Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Dean
Bodhi parks the truck sideways across my dock space with the tires on the wood and the engine still running. He doesn’t cut it. He just sits there for a ten-count with both hands white-knuckled on the wheel and his jaw doing that thing where it looks like he’s trying to crack his own teeth.
I set the wrench down and wipe my hands on a rag. Captain squawks from the console, “Abort, abort!” and Bodhi finally shoves the door open and climbs out.
He looks like hell. The dark circles have graduated to full bruises under his eyes, and that button-down he’s been wearing for three days running is wrinkled across the shoulders where he’s been leaning against something. He’s got a travel mug of what I assume is coffee but smells like punishment.
“Morning,” I say.
“You know where she was yesterday?”
I don’t have to ask who he means. “Not offhand.”
“Gus Pemberton’s.” He slams the truck door and crosses the dock toward me.
His boots hit the wood hard enough that Doug raises his head from the life jackets, assesses the threat level, and drops it again.
Even Doug knows when to stay down. “Gus. The man who hasn’t spoken more than four consecutive words to anyone in this town since I was in diapers.
Who walked out of town council when they asked about updating the septic ordinance. That Gus.”
“She talked to Fish too.”
“Everyone.” Bodhi drags a hand through his hair.
It sticks up on one side. “Mimi held court at the Driftwood for an hour. I got three texts about it before coffee. Donna talked. The Tangled Net talked. Yesterday afternoon I walked into Saltbox to buy a replacement bulb for the barn and Fish Monroe was sitting on the register counter telling her about the Fairchild manifest like he’d been saving it up. ”
“Fish doesn’t sit on counters.”
“He sat on Gus’s. I saw it.”
I bend and pick up the wrench again. Give my hands something to do. “I can’t gag my own family, Bodhi. You wanted her kept close. Keeping her close means letting her close.”
“I wanted her contained. Contained means she doesn’t get the entire island’s oral history served to her on a plate.
” He sets the travel mug down on my toolbox and levels a finger at me.
“You know what your version of containing her is? It’s interrupting conversations and hoping nobody notices.
I saw you at the Driftwood. You were three booths over with your back turned pretending to read the same tide chart for forty minutes while she talked to Mimi. ”
“I like tide charts.”
“You don’t read tide charts. You’ve been running this water since you were eighteen.
You read the water.” His voice drops. “You sat there listening to Mimi tell her God knows what, and you didn’t stop it, and don’t tell me you didn’t know it was happening because the entire diner knew you were there and nobody cared. ”
I drop the wrench. It clatters on the deck. “What was I supposed to do, Bodhi? Walk over there and physically remove her from the booth? That’s what you’re asking?”
“Your version of managing this is driving her to Saltbox Hardware and parking outside for two hours while she sits in Gus’s back room drinking tea and taking notes. That’s not containing her. That’s chaperoning her.”
“She was asking questions. That’s her job.”
“That’s your defense now? That it’s her job?” He kicks at a loose cleat. “You spent yesterday following her around like a shadow. Wherever she went, there you were five minutes later pretending you had business. The Driftwood. Brine and Bean. Harbor Street. Saltbox.”
“She walked into Saltbox on her own.”
“And you were on Harbor Street in the truck in the rain because the tides shifted and you suddenly needed a hardware store three miles from the water.”
The rain. I remember the rain. I remember her standing in it with her notebook going soft in her hands and her hair dark with it and the way she looked at me through the passenger window before she got in. The wipers going. The heater. Her saying You’ve been three feet behind me all day, Dean.
I shove the memory down. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to stop lying to me.” He picks up the travel mug and drains half of it. The steam rises past his jaw. “This isn’t about the treasure anymore. Every ferry’s fuller than the last. Tuesday’s mid-morning was eighty percent capacity. Today’s first run was standing room.”
“That’s good for business.”
“No. That’s sixty people off the boat, onto the island, asking where the treasure hunt starts and who’s running the tours and whether the north pasture is open to the public.
Someone flew a drone over the north pasture yesterday afternoon, Dean.
From the water. I saw it on Colter’s security feed.
We don’t have north pasture security. We have a gate and a sign and the hope that tourists respect private property. ”
I stare at him. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know. But I know it wouldn’t have happened if a woman with eight million followers hadn’t posted Come find the treasure and tagged Port Haven six times.”
“She didn’t tag Port Haven.”
“Her followers did. Her comment section is a travel agency. They’re planning trips. They’re asking about hotels. They’re debating which side of the north shore has better metal-detecting access.”
I scrub a hand over my face. The grease from the wrench smears across my forehead. “So what are you asking me to do? Shut down her account? Confiscate her phone?”
“I’m asking you to shut this down. Today.
” He sets the mug down hard enough that coffee sloshes over the rim.
“I don’t care how. Talk to her. Tell her the truth.
Tell her Malcolm’s full of shit. Tell her the treasure’s a story we tell to tourists because it makes them buy more coffee.
I don’t care. Just make it stop before this place becomes whatever the hell Malcolm’s trying to turn it into. ”
“Bodhi—”
“I have a family and a business and a bank account that’s running on fumes and a grandmother who calls me twice a day to remind me that my grandfather would have handled this better.” His voice cracks. Just once, and he locks it down, but I heard it. “I don’t have patience left. Handle it.”
He turns and walks back to the truck. Doesn’t slam the door this time. Just gets in, backs it off the dock with the tires throwing gravel, and drives.
I stand there. Doug whines from under the bench. Captain mutters something obscene and fluffs his feathers.
Everything Bodhi said was true and I knew it before he said it and hearing it out loud doesn’t make it easier.
I have been following her. I drove her to Saltbox.
I sat outside Gus’s for two hours in the rain with the engine idling and the wipers going because I wanted to be there when she came out, and I told myself it was about Curt and the dock and keeping an eye on the situation, and that was bullshit and we both know it.
I pick up the wrench and throw it into the toolbox. The clang echoes off the water.
Contain her, Bodhi said. Keep her away from the family. Don’t let her dig.
Instead, Mimi folded her into dinner. Gus Pemberton, who hasn’t spoken a complete sentence to a stranger in twenty years, poured her tea and opened his back room.
Fish Monroe sat on a counter and talked about cargo manifests.
The whole island has been feeding her stories like they’ve been starving for an audience, and I stood at the edges and watched it happen and told myself I was managing it.
I wasn’t managing anything. I was watching her.
I was listening to her laugh. I was memorizing the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was thinking and the way her mouth curved when Hazel handed her a plate and the way her voice changed when she talked about the wildfire piece, like it was the only thing she’d ever done that mattered.
That’s not containing her. That’s something else entirely, and I don’t have a name for it that doesn’t scare the shit out of me.
The dock creaks. Curt Malloy wanders past with a paper cup of something that smells like it came from the Salt’s bottom shelf. His boots are untied. His cap is on backward. He’s smiling the smile of a man who’s found something to be right about and plans to savor it.
“Well, if it isn’t Coastie.” He raises the cup in my direction. “Heard your girlfriend’s been busy.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Sure looked like it Tuesday night. Whole farmhouse saw you two on the porch.” He takes a sip. “Course, that was before she started posting about the treasure hunt. Eight million people, Kinsella. Eight million people asking where to dig. You must be real proud.”
I turn my back on him and reach for the toolbox.
“Tourists showing up two months early because some Hollywood blonde with an Instagram account decided our little feud was content.” He raises his voice.
The dock’s empty but he’s playing to the water, to the gulls, to whoever might be within earshot.
“Bet the Merricks are loving that. Bet Malcolm’s rubbing his hands together right now counting the room bookings. ”
“Get off my dock, Curt.”
“Your dock. That’s rich.” He laughs. “Wasn’t your dock six months ago. Wasn’t your family’s dock until your brother married up and changed his name. Some of us remember the Kinsellas, Dean. Some of us remember what your people were.”
I turn around. Slow. “Say that again.”
He holds up both hands, still smiling. The cup tilts, liquid sloshing near the rim. “Just making conversation. You know me. Always got an opinion.”
“Your opinion’s worth less than the beer you’re drinking.”
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “But I’m not wrong about the tourists. They’re coming because of her. You can hate me for saying it. Doesn’t make it less true.”
He ambles off down the dock, whistling something tuneless, and I stand there with my fists clenched and my pulse hammering in my ears and the worst part is that he’s right.
The ferries are fuller. The comments on her posts are planning trips.
Someone flew a drone over my brother’s land because eight million people saw a hashtag and decided there was something here worth finding.
I told her she’d make a spectacle of us. I told her she’d leave and we’d be left with the mess. I kissed her and then I told her it was a mistake, and every word of it was true, and it doesn’t change the fact that I want her anyway, and that’s the part I can’t fucking solve.
I know where she is. Half the town knows where she is.
Piper texted the family group chat an hour ago: Scarlett’s here looking for local history books. Send recommendations.
The Next Chapter. Piper’s bookstore, three blocks up from the harbor, white clapboard with blue trim and a window display full of romance novels arranged by tropes.
Piper’s been running it for four years on stubbornness and a business loan from Bodhi that she’s still paying back in monthly installments she can barely afford.
I tell Doug to stay. He doesn’t argue. Captain squawks “Fuck me sideways!” as I climb the dock ladder, and I don’t correct him.
I’m going to have a reasonable conversation.
That’s the plan. I’m going to walk in there and tell her the truth—that Malcolm’s lying, that the treasure’s a story, that the island’s drowning in tourists two months early because of her posts, and that she needs to dial it back before this gets worse.
I’m going to say it calmly. I’m going to keep my voice even.
I’m going to be the adult in the room for once instead of the man who follows women around in the rain and kisses them on porches and pretends it didn’t happen.
That’s the plan.
I’m still telling myself that when I push open the door of The Next Chapter and the bell above it rings, and Piper looks up from behind the counter with a smile that says she’s been expecting me, and Scarlett turns from the history section with a stack of books in her arms and her hair loose around her shoulders and those brown eyes finding mine across the room like she knew I’d come.
Reasonable. I’m going to be reasonable.
God help me.