When the Tide Brought Him Back Chapter 02
In the morning, Elena woke to gulls and to light coming through curtains she had forgotten were yellow. For a moment she did not know where she was, and then the whole of yesterday returned at once: the drive, the blue house, the photograph, and the words on its back. She made coffee in Rose’s kitchen, using the old percolator that sputtered and hissed, and she sat at the table with a notebook and tried to make a practical list. Call the solicitor. Look at the roof. Find out what the house was worth. Decide whether to sell. It was a short list, and it looked easy on paper, but every item on it felt like a small betrayal.
The solicitor, Mr. Bennett, was a kind man in his sixties who had known Rose for forty years. He met Elena in his office above the bakery, offered her tea, and spoke gently about the will. Rose had left the house to Elena with no debts and no conditions, except for one request written in her own hand: that Elena should live in the house for at least a little while before she decided what to do with it. “She said a house needs a person in it to tell you what it wants,” Mr. Bennett said, smiling. Elena laughed, a little unsteadily, because that sounded exactly like Rose. She promised to stay for a week, and as she left the office, she told herself that a week was reasonable, and that it changed nothing.
Outside, Seabrook was waking up properly. Fishermen unloaded crates on the quay. A woman swept the steps of the small library. A hand-painted sign in a shop window advertised a summer fair that had not happened yet. Elena walked down Harbour Lane with her camera around her neck, because it was the only way she knew how to look at a place without feeling overwhelmed by it. Through the lens, the town became manageable: a door, a boat, a rope coiled neatly on a wall. She photographed the peeling shutters of the blue house, the roses, the harbour at mid-morning, and she felt something she had not felt in years, a quiet attention that was not about a deadline.
At the harbour, she stopped. The boat repair yard was still there, though it was larger now, with a new shed and a painted sign that read Hale and Son, Boat Repairs. A man in a work shirt was crouched beside a small wooden boat, sanding its hull with steady, practised movements. Elena raised her camera without thinking, and then she lowered it again, because she knew that back, those shoulders, and the way he pushed his hair out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. Thomas Hale had grown taller and broader, and there was a scar on his forearm she did not remember, but it was him, unmistakably him, and her heart began to beat too fast.
He looked up, and for a second neither of them moved. Then he stood, wiped his hands on a rag, and said, “Elena.” Just her name, flat and careful, as if he were testing whether it still fit. She said his name back, and her voice sounded strange to her own ears, too bright and too nervous. They stood on the quay with the water between them and the whole town going about its business, and Elena understood that ten years had not made this easier. He asked if she was home for long. She said she did not know yet, which was true, and also a kind of cowardice. He nodded, as if he had expected that answer, and said he was sorry about Rose. “She was a good woman,” he said. “She came down here most Sundays to look at the boats.”
Elena wanted to say more, to explain why she had come back, to ask about his life, to apologise for the way they had parted, but the words tangled in her throat. Thomas turned back to his boat, and she understood that he was giving her a way out, and also that she did not want to take it. “Thomas,” she said, before she could stop herself, “would you look at the house sometime? The shutters need fixing, and I don’t know where to start.” It was not the most honest reason to ask, but it was a true one, and he looked at her for a long moment before he said, “Tomorrow, after the yard closes. I’ll bring tools.” Elena walked home with her camera swinging against her side and her hands shaking, and she did not take a single photograph for the rest of the afternoon, because she was too busy remembering what it had felt like to be known by someone in this town.