Page 77 of Pull Me Under

Brynn’s standing now. Pale, but her voice is steady and controlled as she says, ‘My family left because yours made it impossible to stay. My grandfather lost everything. His business, his home, his reputation. And my father⁠—’

She stops. A frown flickers across her face, just briefly.

‘My father is DEAD because of your family.’

The words hit like stones. The pub goes absolutely silent.

‘He drank himself into a grave because of whatever happened here. Because of lies you told. Because of whatever YOU did to make us leave.’ She’s shaking now, but she doesn’t look away from Dad. ‘So don’t you dare stand there and act like the Trelawneys are the villains of this village. We weren’t the ones who destroyed anything. We were the ones who got destroyed.’

Dad’s face does fractures. His mouth works like he’s reaching for a response and finding fog where the words should be.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says, but his voice has lost its force. ‘You don’t know anything about what happened.’

‘Then tell me.’ Brynn steps closer. ‘Tell me what happened. Tell me why you hate us so much. Tell me why my father spent his whole life broken.’

For a long moment, nobody moves.

Then Dad turns and walks out.

He’s not walking away in fury. I can see it in the stiffness of his shoulders, the slight hesitation at the door. He’s walking away because he doesn’t trust what’s about to come out of his mouth. Because the script he’s relied on for twenty years – business rivalry, territory, what they cost us – has just been blown apart by a woman standing in a pub saying, My father is dead, and whatever the real story is, it’s pressing against the inside of his skull and he can’t hold it.

The door swings shut behind him.

Brynn stands there, breathing hard, hands clenched. The whole pub staring.

‘Show’s over,’ Tilly announces. ‘Next round’s on the house. Ayo, get pouring.’

The noise resumes – forced at first, then gradually natural. But Brynn’s already grabbing her jacket, heading for the door.

I follow without thinking.

She’s halfway down the harbour before I catch up.

‘Brynn. Wait.’

‘Leave me alone, Harding.’

‘Just – will you stop for one second?’

She stops. Turns. Her face is wet – tears or sea spray, I can’t tell – and her expression is somewhere between fury and devastation.

‘What?’ she demands. ‘What do you want?’

‘I didn’t know. About your father.’

She laughs – short, bitter. ‘No one knows. No one cares.’

‘That’s not true⁠—’

‘He was a good man.’ Her voice cracks. ‘Before. When I was little, before we left, he was a good man. He used to take me out on the boats, teach me the knots, tell me stories about the sea. And then everything changed, and he just … disappeared. Into a bottle. Into himself. I spent my whole childhood trying to reach him, and I never could.’

The wind is pulling at her hair, and she wraps her arms around herself.

‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘What made him⁠—’

‘I don’t know.’ Her shrug is heavy, the weight of the universe slumping her shoulders. ‘Something. Maybe someone.’ Her gaze narrows. ‘Someone like your father, perhaps. Running them out of town, all because of some insane rivalry over an ocean that’s more than big enough for everyone.’

‘My father’s not—’ I stop. Because I don’t actually know what my father is or isn’t capable of. I’ve spent my whole life taking his word for things, believing the cover story – the Trelawneys threatened our business, Walter undercut our contracts, poisoned the well. But standing here, looking at the wreckage of that story in Brynn’s face, it sounds exactly like what it is: a man repeating a script he wrote twenty years ago to cover up a history he doesn’t want to share.