Page 186 of Pull Me Under

It was Kit’s idea. After everything came out – the affair, the letters, the decades of lies – he’d sat me and Jude down in Nina’s café and laid it out like a business proposal. The Trelawneys had the shed, and I definitely have the skills. The Hardings had the boats, the contacts, the fishing crews who needed repairs done.

‘Trelawneys and Hardings have always been competition,’ Kit said. ‘Maybe it’s time to try being partners instead.’

I’d expected Jude to resist. He’d not want me to be tied in with the legacy of another family business.

But Jude had just looked at me. At the shed through the window. At the future waiting to be built.

‘Partners,’ he’d said. And that was that.

Reuben had opinions, of course. Reuben always has opinions. But Reuben’s opinions don’t carry the weight they used to. He’s still in the cottage. Still recovering, though he’s stronger now – strong enough to walk to the harbour most days, to sit on the bench by the sea wall and watch the boats come and go. He spends time with Maisie and the community he’s always lived in, although he doesn’t consume as many pints of Cornish ale as he once did. Isla, when she came back from New York, only a couple of weeks after Kit and Maisie, put him on a strict regime of tofu and green juices.

He complained, but he drinks the juices.

We don’t talk much. But we talk.

He nodded at me in the harbour last Tuesday. Said ‘Morning,’ and I said it back. For Reuben, that’s practically an embrace.

It started about a month after Bristol. Jude came back from visiting him one evening, quiet and thoughtful, and when I asked what happened he just said, ‘He apologised. For the letters. For lying about Mum.’

‘Did you forgive him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jude had stared out the window for a long time. ‘He was wrong. What he did was unforgivable. But he was also… He was hurt, Brynn. She cheated on him. She was leaving him for another man. And instead of falling apart, he just … hardened. Turned all that pain into a cruel protective mechanism.’

‘That doesn’t excuse it.’

‘No. It doesn’t.’ He’d turned to look at me then. ‘But it explains it. And I think I needed to understand before I could figure out what comes next.’

What comes next, it turns out, is messier than forgiveness but more honest than pretending. Jude visits him twice a week. They talk about the boats, the weather, the fishing quotas – safe subjects, neutral ground. Sometimes Kit joins them when he’s in town. Helen hasn’t seen him, isn’t ready for that, and Reuben hasn’t asked.

Maybe he never will. Maybe some bridges stay burned.

But last week, when Jude told him about the university acceptance, about finally pursuing marine biology, Reuben had gone quiet for a long moment. Then he’d said, ‘Your mother always said you were too clever for fishing.’

It was the first time he’d mentioned Helen without bitterness.

It’s not much. But it’s a start.

Helen’s coming for Sunday lunch.

It’s become a thing – once a fortnight, sometimes more. She drives down from Bristol, stays in the spare room at mine and Jude’s place (because yes, we have a place now, the cottage that used to be my grandfather’s, almost fixed up and warm with summer sun, and finally feeling like home). She brings wine and stories and the kind of maternal fussing that still makes Jude go quiet sometimes, overwhelmed by having what he spent twenty years missing.

Lily comes too, when she can. She’s started at Bristol Uni – marine biology, of all things, which made Jude laugh until he cried when she told him. ‘Must be genetic,’ she’d said, and he’d hugged her so hard she’d complained about her ribs.

It’s strange, having a sister. Strange and wonderful and occasionally infuriating, because Lily has opinions about everything and she’s not shy about sharing them. But I wouldn’t trade her for anything.

The boat launch is next weekend.

I’ve invited everyone – Helen, Lily, Kit and Isla and Maisie if they can make it. Nina’s doing the catering. Tom’s promised to keep his opinions about seaworthiness to himself. Even Cal and Cass are coming despite the lack of sleep they are suffering from baby Ellie.

Jude’s deferring his first week of lectures to be there. ‘I’m not missing this,’ he said when I told him the date. ‘I’ve watched you build that boat from a wreck. I’m going to watch her sail.’

‘She might sink.’

‘She won’t sink.’

‘She might. First voyage. Anything could happen.’

‘Brynn.’ He’d taken my face in his hands, the way he does when he wants me to really hear him. ‘That boat is not going to sink. You know why?’