Page 21 of Pull Me Under

He sidesteps me – surprisingly quick for someone with bad knees – and before I can grab his arm, he’s at the shed door. Doesn’t knock. Of course he doesn’t knock. Reuben Harding has never knocked on a door in his life.

The door slams open, and there she is.

Brynn’s at the workbench, reading what looks like Peter’s old maintenance manual, cup of tea at her elbow like she lives here. Which she does now, I realise – there’s a sleeping bag on the camp bed, a holdall tucked underneath, steel-toed boots lined up by the door. She’s moved in. She looks up slowly, deliberately, like she was expecting this exact moment and has been rehearsing her expression.

‘Mr Harding,’ she says, voice steady as a held breath. ‘Took you longer than I expected.’

Dad fills the doorway. All wounded authority and twenty years of fermented rage.

‘You think you can just show up and slip back in like nothing happened?’

Brynn doesn’t move from the workbench. Just leans against it like he’s weather she’s decided to wait out. ‘I don’t recall asking for your blessing.’

‘Your family left this town in ruins⁠—’

‘We left quietly.’ Her jaw twitches – the only crack. ‘At three in the morning, actually. And for reasons none of you ever bothered to ask about.’

That lands. I see it hit in the way his shoulders tighten, the pause before his next attack. ‘Your grandfather was a coward and a thief.’

‘My grandfather was a fisherman who built half the boats in this harbour.’ She sets down Peter’s manual with deliberate care. ‘Including yours, if memory serves.’

‘Memory serves nothing when it comes to Trelawneys. You twist everything⁠—’

‘I was seven.’ She says it like laying down a card. Simple. Factual. Devastating. ‘Seven years old when we left. So whatever sins you’re laying at my feet, Reuben Harding, you’d better be sure they’re mine to carry.’

She stands then, and I realise how small she is next to Dad’s bulk. How young she must have been. How none of us ever really knew what happened – just that one day the Trelawneys were gone and we weren’t supposed to ask why.

‘You come back here,’ Dad’s building up, face going a shade of red that usually precedes a visit from Dr Abott, ‘thinking you can just claim what you abandoned⁠—’

‘What we own.’ She cuts him off clean. ‘What we’ve always owned. What you’ve been using rent-free for two decades while you told everyone it was a business rivalry.’

‘It was a business⁠—’

‘It wasn’t.’ Her eyes are black and steady. ‘And you know it.’

‘You ungrateful⁠—’

‘Dad.’ I grab his arm. He shakes me off, hard enough that I stumble, the bad leg buckling for a second.

‘Don’t you touch me, boy.’

His face hardens – a look I’ve spent twenty-seven years learning to read. A look that doesn’t need fists because words have always done enough damage. The look that says, You’re not Kit, you’re not enough, you’re not the son I wanted for this. He wields disappointment the way other men wield their hands, and the bruises last longer.

‘Then stop,’ I say, and my voice comes out harder than I intended. Low and flat, the voice I use on the lifeboat when things are going sideways. ‘You want to yell at ghosts, do it on your own time. Not here.’

He turns on me then, and the pause stretches – him calculating, me not backing down. It’s a new dynamic, this. I’ve spent my life stepping aside for him, letting Kit be the one who pushed back because Kit had the currency of being the favourite. But Kit’s not here. And I’m tired of stepping aside.

‘You don’t know what they did,’ he says, low enough that only I can hear. ‘What they cost this family.’

‘Then tell me. Because all I’ve got is business rivalry, and we both know that’s bollocks.’

A memory shifts behind his gaze, only a shadow, and only for a second – just a second – he looks old. Not angry-old. Lost-old. It’s a confusion I’ve been pretending not to notice for months.

Then it’s gone, and he’s Reuben again.

‘You’ll learn,’ he says, backing towards the door. He points at Brynn like a curse, but his hand isn’t quite steady. ‘You don’t belong here, girl. Never did. And I won’t stand by while you—’ He stops. Blinks. Then: ‘while your mother’s lot poison this place all over again.’

Your mother’s lot. Brynn’s not her mother. Brynn’s mother left when she was a baby. He’s mixing things up again – confusing the generations, the grievances, the women. But he’s already slamming the door, hard enough to rattle the tools on the wall, and the moment to question it has passed.