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Forcing herself to her feet, her bounding pulse returned. Water was washing over the landing, the rock pools at the base of the island beginning to overflow. She had to act, one way or the other—up the stairs or return to the safety of the shore.
On the pier, she could see the fisherman’s rod bending, his line taut with tension. The child beside him was jumping up and down in anticipation.
Dillon turned away. Her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. Above her, the gull cried again, still circling. She took one step up the staircase, glancing at the lighthouse, and then looked back to the mainland.
Her father had once told her the flood tide was unswimmable.
But he’d been gone so long, he’d never really had a chance to know her.
She turned—away from the lighthouse, away from the stairs—and dove headfirst into the water.
The brass knob turned reluctantly as the door creaked open, twelve years of dust weighing on its hinges.
Dillon froze. The room was musty: salt, brine, and wood rot hanging thick in the air. And somewhere beneath it, the subtle scent of cologne—an aroma she’d almost forgotten. Her skin pricked with gooseflesh underneath her sea-soaked clothing.
She took a breath. It was time to face this.
For the first time in more than half her life, she stepped across the threshold of her father’s study.
It was smaller than she remembered it. The rosewood desk seemed less majestic, the wall of books less imposing. But it was otherwise unchanged. The evening of his funeral, her mam had closed the door, and the room was never mentioned between the three Sinclairs again. A well-preserved time capsule oblivious to the life that had continued on around it.
Her damp trainers left a trail of footprints as she slowly took inventory of the once-familiar surroundings. There was the antique turntable beside the radiator and his Beaufort jacket hanging on the wall. She stopped in front of an end table. A weathered copy ofTheory of Elasticitylay open, his glasses propped between the pages, marking a passage that no longer mattered.
Closing the book, she ran her fingers along the broken spine, before crossing the room to his wingback chair. The scent of his cologne was strongest here. She could still see the indent of his elbow on the leather of the armrest. It was the same chair where he’d been sitting when, at four years old, she burst into his study to show him she’d learned how to whistle. Despite his maze of blueprints and ongoing business call, he’d tugged her onto his lap and listened with pride to the shrill, breathy warble. All these years later, and she could still feel the scratch of his five o’clock whiskers, and hear the smile in his voice as he told her he’d never been prouder.
There was nothing she wouldn’t give to hear those words again.
Setting the memory aside, she leaned over his desk, pausing to look at a faded calendar. Beneath a layer of dust, the final month of his life was frozen in time.
Her breath hitched.
July, the 27thwas circled in red, the word DILLON written in capital letters.
Unsteady, she sank into the empty chair to keep her knees from buckling. He’d marked the day of her Olympic debut, twelve years earlier.
For a long time, she sat in silence and stared at her dad’s handwriting, before eventually allowing her gaze to drift to the shadows of the open beams in the ceiling.
She didn’t know how he had done it, putting their mam through that. Did he know she’d be the one to find him?
Or, had he ever considered Seren would feel obligated to move back home, that she’d spend her life trying to fill the hole he’d left in their family?
The tightness in her chest shifted, her sorrow disintegrating to anger.
And what abouther? Had he realized the effect his death would have on her? The darkness that would follow?
Lunging to her feet, she swept the calendar to the floor, suddenly finding the emptiness of the room suffocating. She threw open a long-rusted window.
Along the shore, the moored sailboats bobbed in the high tide, their masts reflecting the late afternoon sun as it slipped toward the horizon.
She closed her eyes, allowing the fresh air to fan her burning cheeks and listened to the waves break against the headland.
Her resentment was misplaced. She knew she couldn’t blame him.
Because, deep down, she understood. His hurt. His need to escape it.
But she also knew what it was like to be the one left behind, to carry that guilt on her shoulders.
It wasn’t something she could do to the people she loved—to the people who loved her.
