Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
brYNN
Aweek.
Seven days of sleeping in the spare room with the yellow curtains and the view of the neighbour’s apple tree. Seven days of Helen’s cooking – proper meals, the kind I forgot people actually make – and Lily’s endless questions and the strange, disorienting feeling of being somewhere I belong.
It can’t last. I know that.
I’m folding my clothes into my bag when Lily appears in the doorway.
‘You’re leaving.’
Not a question. She’s got her arms crossed, hip cocked against the frame, looking so much like me it smacks the air out of my lungs.
‘I have to go back eventually.’
‘Why?’
I tuck a jumper into the corner of the bag. ‘I’ve got a cottage. A boat that’s half-restored. A lifeboat crew that made space for me when they didn’t have to.’
‘So? Sell them.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘It could be.’ Lily pushes off the doorframe, comes to sit on the edge of the bed. ‘You could stay here. Mum’s already said so – you heard her at dinner. The spare room’s yours as long as you want it.’
I did hear her. Helen, clearing the plates, saying it so casually: You know you don’t have to rush off, Brynn. This is your home too, if you want it.
Your home too.
The words had lodged somewhere behind my ribs and stayed there.
‘I can’t just move into your spare room.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m twenty-seven years old and I don’t—’ I stop. Take a breath. ‘I don’t run away from things. Not anymore.’
‘Who said anything about running away?’ Lily pulls her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. ‘Maybe it’s running towards something. Towards us.’
She’s nineteen. Too young to understand that sometimes there’s no good direction. Sometimes every path leads somewhere painful and you just have to pick one.
‘There’s the lifeboat crew,’ I say. ‘I made a commitment. They’re counting on me.’
‘Are they? Or is this about Jude?’
She says it lightly, but her eyes are careful. We’ve been over this – at length, at volume, at two in the morning with mugs of tea going cold between us. The tangled geometry of what we are to each other.
Here’s the thing we’ve worked out: Jude and I share no blood. Not a drop. His mother is Helen. My father is Gareth. We’re connected only through the affair that produced Lily – the bridge between our families, the child neither family knew about.
But Lily is my half-sister. And Lily is Jude’s half-sister. Which means the man I fell in love with is my sister’s brother, and my sister is the daughter of the woman he spent twenty years mourning.
It’s not wrong. We’ve established that, Lily and I, through several rounds of increasingly elaborate diagrams drawn on the back of a takeaway menu. No shared parents. No shared blood. Just shared wreckage.
But it’s complicated. And complicated is pretty much the Harding–Trelawney brand at this point.
‘It’s not just about Jude,’ I say. And it’s not a lie. ‘It’s about the shed. The boat. Grandad’s name on a harbour building that I’m not going to let disappear.’
Lily’s quiet for a moment. She’s learned things about me this week – picked them up the way sisters do, I suppose, not that I’d know.
The way I go still when his name comes up.
The way I check my phone and then pretend I wasn’t checking it.
The way I’ve told her everything about Sea Salt Bay except the parts that matter most.
‘He hasn’t called,’ she says. Not unkindly.
‘No.’
‘Or texted.’
‘No.’
‘Could he? I mean, could he have lost his phone?’
I hesitate. ‘We’re both on the RNLI crew. There’s a group chat. He could find me easily enough, if he wanted to.’
‘But he hasn’t.’
‘No.’
‘Have you tried calling him?’
The question lands somewhere uncomfortable.
‘I could,’ I admit. ‘Same group chat. His number’s right there.’
‘But you haven’t.’
‘No.’
Lily raises an eyebrow. ‘So you’re both just … waiting? For the other one to crack first?’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Isn’t it?’ She tilts her head. ‘He’s my brother, Brynn. I’ve never met him, but he’s still my brother. And you’re my sister. And you’re both being idiots.’
I don’t have an answer for that.
‘I’ve spent nineteen years wondering about Kit and Jude,’ Lily continues.
‘Wondering what they’re like. Whether they’d want to know me.
Whether they ever thought about me – except they didn’t even know I existed, so how could they?
’ She shrugs. ‘And now I find out one of them is in love with my sister, and they’re both too stubborn to pick up a phone. ’
‘He told me to get out. He didn’t let me explain.’
‘I know. You’ve told me.’ She reaches out, puts her hand on my arm. Stops me mid-fold. ‘But Brynn – he’d just found out his dad lied to him for twenty years. Found out his mum didn’t abandon him. That’s a lot to process. Maybe he needed time.’
‘A week is a lot of time.’
‘Is it?’ Lily tilts her head. ‘You’ve had a week too. You could have called. You didn’t.’
I stare at the half-packed bag.
She’s not wrong. That’s the worst part.
‘I don’t know where else to go,’ I admit. The words come out smaller than I want them to.
‘Then stay here. Figure it out. You don’t have to decide everything today.’
‘I’ve already been here a week.’
‘So make it two. Make it a month.’ Lily squeezes my arm. ‘Mum loves having you here. She keeps looking at you like she can’t believe you’re real. And I—’ She stops. Swallows. ‘I spent nineteen years being an only child. I’m not ready to give up my sister after seven days.’
My throat tightens.
Sister.
I’m still not used to that word. Still not used to having someone who shares my blood, my father’s stubborn streak, the same way of chewing her lip when she’s thinking.
Someone who stayed up until two in the morning with me three nights ago, looking at old photos of our father, trying to piece together the man we both lost without ever really having.
‘I’m not giving you up,’ I say. ‘That’s not what this is.’
‘Then what is it?’
I look around the room. The yellow curtains. The apple tree outside. The house that smells like cooking and laundry detergent and something I’m only just recognising as home.
‘I don’t know,’ I say honestly. ‘I just know I can’t hide here for ever.’
‘It’s not hiding. It’s healing.’
‘Maybe.’ I zip the bag halfway. Leave it open. A compromise. ‘But I think I need to go back and face it. Whatever it is. Even if he never—’ I stop. Can’t finish that sentence.
‘Even if he never what?’
‘Forgives me.’
Lily’s quiet for a long moment.
‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ she says finally. ‘You found a letter. You were trying to figure out how to tell him. That’s not a crime.’
‘I should have told him immediately.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe there’s no good way to tell someone their entire life is built on lies.’ She shrugs. ‘You were trying to protect him. That’s not the same as betraying him.’
I think about Jude’s face in that hospital room. The way he looked at me like I was the enemy. Like everything we’d built was ash.
You knew. About my mother. About your father. About all of it.
He didn’t want to hear that I’d only found out the day before. That I’d spent one agonising night trying to figure out how to tell him without breaking him.
Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Maybe he would have looked at me the same way regardless.
But I’ll never know, because he didn’t give me the chance.
‘I should finish packing,’ I say.
Lily doesn’t move.
‘Where will you go? If you’re not staying here and you can’t face Sea Salt Bay?’
‘I am going to Sea Salt Bay. That’s the point. I’m going back.’
‘And if he’s there?’
‘He’ll be there. It’s his village too.’ I shove a pair of jeans into the bag with more force than necessary. ‘I’ve got a boat to finish. A business to build. A crew relying on me for the next call-out. I don’t get to stop doing those things because a man broke my heart.’
‘Very brave. Very stoic. Very you.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I mean it as a compliment.’
‘Shut up anyway.’
She grins. Unfolds herself from the bed and pulls me into a hug – fierce, tight, a hug I’m not used to receiving. The kind I didn’t know I needed.
‘You’re coming back,’ she says into my shoulder. ‘Promise me. Whatever happens, you’re coming back to visit.’
‘I promise.’
‘And you’ll call. Not just text – actually call. I want to hear your voice.’
‘Okay.’
‘And if he breaks your heart again, I’m driving to Cornwall and I’m going to—’
‘Lily.’
‘I’m serious. I’ve got nineteen years of sisterly protection to make up for.’
I laugh. It comes out wet, tangled with something that might be tears if I let it.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say.
‘You’d better be.’
She pulls back. Looks at me with those grey-green eyes – our father’s eyes – and for a moment I see everything we could have had. All those years of shared bedrooms and borrowed clothes and fighting over the bathroom mirror. All those years of having someone who understood.
We can’t get them back. But maybe we can build something new.
‘I’ll call you when I get there,’ I say. ‘Let you know I’m okay.’
‘You’d better. And I expect a full Snapchat tour of this famous boat shed. It’s the only acceptable form of communication, apparently.’
I turn back to the bag. Zip it the rest of the way.
‘Brynn?’
‘Yeah?’
‘For what it’s worth – I think he’d be an idiot not to come after you.’
I don’t answer. Just pick up the bag and head for the stairs.
Helen’s in the kitchen when I come down. Standing at the sink, looking out at the garden, hands wrapped around a mug of tea that’s probably gone cold.
‘You’re going,’ she says without turning around.
‘I have to.’
‘I know.’ She turns then. Her eyes are red-rimmed but her voice is steady. ‘I’ve spent twenty years waiting for people to come back. I’m not going to ask you to stay if staying isn’t right.’
I set my bag down by the door.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘For everything. For letting me into your home. For telling me about my father. For—’
‘You’re family.’ Helen crosses to me, takes my hands in hers. ‘You don’t have to thank family.’
Family.
The word still feels foreign. But less foreign than it did a week ago.