl like a woman who has been waiting years for someone to ask.
“Henry was already married to my sister when Dean was born,” she says.
“Twenty-one years between them. Their mother was forty-five. So Dean grows up in a house where the parents are exhausted and the brother is already gone, and by the time he’s eight he’s an uncle to a baby he babysits.
” She sips. “Henry took Lana’s name when they married.
Wanted out from under the Kinsellas. Dean never got the choice. He was born into it.”
“Into what?”
“Dock people. Bottom-feeders. The Kinsellas worked the fish plants and loaded cargo and lived hand to mouth, and half of them were mean drunks and the other half were worse.” She says it without heat.
A weather report. “His parents were the good ones. Worked themselves into the ground. His mom died when he was fourteen. Cancer. His dad held on until last year—eighty-six years old and still mending nets at the marina, because sitting still would have killed him faster.” She taps a ring against her mug.
“They loved those boys. They just didn’t have anything left over after keeping the lights on. ”
I’m writing. I don’t remember deciding to.
“He joined the Coast Guard at eighteen. Rescue swimmer. He was good at it.” She turns her mug a quarter turn on the table. “Then something happened, and he came home different, and he’s never once said what. Eleven years, and not a word. Not to Henry. Not to me.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I think it broke him.” Her voice has gone flat. “He pretends it didn’t. We all pretend along with him. It’s easier.”
The word broke sits on the page in my handwriting, and I don’t like how it looks there.
“He did security work after. Maritime, executive protection, traveled for years. Came home when his dad died because Bodhi needed the help and Henry couldn’t do it alone.
” She drains her coffee. “Eleven years I’ve been trying to set that man up with every decent woman on this island and a few off it.
He turns them down flat and goes back to his boat and his dog and his miserable parrot and calls it a life. ”
She leans forward.
“Then you show up. And he goes in the harbor after your suitcase. And he brings you to my dinner table. And he kisses you on my porch.” She sits back. “So you tell me. What’s different about you?”
I don’t have an answer.
“The land transfer,” I say.
Mimi lets me have it, which is its own kind of mercy. “1895. That part’s true. Everything else is bullshit. Thomas Haven didn’t have two dimes to rub together—he was loading fish on the docks. Couldn’t afford boots, let alone twenty acres of waterfront.”
“So how did he buy it?”
“He didn’t. His wife did. Eleanor. Family money out of Seattle, old shipping money. She bought the land as an investment and put it in Thomas’s name because women couldn’t hold property then.” She shrugs. “The truth’s boring. Thomas married well. The end.”
I write it down. Eleanor Haven. Seattle shipping money. 1895.
“This isn’t in Malcolm’s records.”
“Of course it isn’t.” Mimi pushes back from the table. “Come on. You’re not going to learn this island from a booth.”
Brine and Bean is two blocks down, painted with a mural of orcas and kelp forests, and it smells like cinnamon and ocean air. Half a dozen people under twenty-five are tapping at laptops with their names in bubble letters on their cups.
“Donna!” Mimi calls, pushing through the door. “This is Scarlett. Malcolm’s reporter. Be nice to her.”
The woman behind the counter has honey-blonde hair going silver at the temples and the warmest, most suspicious eyes I’ve ever seen. She’s wiping down the espresso machine and doesn’t stop when we walk in.
“Malcolm’s reporter.” She might as well be saying root canal. “Here for the Merrick version or the real one?”
“Both, ideally.”
That earns me a second look. She sets the cloth down. “Coffee?”
I’ve had more than enough caffeine today. “Please.”
She makes me an Americano without asking how I take it. “The Merricks are liars. All of them. Malcolm’s the worst because he believes his own, which makes him dangerous. Jasper’s cruel but predictable. Theodore’s the only decent one in the bunch, and that’s Birdie’s influence, not blood.”
I write it down. Donna watches me write and seems pleased about it.