Page 44 of Everything You Hate
“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 washappening 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 sayingYou’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 andwhether 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 postedCome find the treasureand 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.
