Page 84 of Everything You Hate
I have watched that good, honorable man hold his own mother up at a graveside. I am not going to be the reason his mother stands at his.
I would have walked to Anacortes over the water if it came to it, but Thomas insisted on taking me on the morning tide. From there, I will take the train, and from there, I have not decided, and I find that I like not having decided.
He is not coming with me.
I asked him to. I asked him plainly, and I will carry the sorrow of his expression for the rest of my life.
He said, “I would go tomorrow if it were only me.”
But it isn’t only him. He has his mother to think of. His family. He cannot leave them.
We stood there a while, and neither of us said the other thing, and I have thought since that I would not have wanted him if he had been a man who could leave them. That is the whole cruelty of it. The reason he cannot come is the reason I want him to.
Tomorrow I will be gone, and there will be a wedding with no bride, and Charles Fairchild will stand in my father’s house and undoubtedly be very pleasant about it. By summer there will be a story about me on this island that I will not be here to correct.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Scarlett
I sit on the harbor bench with Evangeline’s journal open in my lap and the truth burning a hole through my chest. Charles Fairchild raped her. Not Thomas Haven. Not a jealous fiancé. A man who put his hand over her mouth and called it his right, and then went downstairs and asked about the weather.
The harbor stretches out in front of me, boats bobbing at their slips, water flat and gray under the afternoon sky. A tourist drone buzzes overhead, then veers north toward No Name. I flinch.
I’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes. Maybe longer. The bench wood is cold through my jeans. My phone sits beside me, screen dark. I haven’t moved since I finished reading.
Malcolm’s archive is a lie. The whole curated exhibit, the maps with No Name erased, the narrative he’s been feeding the island for decades—all of it built on the bones of a woman who was running from a rapist. Evangeline didn’t steal that treasure. She took back what was hers. Her father accepted a bride pricefor her body, and she reclaimed it with a combination she’d memorized because his hands were failing him.
Thomas Haven loved her. He stood on a pier and asked who hurt her, and when she didn’t answer, he knew.
I pick up my phone and call Dean.
The line rings. Once, twice, three times. The harbor wind pushes against my face, carrying salt and diesel and the distant cry of gulls. Four rings. Five.
Someone picks up.
“Dean’s phone.”
Not Dean. The voice is younger, softer at the edges. Strained.
“Abel?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?” Background noise: an engine, low and steady. Wind cutting across a microphone. Voices somewhere behind him, too muffled to make out.
“It’s Scarlett. Is Dean there?”
“He’s—” A pause. Something shifts on his end, fabric against the phone. “He’s busy right now. We’ve got a situation.”
The strain in his voice tightens. I sit up straighter. “What kind of situation?”
“Two treasure hunters. Took a dinghy out to No Name this morning. Storm’s coming in. NOAA just upgraded to a small craft advisory.” His words come fast, clipped. “Nobody’s heard from them since ten. Dad’s out. Dean’s out. Every boat on the island with a radio is looking.”
My stomach drops. “No Name? The east cove?”
“East side, yeah. Where you and Dean found that chamber.” He doesn’t mean it as an accusation. It lands like one anyway.
“I can help. What do you need? I can come down to the marina, coordinate from shore, something?—”
“You’ve done enough, don’t you think?”
