Page 177 of Pull Me Under

Family.

The word still feels foreign. But less foreign than it did a week ago.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I say. ‘About Dad. Not the letters, not the leaving. Just … him. What he was like. Before.’

Helen’s face shadows, layers of history and unforgotten pasts flicking across the surface of her skin. Pain, yes, but underneath it – light. Like sunshine through a cracked window.

‘He was funny,’ she says. ‘That’s the thing people forget, or maybe they never knew. He could make you laugh until you couldn’t breathe. This dry, quiet wit – he’d say something so deadpan you wouldn’t realise it was a joke until thirty seconds later, and by then he’d already moved on.’ She smiles, and it’s the youngest I’ve ever seen her look. ‘And his hands. God, his hands. He could fix anything – engines, generators, a clock that hadn’t worked since 1974. He’d be elbow-deep in an engine block, covered in grease, humming sea shanties to himself like he was the happiest man alive. And I’d watch him from the harbour wall and think: that’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.’

My throat aches. Because I know those hands. I inherited them – the mechanical instinct, the need to understand how things work, the way a seized bolt feels like a personal challenge.

‘He sounds like someone I would have liked,’ I say, my throat squeezing in a way so painful, I have to breathe through my nose.

‘You would have. I believe he’d have been so proud of you, Brynn.’

‘He didn’t tell me that, not very often.’ My memories ache with the silence that used to live between us, this awful deadly silence that I thought I’d caused. That somehow, even though I was a child and didn’t know what I’d said or done, whatever it had been must have been wrong.

‘He wouldn’t have known how. Your father was brilliant at fixing things and terrible at saying what he felt. On paper, with no one watching, he could say everything. Face to face, he just … froze.’

I blink, once, twice, my eyes stinging, but deep in my chest where I’ve kept all this crap, all the guilt, the fear, the fucking anger, it moves, not much, maybe nothing more than a minuscule amount, but it moves none the less. Eases.

I think about Jude. About the way he could tell me everything at sunrise in a hidden cove but couldn’t look at me in a pub.

‘Will you come?’ I ask. ‘To Sea Salt Bay. To see them? Jude and Kit,’ I clarify, although I don’t need to. Helen’s hands tighten on her mug.

‘Brynn—’

‘They know now. About Reuben, about the letters, about everything. Jude heard it from his father’s own mouth.’ I step closer. ‘They’ve spent twenty years thinking you didn’t want them. Don’t you want to tell them the truth yourself?’

‘Of course I do.’ Her voice cracks. ‘I’ve imagined it a thousand times. Showing up on their doorstep, explaining everything.’

‘Then come with me. We could drive down together. Today.’

Helen sets the mug down carefully. Her hands are trembling.

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because what if they don’t want to see me?’ The words come out raw. Exposed. ‘I walked away from them, Brynn. I let Reuben convince them I didn’t care.’

‘You didn’t have a choice. He forced you out⁠—’

‘I could have fought harder. I could have gone to the police, hired a solicitor, done something other than disappear.’ She presses her fingers to her eyes. ‘It seems so futile now. I’ve placed all my life into letters. How pathetic. In a letter, something so small and insignificant it can get lost, wet and damaged, pushed through the wrong door… I’ve been a fool, Brynn, and I don’t think I can face them and have them judge me for that.’

The tragedy of it sits between us.

‘You can’t get those years back. But you can stop the silence.’

Helen laughs – a broken sound. ‘Reuben’s just had a heart attack. I can hardly show up at his bedside and demand answers.’

‘Why not? He owes you answers. He owes all of us answers.’

‘Because I’m terrified.’ The admission comes out barely above a whisper. ‘I’m terrified I’ll walk into that village and Kit and Jude will look at me the way Reuben wanted them to. Like I’m nothing. Like I was never their mother at all.’

I think about Jude’s face in the hospital room. The way he looked at me when he realised I’d kept something from him.

I understand that fear. More than I want to.