The Secret Between Us novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Rain Shed

The next morning it rained so hard the harbor disappeared.

I went to the boat shed at seven with the key to my father's desk in my pocket.

The shed smelled of cedar and varnish, the way it had smelled my whole life.

A forty-foot hull sat on the cradle with its ribs showing.

My father stood under it with a rag in his hands, and he looked as if he hadn't slept.

"Isla," he said. "You didn't have to come this early."

"I needed something from your desk, Dad."

His hands went still on the rag.

"What something?"

"A piece of paper. The one that came in the mail three years ago."

He looked at the floor.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You do. It's in the second drawer, under the sander receipts."

The side door banged open before he could answer.

Rain blew in with a man behind it, and the man wiped his beard with the back of one hand.

"Morning, Fergus," Caleb said.

My father went gray all the way to his lips.

He had known this boy since the boy was seventeen, and he'd taught him to scarf a plank.

For a moment I thought he might cry, and then he did something stranger.

He dropped the rag and walked out of the shed into the rain without a coat.

"Dad!"

The door swung shut.

"He didn't say a word," Caleb said slowly.

"He's had a bad heart for a year. It was a shock."

"It was more than a shock."

I didn't want to look at that, so I went to the desk.

The second drawer stuck, as it always did, and I yanked it free.

Under the sander receipts lay a long cream envelope, gone soft at the folds.

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