Chapter 22: Main Street

Mara's POV

Rory put us ashore at the second pier at four o'clock.

The sky had cleared to a hard cold blue, and the harbour smelled of diesel and fish.

I stood on the planks with the crumpled photograph in my pocket.

I was so angry that I had stopped feeling my hands.

"I'm going to the café," I said.

"We're going home," Chan said. "We call the lawyer. We call the police."

"We'll do all that. First I'm going to the café."

"Mara, why?"

"Because he wants me to leave the light on in my house.

"I'm going to walk through my town with my head up in front of everyone I know."

Chan opened his mouth, and shut it.

He looked at Hyunjin.

Hyunjin pushed back his hood, folded the cap in half, and put it in his pocket.

His hair fell around his shoulders, black and glossy in the late sun.

"I'll go," he said.

"Hyunjin."

"If he's in the trees, he's in the trees. I can't make the trees go away.

"I want to walk up a street and not feel like a rabbit."

He held out his hand to me.

His fingers were long and cold, and they didn't shake.

I took it.

I laced my fingers through his and held on, and I felt the whole width of the pier look at us.

The harbour office door stood open. A man in a reflective vest stopped with a coil of rope on his shoulder.

He looked at the hand, and at the hair. He looked at me.

"Afternoon, Mara," he said.

"Afternoon."

"Cold one."

"It is."

He nodded to Hyunjin, gravely, as if to a visiting councillor, and went on coiling.

We started up Main Street.

It's four blocks from the harbour to the Driftwood, and I have walked them ten thousand times.

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