Chapter 17: Not the Mornings

By morning I had called a lawyer in Bellingham, and she gave me Monday at nine to take Declan's name off my will.

Until I signed, Frances said, I would eat only what she cooked and drive nowhere alone.

I agreed to all of it.

I walked across the lawn at ten that night in my boots and my mother's green dress.

It was the first thing I had touched in the dark.

The boatyard light was on, as he had said it would be.

Jude opened the shed door before I could knock.

He looked tired, and he did not smile.

"Is Joelle all right?" he said.

"She's asleep in the sunroom. Frances is sitting up with a poker."

"Good."

"I came to tell you what I meant," I said. "At the post office."

He leaned on the doorframe and waited.

"I froze," I said. "He stood there and said it, and I couldn't make my mouth work. It wasn't that I wanted him."

"I know what I saw."

"You saw a woman who had been awake all night, and who is afraid of her husband."

His jaw moved.

"He told the whole line you'd go back when the baby came," he said. "You said you were staying, Hanna. That's all you said."

"In my house. I said I was staying in my house."

"I heard it."

"Then hear this." My voice shook. "I will never go back to him. Not for the baby, not for the inn, not for anything."

"If I have to live in that kitchen with a poker for the rest of my life, I will not."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he put his hand on the back of my neck, under the braid, and drew me in.

His mouth was warm, and he kissed me hard, without any caution left.

I grabbed his shirt in both fists.

"The room," I said against his lips. "Now."

We did not make it to the bunk.

He backed me against the boathouse wall, inside the little room, with the door kicked shut behind us.

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