Chapter 8 #2
I never used to worry like this. Not about Dad.
He was granite – weathered maybe, but solid.
Immovable. A father you rebel against because he’s strong enough to take it and then put you back on the right path.
His path. Now I’m watching him come apart from the inside, and Kit’s in New York with Isla and Maisie and whatever their temporary life is now – miles away from mooring checks and melting kettles.
While here I am, cataloguing the ways we’re falling apart as Kit posts photos of Maisie at the Statue of Liberty.
Six o’clock comes and goes. The harbour starts waking up around me – lights in windows, engines coughing to life, Frankie’s dog trotting down the slipway for its morning swim. The ordinary sounds that suggest everything’s normal when nothing is.
What if he’s hurt? What if the boat’s taking on water? What if his mind wandered out there and he forgot how to get home? What if the sea tried to take another Harding and I’m sitting on a jetty doing nothing?
What if, what if, what if.
Then – engine sound. Familiar, closer, and there she is. The Mary Jane rounding the breakwater like nothing’s wrong, like she hasn’t been missing for two hours, like I haven’t been sitting here imagining coffins and coastguard calls and being the one to tell Kit.
Reuben’s at the wheel, whistling. Actually whistling. Some old sea shanty I remember from childhood, from before everything went wrong.
He ties up with the easy efficiency of someone who’s done it ten thousand times, muscle memory stronger than whatever’s eating his mind. The boat’s low in the water – he’s had a good haul.
‘Morning, boy,’ he calls, cheerful as Christmas. ‘Hell of a catch out past Point Three. Barely any other boats out there this morning. Can’t imagine why.’
I breathe out for the first time in two hours.
He’s fine. He’s himself. I’ve been going mad, seeing problems where there aren’t any, turning into a paranoid person who panics over nothing. Relief so strong it makes my knees soft.
Then the words register properly.
Point Three.
‘Dad.’ My voice comes out carefully level. ‘You know that’s restricted. Protected waters. The conservation zone. You bang on about it every day when the tourists—’
He waves me off, already heading up the dock with his catch bucket swinging. ‘Don’t be such a stickler, Jude. Few fish never hurt anyone.’
‘Dad—’
But he’s gone, humming his way towards home and a shower and a day where he’ll probably lecture someone else about the very fishing regulations he just broke without seeming to realise it.
I stand there, the harbour coming alive around me, and my hands are trembling.
This is happening.
Reuben Harding, who’d report his own mother for fishing violations.
Reuben Harding, who once made Kit return a single undersized bass to the sea in a force 6 because rules are rules, boy.
Reuben Harding, who spent three years on the conservation committee that established Point Three as a protected zone – who championed it, who argued for it, who told anyone who’d listen that it was the future of sustainable fishing in the bay.
That Reuben Harding just poached from protected waters at dawn and doesn’t remember why it matters.
I reach for my phone. My fingers hover over Kit’s name. I could tell him. Should tell him. Dad took the Mary Jane out alone at 4 am. Fished Point Three. Didn’t know it was restricted. Kit, I think—
I think what? That our father’s losing his mind? That the man who built this business and this family and this whole bloody harbour is dissolving from the inside? That I can’t do this alone anymore?
Kit would come home. If I told him, he’d come home. And Dad would be glad to see him. Would probably snap back to himself for a week, a month, long enough for Kit to decide it was a false alarm, that Jude was overreacting, that the old man’s fine really, just needs a bit of company.
And then Kit would leave again. And I’d still be here.
I delete the half-written message. Type again.
All quiet here. Give Maisie a hug from me.
The lie sits in my hand, small and necessary. Kit’s got his own life. His own family. He doesn’t need to know. Not yet. Not until I’m sure. Not until there’s more to say than I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do and when did you last notice Dad was actually Dad? I hit send.
Across the harbour, there’s a light on in the Trelawney shed.
Movement behind the window – Brynn, back from the cottage, starting her day with tea and lists and that particular brand of organised determination that makes everything seem possible.
She must have come down while I was on the jetty.
Walked right past me, probably, while I was staring at the water pretending to be fine.
God, please don’t let her have heard any of that exchange with Dad. The Point Three confession. The cheerful obliviousness.
I don’t know if I’m afraid of what she’d do with that information or afraid she’d care. Both options feel dangerous in different ways.
The sun’s properly up now, turning the water from grey to gold, and the harbour’s filling with the usual morning traffic.
Everyone pretending everything’s normal.
Everyone keeping their worries locked away, their suspicions about Reuben Harding unspoken – because I know I’m not the only one who’s noticed.
Frankie watches him sometimes. Bill steers conversations away from Peter.
Tilly pours his pints and counts them and says nothing.
I head back to the boats, to the nets that need mending, to the paperwork that never stops, to the Mary Jane bobbing innocently in her berth like she hasn’t just broken my heart a little.
But I keep glancing at the shed, at the cottage on the cliff, at the space between what we say and what we mean.
Brynn was right about one thing – it wasn’t really about the boat.
It’s about watching everything I’m supposed to be holding together come apart, and the only person who seems to see it is someone I’m supposed to consider an enemy.
The Mary Jane rocks gently on the morning swell, and I hate her a little for coming back, for making my panic look like overreaction, for being fine when nothing else is.
Somewhere up in that cottage, a list hangs on the wall with nothing crossed off yet.
I wonder if Brynn knows she’s already on mine.