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Chapter fourteen

Wes

T he village post office squatted between the co-op and what used to be a tackle shop, its cedar shingles faded to the color of driftwood.

Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays—that was my routine.

Thirty-seven steps from the harbor path to the front door, nineteen more to the wall of mailboxes lining the back wall.

I'd been repeating the walk for years, and somehow, Eric had turned it into something worth examining.

The irony wasn't lost on me—I'd spent decades perfecting the art of invisibility, and now I caught myself wondering what he'd think of Mrs. Lin's hand-painted sign advertising fresh eggs or Noah Pelletier's pulley system he'd rigged to haul his lobster traps up from the dock.

"Morning, Wes."

I turned to see Sarah Lancaster emerging from the co-op, a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. She was Dr. Whitman's nurse, had been for fifteen years, and possessed the steady competence that made people confess their troubles without realizing it.

"Sarah."

"That young man staying with you—Eric? My Tom ran into him yesterday down by the old wharf. Said he was asking smart questions about storm damage patterns."

She shifted the bag's weight and studied my face. "Tom was impressed. Said the boy's got eyes that actually see what he's looking at."

"He's thorough."

"Tom said more than thorough. Said he listened like what we had to say mattered." Sarah smiled. "Island could use more of that kind of attention. The good kind, I mean."

I grunted something that might have passed for agreement and continued toward the post office. Box 47, my box, held the usual assortment—a propane bill, something from the marine supply catalog, and a seed company circular. Underneath, I found a white envelope heavier than the rest.

The return address made my hands go numb.

Morrison & Associates, Attorneys at Law, Caribou, Maine

It was Derek's hometown before his family moved to Whistleport when he was in kindergarten.

I stood in the narrow space between mailbox rows, my fingers trembling. The paper was expensive—the kind that suggested serious business conducted in paneled offices.

Opening it in the post office was risky. I needed privacy for the mystery envelope.

Eric was in the guest room when I returned to the cottage. I sat at the kitchen table and pulled out the unexpected envelope. My hands shook badly enough that I had to set it down twice, pressing my palms flat against the scarred wood until the trembling subsided.

The letter was brief. Professional. Devastating.

Dear Mr. Hunter,

We regret to inform you that Helen Louise Hunter passed away on October 8th following a brief illness. Per her instructions, funeral services were held privately for immediate family only.

As you were not listed among her emergency contacts, we were unable to notify you prior to the service. We are sending this notification to fulfill our legal obligations regarding next of kin.

Sincerely, James Morrison, Esq.

Helen Louise Hunter. Derek's mother. My aunt, though she'd made it clear years ago that she no longer acknowledged the relationship.

The paper slipped from my fingers, drifting like a white leaf to the floor. October 8th. Five days ago. She'd been dead for five days, and I'd been here fixing generators and teaching Eric how to splice rope while her body went into the ground surrounded by people who pretended I didn't exist.

Memories flooded back.

Derek in the hospital room next to mine, machines breathing for him while I lay there with a shattered knee and lungs that worked fine. The rush of doctors and nurses down the hall when his monitor flatlined.

Aunt Helen in the hallway afterward, her face transformed by grief into something sharp enough to cut. The slap that left my cheek stinging for hours—not because she'd hit me hard, but because she'd meant it with every fiber of her being.

I pressed my forehead against the cool surface of the table, breathing in the scent of old wood and coffee grounds and salt air that usually anchored me.

Aunt Helen was dead. The woman who'd baked me birthday cakes until I was fifteen and taught me to drive a stick shift in her ancient Buick. She called me her second son until the night her first son died because he'd been too drunk to navigate a curve.

She was dead, and I'd never get the chance to build a new bridge.

I bent to retrieve the letter from where it had fallen, fingers clumsy against the smooth paper. The words hadn't changed—she was still dead, the funeral still over, and my exile still complete.

The wood stove squatted in the corner of the living room like a patient animal, its firebox dark and cold despite the October chill that had begun creeping through the cottage walls.

I opened the iron door, revealing the nest of kindling and newspaper I'd laid that morning but never lit.

The letter fit perfectly among the tinder, white paper stark against brown twigs.

I found the matchbox on the mantel, fingers tracing its rough edges. One strike and Aunt Helen's death would become smoke and ash, another piece of my past reduced to carbon.

For some reason, I couldn't light the match. I closed the stove door and turned away.

"Wes?" Eric's voice drifted from the hallway, followed by the soft pad of sock feet against worn floorboards. "Everything okay? I heard you come in."

He appeared in the kitchen doorway, hair still mussed from whatever afternoon project had claimed his attention. He'd tucked his laptop under one arm, and he wore a look of gentle concern.

"I'm fine." The words came out flat, mechanical, and stripped of anything inviting questions or comfort.

Eric tilted his head. "You sure? You look—"

"Said I'm fine." I moved toward the hallway, brushing past him to the refuge of my bedroom.

"Wes—"

"Need to lie down. Knee's acting up."

It wasn't entirely a lie—my knee always ached when the barometric pressure went down, and there was a dip caused by a front moving in from the northwest. The real ache was deeper, in places I couldn't fix with ibuprofen and a heating pad.

Eric didn't follow me down the hallway. I heard him moving around the kitchen. He was probably brewing fresh coffee or grabbing a late-morning snack.

My bedroom door closed behind me with a click that sounded too final, like a deadbolt sliding into place. I sat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped between my knees, and stared at the pattern of wood grain in the floor planks.

He doesn't need this.

Eric had come to study resilience, not watch a grown man crumble because a letter arrived bearing news that should have mattered less after more than a decade of silence.

He doesn't need me.

That truth settled deeper, past the immediate pain of Aunt Helen's death and into the foundational grief that anchored me on Ironhook.

Eric was young, brilliant, and full of the kind of hope that made him see possibility where others saw only endings.

He deserved someone who could match that energy.

I lay back against the pillow, studying the ceiling beams. The wood was scarred from decades of weather and time, marked by knots and imperfections that had become as familiar as my own reflection.

Outside, the wind was picking up. I heard it test the cottage's defenses, rattling windows and finding every gap in the weatherstripping.

Soon, it would bring chilly rain, the October weather that made the island feel even more isolated than usual.

Eric would be trapped with me, watching me struggle with ghosts he couldn't see and wounds he couldn't heal.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to feel nothing at all.

The need to move finally drove me from the bed hours later, when shadows had stretched long enough to claim most of the cottage, and my bladder had reached the point where ignoring it became impossible. I crept down the hallway like a burglar in my own home.

I'd barely returned to my bedroom when I inhaled the scent—coffee, rich and dark, with the faintest hint of vanilla that meant Eric had pulled out my stash of flavored creamer.

I pressed my ear to the door, waiting for the sound of footsteps or the rustle of movement that would signal his presence in the hallway.

Silence.

The aroma was powerful enough that I decided to open the door. There, wedged up against the threshold, I found a wooden tray. The mug was my favorite—thick ceramic with a chip near the handle that my thumb had worn smooth over years of use. Steam curled from its surface.

Beside the coffee, a sandwich wrapped in wax paper waited. Through the translucent wrapping, I saw thick slices of what looked like the sourdough bread Eric had bought on his last trip to Whistleport, layered with sliced turkey and cheese.

A small yellow Post-it note was stuck to the wax paper. Eric's meticulous handwriting spelled out three words: Just in case.

I stared at the tray for a long moment, waiting for anger or irritation to surface—some emotion that would justify pushing the gesture away like I'd pushed away everything else. Instead, gratitude unfurled in my chest.

The coffee was perfect. Strong enough to cut through the fog in my head and sweet enough to remind me that comfort could come in small doses. I carried the mug back to my room and left the sandwich where it was.

The sandwich remained on the hallway tray while the sun finished its descent toward the horizon.

I found reasons to avoid the hallway—organizing my sock drawer with military precision, reading the same page of a Coast Guard manual three times without absorbing a single word, and staring out the bedroom window at the darkening water until my eyes ached from the strain.

The last gray light faded from the water while I sat there, and still, I didn't move—as if staying in my room could somehow keep the rest of the world at bay.