Chapter 4: Sister

I did not decide to do it.

I grabbed the long crab gaff off the boathouse wall and swung it at the drone.

It dipped, whined, and came back.

"Sorcha!" Velun hissed. "Get away from the edge."

"It's filming you!"

"It's filming a pool."

"It's filming a pool with a man in it!"

Then a sound hit the whole inlet, so loud and deep that the windows of the cottage hummed.

It was a ship's horn, the long, ugly bellow of a harbor tug.

The drone jerked sideways.

A yellow tug rounded the point with its bow lights burning.

A white-bearded man stood in the wheelhouse door with one hand on the horn cord.

He leaned on the horn again.

The drone wobbled, gave up, and shot away over the trees toward the headland.

I lowered the gaff.

"Gus," I said, and I started to cry for the first time all night.

Gus Pellam brought the tug alongside my dock at a speed no harbor master should use.

He climbed up onto the boards in his yellow slicker and looked at me, then at the boathouse, then at the gaff.

"Your father," he said, "would have used a net."

"I didn't have a net."

"You had a gaff and a nerve. It's close enough."

He crossed his arms.

"Brent Fenderson's truck was on the county road at five in the morning."

"His drone's been over my harbor all week. Want to tell me what that's about?"

"No."

"That's what your father used to say."

"I know."

"I'm sixty-eight, Sorcha. I have been to your birthday parties. Out with it."

I opened my mouth to lie.

A long silver hand came up over the lip of the pool behind me.

Gus saw it first.

The mug of coffee in his fist tilted, and the whole cup poured out onto the boathouse boards.

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