The Gate Between Us

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“Take your hands off my gate.”

Finn Rook turned, and nine years disappeared from Isla Calder's body.

Her mind remembered them. Her body, apparently, was an idiot.

He stood outside the Blue Room with a red warning flag beneath one arm. He still tipped his head when he listened, as if every word deserved his attention. It had once made her feel like the only person on earth. Now she wondered how many women knew that look.

“Morning, Isla.”

“Is it?”

“Not for swimming.”

Behind him, the bay glittered beneath a perfectly ordinary blue sky. Twenty people had booked her first open-water session. The beach club her aunt had left her needed every one of them.

Finn held out his phone. A weather warning filled the screen.

“The front's moving faster than expected.”

“I've read it.”

“Then you'll cancel.”

“I'll decide what happens at my business.”

He lowered the phone. “Of course.”

The easy agreement wrong-footed her. She had prepared for a fight. Fighting him was safer than remembering the last time those hands had touched her.

A delivery van honked behind her car. Isla stepped back, caught her suitcase on a cracked paving stone, and dropped the bag containing every pastry for the opening.

Finn reached for it.

“Don't.”

He stopped immediately.

She crouched. Three croissants had escaped onto the pavement. A fourth lay against his boot, looking as defeated as she felt.

“Welcome home,” she said to it.

Finn made a sound dangerously close to a laugh.

“Find that funny?”

“Not the pastry.”

Their eyes met. There it was again, the stupid thing her chest did. As if it had been waiting beside a window all this time.

She took the warning flag from him.

“I'll check the conditions with my assistant. You can go.”

“Your aunt used to threaten me with that flag.”

“My aunt had excellent judgment.”

“Usually.”

He looked at the building, and his expression changed. Mags had been dead for six weeks. For one brief, inconvenient moment, Isla saw grief rather than an enemy's son.

Then he walked down the steps, and she could breathe badly in private.

The Blue Room smelled of old wood, coffee, and Mags's lavender hand cream. Its broad windows faced the bay. Her aunt's handwritten menu still offered a free biscuit to anyone having a particularly rotten Tuesday.

It was Thursday. Isla ate one anyway.

Her assistant arrived carrying a bag of clean towels. Bea was thirty, brisk, and blessedly uninterested in the Calder family legend.

“That's the lifeboat captain, isn't it?”

“Among other unfortunate qualities.”

“Did you two murder someone together?”

“Worse. We dated.”

Bea looked through the window. “How tragically inconvenient for you.”

“Please arrange the chairs.”

By ten, the wind had changed. Isla went down to the shore with Bea, checked the updated warning, and returned without taking anyone into the water.

She did not need Finn Rook to be right. The sea was perfectly capable of doing that itself.

Her father arrived as she wrote SESSION MOVED INDOORS on the blackboard.

Tom Calder wore his harbor association jacket, although nobody had asked him to represent anything.

“Good,” he said. “You've seen sense.”

“I usually do.”

“People remember what happened.”

“So do I.”

He glanced at her bare legs below her shorts. The old scar on her knee had faded to silver. His eyes always found it before they found her face.

“I promised Mags I'd help.”

“Then put out another twelve mugs.”

He remained beside the counter.

“Was that a Rook at the gate?”

“Finn brought the warning.”

“The station could have sent anyone.”

“Yes. They might have sent someone you like. Then we'd have had nothing to discuss.”

Her father's jaw tightened.

Their families had disliked each other before Isla was born. The original quarrel involved a boatyard, a boundary, and two men now dead. Nobody could explain it without taking twenty minutes. Since the accident, they no longer needed to try.

Tom picked up a mug.

“Don't let him make a fool of you twice.”

The words landed exactly where he intended. Isla turned back to the blackboard before he could see.

The customers arrived in coats over swimming costumes. Some were disappointed. One demanded to know why an instructor advertised sea swimming if she feared a little weather.

“I don't fear weather,” Isla said. “I respect it.”

Her father stepped forward.

“Given my daughter's history, naturally we're being cautious.”

Silence spread between the tables.

Isla could feel the familiar story settling over her. Reckless girl. Injured brother. Young lover from the wrong family. The person who left town when everyone else stayed to suffer.

She put down her pen.

“My history includes nine years teaching swimming and diving,” she said. “Today you're getting a dry-land introduction and a full credit for another session. If that doesn't suit, I'll refund you.”

The complaining man folded his arms.

“And what are we supposed to do indoors?”

“Start by telling me what frightens you about the water.”

“I didn't say anything frightens me.”

“No. You made that very clear.”

A woman near the window laughed. Then she raised her hand.

“Not being able to see the bottom.”

“Thank you,” Isla said. “That's where we'll begin.”

An hour later, nobody had left. They were laughing over cups of tea, comparing childhood swimming disasters. Isla moved between the tables, listening, helping people name the things they had been embarrassed to admit.

She did not notice Finn in the doorway until the woman near the window asked whether he'd been afraid during a rescue.

“Frequently,” he answered.

“Really?”

“Fear's useful. Pretending you don't have any is less useful.”

He looked at Isla as he said it. She hated how badly she wanted to know whether he meant the sea.

When the room emptied, Tom carried the cups into the kitchen. Finn remained beside the biscuit tin.

“You did well,” he said.

“I wasn't waiting for a review.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you here?”

He set a small cardboard box on the counter.

“Mags asked me to fix the latch on this. I didn't get it back before she went into hospital.”

Inside lay her aunt's wooden keepsake chest. Isla recognized the painted gull, one wing larger than the other. She had painted it at twelve.

For a moment she couldn't speak.

Finn slid the box closer without touching her.

“She liked the crooked wing.”

“She said symmetry was for people without imagination.”

“She said that about my haircut too.”

Isla laughed before she could stop herself. The sound hurt.

Finn's gaze fell to her mouth. It lingered just long enough for warmth to travel up her neck.

She stepped back.

“Did you have to bring it yourself?”

“No.”

He could have blamed a heavy box, a difficult latch. Instead, he met her eyes.

“I wanted to see you.”

Her hand tightened on the counter. Outside, her father's car was still parked beside hers. She could almost hear what he would make of that sentence.

“And now you have.”

“Yes.”

“I'm not twenty anymore, Finn.”

“I noticed.”

Something in his voice made her look up. For a moment neither pretended to be discussing a delivery.

She wanted him to notice everything: the years she'd survived, the work she'd learned, the woman who could send him away. She hated that wanting almost as much as she liked the way he stood waiting for her answer.

“This doesn't make us friends.”

“I wasn't assuming it did.”

She moved the box between them. It was the only barrier she trusted herself to lift.

“Thank you for bringing it.”

He nodded and left. This time she watched him go.

Upstairs, Mags's bedroom remained exactly as she'd left it. A book lay facedown beside the bed. Isla opened the chest on the quilt.

There were photographs, foreign coins, a tiny velvet shoe. Beneath them sat an envelope addressed to Isla in handwriting she knew better than her own.

Finn's handwriting.

The date was nine years old.

She unfolded the page.

I came to the hospital again. Your father says you don't want me there. If that's true, tell me yourself and I'll respect it. But don't leave believing I wanted this. I'll wait at the station before the early bus.

Isla read it twice. Then she called the number he'd written on today's weather notice.

He answered on the second ring.

“Is everything all right?”

“You wrote to me.”

A pause.

“Yes.”

“I never got it.”

Outside, the wind struck the window hard enough to rattle the glass.

“I waited,” Finn said quietly.

Her hand tightened around the letter.

“Then why weren't you there when I left?”

“I was, Isla. Your father told me you'd already gone.”