Page 85 of Everything You Hate
The words hit the air between us and freeze there. Abel Merrick, who names marina rats and speaks Italian to hismother and has never raised his voice in my hearing, just snapped at me like I’m the reason his world is coming apart.
He breathes out. “Sorry. That was—we’re all worried. Storm’s coming in fast. NOAA missed the forecast again. Dean’s pissed. Bodhi’s pissed. Half the search boats are Merrick, half are Haven, and nobody’s talking to each other except through the radio, which is its own kind of miracle.” Another pause. I hear someone call his name in the background. “I gotta go. Stay put. We’ll call when we find them.”
He hangs up.
I sit on the bench with the dead phone in my hand and Abel’s words ringing in my ears.
You’ve done enough.
The harbor looks different suddenly. The water isn’t picturesque anymore. It’s a problem. Eight miles of open sound between Port Haven and No Name Island, and somewhere out there, two people in a dinghy too small for the weather that’s coming.
Two people who came here because of me.
I stand. My legs are stiff from sitting. I tuck the journal into my backpack and walk back toward Main Street, and the town I walked through this morning has transformed again. The treasure hunters have multiplied. They cluster outside Brine and Bean with laminated maps and metal detectors propped against the wall. A woman in a Patagonia vest lectures a group about tide charts. A man in cargo shorts unpacks a drone from its case.
None of them know about the storm. Or if they know, they don’t care.
Piper’s bookstore window is clean. The glass shines in the gray light, the children’s books arranged behind it in their rainbow, the rabbit with its tiny spectacles watching the street with stuffed animal resignation. I press my palm against the glass. Cold. Smooth. No trace of the red paint.
Inside, the shop is dark. Closed sign in the window. Piper must have gone home.
I keep walking. Past the Driftwood, where Patty Sue stands in the doorway with a coffee pot, watching the street with narrowed eyes. Past Saltbox Hardware, where Gus Pemberton leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed, tracking the treasure hunters with the flat gaze of a man who has seen every version of stupid this island can produce.
Nobody looks at me. Or everyone looks at me and then looks away. I can’t tell which is worse.
The Tidewater lobby is a disaster. Maps spread across every flat surface. Coffee cups. Laptops. A whiteboard covered in coordinates and question marks. Three men argue over a topographic survey near the fireplace. A woman with a tablet takes notes, nodding along like she’s covering a press conference instead of a potential search and rescue.
I duck my head and take the stairs. My room is exactly as I left it: bed unmade, laptop open on the desk, the curtains drawn against the afternoon light. I drop my backpack on the chair and sit on the edge of the bed.
My phone buzzes. Malcolm.
I ignore it.
It buzzes again. Jasper.
I set it face-down on the nightstand.
The analytics dashboard Malcolm sent me is still open on my laptop. The graph spikes toward the ceiling. Comments scroll in real time:Has anyone checked the east shore? Coordinates? Drone footage? I’m booking a flight next week. Where’s the best place to dig?
I close the laptop. The screen goes dark, and my reflection stares back at me: blonde hair coming loose from its knot, dark circles under my eyes, the sweatshirt I’ve been wearing for two days because it smells like Dean’s boat.
I open Evangeline’s journal again. The March entry. Her handwriting is steadier here than in the earlier pages. The pen pressed hard into the paper. I trace the line with my fingertip:He held me down on my mother’s settee, and he violated me.
Malcolm has to know. Or he suspects. That’s the only explanation for No Name’s absence from his maps, for the curated archive, for the narrative he’s built so carefully around Thomas Haven the murderer. He can’t have the real story get out. The Merrick family legacy depends on Thomas being the villain.
If Evangeline’s journal is authentic—and Gus Pemberton had no reason to lie, not after forty years of holding it—then everything Malcolm has built collapses. The feud. The businesses. The righteousness.
I lie back on the bed with the journal open on my chest. The ceiling is beige. The air conditioner hums. Somewhere down the hall, a door closes.
I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know, the room is dark and the digital clock on the nightstand reads 12:17.
And someone is watching me.
I know it before I open my eyes. The quality of the darkness has changed. The air in the room feels charged, the way it does before lightning. My skin prickles. Every hair on my arms stands up.
I open my eyes.
The figure stands on the balcony.
