Chapter 7 #3
‘Nothing. It’s not – I’m just here to fix boats and sort out a cottage. Not save the world.’
‘Peter wasn’t trying to save the world. Just this little corner of it.
’ She pulls her feet up under her, getting comfortable like we’re friends who do this, have tea while storms rage.
‘He used to say the small places matter more because they’re what people actually live in.
You can’t save the ocean, but you can save a harbour.
You can’t feed the world, but you can make sure your neighbours eat. ’
‘He sounds like he was a good man.’
‘He was the best man.’ Her voice doesn’t crack, but it thins.
‘He was interested. In everything. In people, in fish, in the way storms formed, in why certain jokes were funny, in how to make the perfect coffee, in saving things that other people had written off.’ She looks at me directly. ‘He would’ve been interested in you.’
‘Me?’
‘Someone who reads his notes and immediately understands them. Someone who’s come to check on the village basket case even though you barely know her.’
‘You’re not—’
‘I am, though. The one who falls apart when sirens sound. Who can’t sell Peter’s boat but can’t look at it either.
Who’s running a café because I don’t know what else to do with my hands.
’ She says it matter-of-fact, like she’s reading a weather report.
‘It’s been six months. People expect me to be better by now. ’
‘People are idiots.’
‘That’s what Peter used to say.’ She almost smiles. ‘Though he usually added, Present company excluded to soften it.’
‘I don’t soften things. Character flaw.’
‘Or character strength, depending on the situation.’
We drink our tea. The storm keeps raging. Catastrophe relocates to my lap without invitation, purring like a broken outboard motor.
‘I’d love to pick your brain sometime,’ Nina says. ‘About Peter’s work. About the harbour. About how someone decides to come back to a place that ran them off.’
She’s direct, for sure.
‘All right. But I get to pick yours too.’
‘Deal.’ She extends her hand, formal as a contract. ‘Nina Ellis. Café owner, village basket case, keeper of Peter’s ghost.’
‘Brynn Trelawney. Boat mechanic, shed squatter, haver of daddy issues and a tendency to hold grudges.’
We shake on it and for the first time I get a flicker of lightness, like I don’t have to spend every damn moment fighting. At least maybe not with Nina.
‘I should go,’ I say eventually, though I don’t move yet. ‘Let you get some sleep.’
‘Bold of you to assume I sleep.’ She laughs, and I wonder how often she’s laughed in the last six months. ‘Thanks for checking in, Brynn. Genuinely.’
I untangle myself from Catastrophe, who protests with a sound like someone stepping on bagpipes. Nina walks me to the door, both of us pausing at the threshold.
‘Brynn?’ She’s backlit by the warm light of her flat, looking less hollowed out than two days ago. ‘The Hardings don’t speak for everyone. Reuben doesn’t speak for everyone. Some of us are glad you’re back, even if we don’t know why yet.’
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just nod and head back into the storm.
The walk back is slower than it needs to be. Rain soaks through my jacket, but I don’t hurry.
The shed, when I reach it, feels less like exile and more like possibility.
Peter’s notes are still spread across the workbench.
His conservation plans, his solutions to problems other people didn’t even see as problems yet.
And Grandad’s half-carved seal, waiting.
The cat, who seems to live here fifty per cent of the time, like a ghost that steals in and out, is watching me from the top shelf of a storage unit.
I sit at the bench, pull the notebook towards me, and start making new lists. Not just what needs fixing, but what could be built. Not just survival, but growth.
Outside, the storm’s finally wearing itself out, rain gentling from assault to conversation. Through the window, the harbour lights waver like uncertain stars.
I pick up Peter’s pen – because it feels like his pen, even though pens don’t really belong to anyone – and start sketching out what a conservation zone might look like. How you could create corridors for fish migration. How you could balance commerce and preservation.
How you could honour a ghost by making his ideas breathe.
The cat jumps back up. Curls into my lap, all skin and bone. I should get him some food. I should also stop letting strays adopt me, but here we are.
Ghost, I think, pen in one hand, the other finding its way to the space behind his ears. Half here, half not. Slipping in and out like he’s made of harbour mist.
Ghost it is.
It’s past midnight when I finally stop writing. The storm’s moved on, leaving that clean-washed quiet that follows violence. And I’m still here, in a shed that’s mine, in a village that doesn’t want me but might need me, writing futures for a place where I’ve decided to stay.
Tonight, I checked on someone who needed checking on. And someone checked on me right back.
That’s not nothing.
That might even be something.