Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
brYNN
The shed still reeks of him – Old Spice and diesel and a brand of self-righteous fury that I reckon must run in the Harding blood. I’ve been scrubbing the mug for five minutes now, like I can wash away the memory of Reuben’s face, twisted with twenty years of hate he’s been saving just for me.
The mug’s clean. I keep scrubbing anyway.
He doesn’t even know what we left behind.
The thought arrives sharp as a fishhook, catches somewhere behind my ribs.
He doesn’t know about Grandad’s hands shaking as he packed the van – the only time I ever saw those hands shake, hands that could strip an engine blindfolded, that carved seals from driftwood and never missed a line.
Doesn’t know about Dad’s silence that lasted three months after we left, a silence so complete it was like living with a photograph.
Doesn’t know about Grandad standing in the lane at three in the morning, loading the last box, and not looking back.
Not at the shed. Not at the harbour. Not at the life he’d built from nothing and was leaving with less.
He doesn’t get to rage at me for things I was too small to understand.
I set the mug down harder than necessary. It doesn’t break – things rarely do when you want them to.
The manual’s still open to the page I was reading when he burst in.
Hydraulic pressure systems. The inside cover reads Property of P.
J. Curnow – Sea Salt Bay Harbour Mechanic in careful block letters, and the margins are filled with scrawled handwriting that suggests Peter Curnow thought fast and understood even quicker.
Check seals monthly – salt corrupts everything. Underlined twice.
Even the dead leave instructions, if you know where to look.
Wind howls through a cracked pane I hadn’t noticed before, bringing the smell of rain that’s coming but not here yet. Everything in Sea Salt Bay is like that – always about to happen, never quite arriving. Storms building. Truths hovering. Hearts about to break but holding on for one more tide.
I should have shouted at Reuben. Should have given him the fight he wanted, the confirmation that Trelawneys are exactly as awful as he’s been telling himself.
Should have blasted a cruel line about his absent wife, his golden son who got to step back and build his own life, his younger son who watches me like I’m a problem he can’t solve.
But I’ve never been good at rage. Not the loud kind where the perfect put-down and response are ready on the tip of your tongue.
The quiet kind, though? The kind that builds foundations and tears them down? The kind that brings you back to a place that doesn’t want you, just to prove it wrong? That kind I know like my own heartbeat.
I fold the tarp that doesn’t need folding, straighten tools that are already true. My fingers need to work, while my brain sorts through the mess of being Brynn Trelawney in a place that wishes I wasn’t.
There’s a box under the workbench I hadn’t noticed before. Old biscuit tin, the kind that gets repurposed for everything but biscuits. Inside: fishing flies, a dried seahorse, three marbles, and—
My breath catches.
A piece of driftwood, half-carved into what might have been a seal or might have been a dream. Grandad’s work. Has to be. Nobody else carved like that – finding the shape that was already in the wood, just waiting.
See there, little fish? The seal’s already inside. We’re just helping her out.
The memory surfaces whole and uninvited.
This workshop – this workshop – smelling of sawdust and the peppermints he always had in his pocket.
Me, maybe five, standing on a crate to reach the bench.
Him, guiding my hands on the carving knife, teaching me to see what could be instead of what was.
His waxed jacket rough against my cheek.
His laugh, which was rare and deep and made you feel like you’d won first prize when you didn’t know you were trying.
He didn’t speak that night. The night we left. He just carried my suitcase to the car, his hands unsteady, which made my stomach twist, a sensation I still remember all these years later. He didn’t look back. Not at the shed. Not at the harbour. Not at the life he’d spent forty years building.
I didn’t understand then. Thought we were coming back. Thought it was an adventure, a holiday, a brief interruption in the story of being the Trelawneys of Sea Salt Bay.
Twenty years later, I’m holding his unfinished seal, and I still don’t understand.
Not completely. But I know more than Reuben thinks.
Know about the meetings that happened after midnight.
The threats that weren’t quite threats. The way certain contracts got cancelled, certain moorings got reassigned, certain families got frozen out until leaving seemed like the only option.
I know about survival that looks like cowardice from the outside.
The notebook is where I left it. I flip to a fresh page, write with a focus that keeps the shaking at bay:
IMMEDIATE ACTIONS:
Check cottage roof (storm’s coming)
Source building supplies (not from Harding-friendly vendors)
Register with harbour master (official claim on shed and mooring)
Set up proper workshop operations
Establish income stream – fill Peter’s gap?
Fix what can be fixed
Ignore what can’t
Do not engage with Reuben Harding
Do not engage with Jude Harding
Survive
I underline that last one three times, hard enough to dent the next page.
A knock interrupts – not a bang, not a demand, just knuckles on wood, almost hesitant. I know who it is before I open the door because who else would it be? The wind? God? Someone with good news for once?
Jude’s standing there, hands in his pockets, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. The harbour light behind him makes him a silhouette – all shoulders and stubborn jaw.
‘What?’ I don’t open the door wider. ‘Come to yell at me too? Should I put the kettle on for the full Harding experience?’
‘Came to tell you something.’ He shifts, and I can see his face now. Tired. Always tired, like exhaustion is his default setting and everything else is a temporary upgrade. ‘About the Mary Jane.’
‘What about her?’
‘You were right.’ He says it like it’s costing him. ‘The feed line. The worn seal in the distribution manifold.’ A pause. ‘Fitted it this afternoon. She’s running clean.’
I lean against the doorframe, blocking entry but not actively slamming the door in his face. Progress. ‘And you came all the way down here to tell me that.’
‘Seemed like the decent thing.’
‘The decent thing would have been reading Peter’s manual six months ago.’
His face flickers – hurt, or the shadow of it. I almost feel bad. Almost.
‘He won’t let this go,’ Jude says, steering past it. ‘Reuben. He holds grudges like heirlooms.’
‘Noted.’
‘I’m not saying you should leave—’
‘Good, because I’m not.’
‘—just that you should know what you’re in for.’
‘Twenty years of reputation destruction, economic strangulation, and social exile?’ I keep my voice light, casual, like we’re discussing weather patterns. ‘Already familiar with the Harding playbook, thanks.’
There’s a bright flash deep in his shadowed gaze – hurt, anger, possibly both – but he doesn’t deny it.
‘That’s not—’ He stops. Runs a hand through his hair, and a few grains of sand fall out. He’s obviously come straight from somewhere, hasn’t even showered. ‘I was nine.’
‘And I was seven. Weird how we’re both still paying for it.’
He looks at me then, really looks, and for a second I see that boy – seaweed in his hair, laughing, chasing me across the harbour stones.
‘Why did you really come back?’ He asks it different this time, softer.
I could tell him. Could say that Grandad died three months ago convinced he’d failed me, that Dad drank himself into silence and then into nothing, that I’ve been running towards and away from Sea Salt Bay my whole life and finally got tired of the circling.
Could tell him about the solicitor’s letter, the cottage deed, the toolbox with Grandad’s initials scratched into the lid.
Could say: because this is the only place that’s ever felt like mine, and I’m done pretending it doesn’t matter.
Instead, I say, ‘Stubbornness. Spite. The usual Trelawney traits.’
‘Right.’ He backs away, and I can’t tell if he’s disappointed or relieved. ‘Well. Thanks for the diagnosis. I owe you one.’
‘You owe me twenty years of shed rent, but we can start with one.’
Almost – almost – he smiles. But it dies before it reaches his eyes, and then he’s walking away, favouring the bad leg just slightly in the way people do when they think no one’s watching.
I close the door, lean against it, listen to his footsteps fade.
The shed feels smaller now, like his presence expanded it and his absence shrinks it back. The wind’s picked up properly, rattling the cracked pane, promising the storm that’s been building all day.
I go back to my list, add one more line:
Do not notice the way Jude Harding looks at broken things like he understands them.
I underline it four times, until the pen tears through the paper.
The storm they’ve been promising all week finally arrives on Friday evening.
It throws itself at Sea Salt Bay like it’s got a personal vendetta against shelter, rain hammering the shed roof with a violence that makes the corrugated iron sing.
I’ve been at the workbench most of the day – stripping parts, cataloguing Peter’s inventory, reading his conservation notes until my eyes blur.
He had good ideas. Really good. Corridors for fish migration, rewilding the inlet margins, sustainable quotas that could actually work.
It’s deep thinking that sees the whole picture, not just the next catch.
Thinking that dies with the thinker, unless someone picks it up.