Chapter 6: Storm on the Dock

Lydia's POV

I couldn't sleep that night, so I went out to the end of the dock and let the storm find me.

It came up the river from the south, black and fast, with wind that smelled of rain and cut grass.

The first lightning lit the whole lawn white, and the house with every window dark.

In the book, you lose the house on Friday.

I had been saying those words over to myself for eight hours.

Nobody had ever lost a house to a girl with a tear-streaked face and a made-up novel, and yet there she'd been, wearing my dress.

The rain arrived all at once.

I stood in it with my arms wrapped around myself and let it soak me, because it was better than thinking.

"You'll catch your death out here."

I didn't turn around.

Kendrick came down the boards with a hurricane lamp in one hand and a man's black coat over his arm.

Under the other arm he carried a stack of four heavy books, wrapped in a tablecloth against the wet.

My father's atlases.

"You went back for them," I said.

"The cook's helper was going to put them in the attic. I had a better idea."

He put the books down on the dock under the overhang of the boathouse roof, and then he came and stood beside me.

He smelled like wet wool and a woodstove.

There was something different in the way he held himself.

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