Page 141 of Pull Me Under

I press my hand to my mouth, trying to hold in the sound that wants to escape. A sob? A scream? I don’t know.

Jude shifts, reaching for me in his sleep. ‘Brynn?’

‘I’m fine.’ My voice doesn’t sound fine. ‘Just need some water. Go back to sleep.’

He mumbles incoherent sounds and settles back into the pillows.

I sit there in the dark, watching him breathe, the weight of the secret crushing my chest.

I’ll have to tell him.

But how? How do you tell someone that your father might have stolen his mother? That the abandonment wound he’s carried for twenty years is somehow tangled up in your own family’s disgrace?

I don’t move. I barely breathe.

Tomorrow, everything changes.

But tonight, I let him sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

BRYNN

Dawn light creeps through the curtains. Grey-pink, soft-edged. Everything feels suspended, not quite real. Magical.

Jude’s already awake. I can feel him moving carefully, trying not to disturb me. The mattress dips as he sits up, and I keep my breathing steady, my eyes closed.

Coward. You’re being a coward.

But I’m not ready. Not yet. I need time to think, to untangle the knot that’s been tightening like a noose inside me since I sat bolt upright at three in the morning with his mother’s name ringing in my ears.

I hear him pull on his jeans. The soft thud of his boots. Then he pauses, and I feel the warmth of him leaning over me, his lips brushing my forehead.

‘I’ll be back later,’ he murmurs. ‘Get some sleep.’

I make a vague noise of acknowledgement, and then he’s gone. The cottage door clicks shut behind him, and I listen to his footsteps fade down the path.

He’s going to work. Of course he is. His father threw him out last night – not under my roof – but Jude Harding is still going to show up at the harbour, still going to haul nets and check the boat and do whatever needs doing. Because that’s who he is. Loyal to the bone, even to people who don’t deserve it.

I have opinions about this.

Lots.

I keep them to myself.

Part of me wants to run after him, grab his arm, tell him to let Reuben stew in his own bitterness for once. Let the old man see what happens when he pushes away the only son who’s actually staying.

But a larger part of me – the part that’s been awake for hours, turning over puzzle pieces in the dark – needs him to go.

I need to be alone with my father’s letters.

I give it twenty minutes. Long enough to be sure he’s not coming back for a forgotten wallet or a last kiss. Then I’m out of bed, pulling on yesterday’s clothes, making tea with hands that won’t quite steady.

The box is where I left it, tucked in the corner of the sitting room. Grandad’s things. Dad’s letters. The paper trail of a broken man’s life.

I carry my tea to the armchair and pull the box onto my lap.

Helen Harding.