Read Chapter 28: The Mother's Confession

The Kincaid house smelled of peat smoke and lavender, a combination that usually soothed Isla. Tonight it only sharpened her unease. She stood at the kitchen window, watching the last of the sunset bleed into the Atlantic, while behind her Mrs. Kincaid sat at the table with a cup of tea that had long gone cold.

"I wanted you to stay," Mrs. Kincaid said.

Isla turned. The old woman looked smaller than she had ever seen her—shoulders curved, hands trembling around the cup. The woman who had fussed over Isla's colds, who had fed her scones after long days on the water, who had become something like family—that woman had never once looked like this.

"Say it again," Isla said. "Slowly."

Mrs. Kincaid set the cup down. "I sabotaged the Morven's fuel line. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry." Isla's laugh came out hollow. "That sabotage nearly killed me. Do you understand that? I could have gone over the rocks in a storm. I could have—"

"I know." The old woman's voice cracked. "I know, Isla. I've prayed about it a hundred times. I've begged the sea to forgive me. But I couldn't let you leave."

"Let me leave? I was leaving because I'd found nothing—"

"Because you were giving up." Mrs. Kincaid pushed herself to her feet, steadying herself against the table. "Because after months of searching, you'd concluded there was no sign of Ewan anywhere. And if you left, there'd be no one left who believed he might still be out there."

Isla pressed her fingers to her temples. "That's not justification. That's—that's delusion. You almost killed me to keep me searching for a son who you knew was dead."

"He wasn't dead." Mrs. Kincaid's voice dropped to a whisper. "He was never dead. You brought him back to me, Isla. In all your research, all your mapping of currents and seal patterns—you brought my boy home."

Isla's throat closed. "Tam is not—"

"You saw what happened on the shore tonight." Mrs. Kincaid took a step closer. "You saw the pelt react to his blood. You saw the pendant glow when Cleary tried to sever it. Don't stand there and tell me Tam is not my son when every bone in my body knows he is."

The truth sat between them, heavy and wet as a drowned rope. Isla had known since the cave. She had known when she saw the scar on the pelt mirrored on his back. But hearing it spoken aloud, in this kitchen where she'd eaten Sunday dinners and helped wash dishes—something cracked open inside her.

"Did you know Cleary would come?" Isla asked. "Did you fund him hoping he'd bring Ewan back?"

Mrs. Kincaid shook her head. "I funded him hoping he'd find Ewan. He claimed he could locate drowned souls. That his science—his machines, his sonar—could pinpoint where the bodies rested." She swallowed hard. "He said if Ewan was alive anywhere, he'd find him. It was the first hope I'd had in years."

"He lied to you."

"He did. But he also brought me the truth." Mrs. Kincaid reached out and took Isla's hands. Her skin was rough, warm. "I gave that man every penny of my husband's life insurance to find my boy. And instead, all these months, he was tracking Tam. Watching him. Learning his patterns. Preparing to take his pelt."

Isla pulled away. "You could have told me. Months ago. When I first told you about Tam. When I brought him to you. When you came to the bothy that night demanding his songs—you could have told me who you were to him."

"I didn't know then!" Mrs. Kincaid's voice broke into a raw cry. "I saw him and I felt something pull at me, something deep and terrible and hopeful, but I didn't know. He wore your clothes, spoke like a man raised on land. My son was a newborn when I lost him, Isla. A baby. I held him to my chest for three hours before the tide took him. How could I know the man in your spare room was him?"

"Because you hoped." Isla's voice hardened. "You hoped so hard you decided to wreck my boat."

"I did it because I couldn't bear to lose him all over again." Mrs. Kincaid's lips trembled. "Because if you left, and Cleary failed, and nothing remained—I'd have nothing. No hope. Just the cold water and the memory of his tiny hand."

Isla felt the anger drain out of her in a slow, sickening wave. She understood grief. She had been drowning in it her whole life, in her own way—her father's disappearance had hollowed her out and filled her with the sea. She had never forgiven the water for taking him. She had spent her career trying to understand what had happened to him by studying the creatures that shared his fate.

"Press charges," a voice said from the doorway.

Both women turned. Tam stood there, barefoot, wearing the jumper Isla had bought him in Stornoway. His pale hair was still damp from the sea. He looked at Mrs. Kincaid without accusation, without anger.

"You should press charges," he repeated, stepping into the room. "She endangered your life. She lied to you. You trusted her, and she violated that trust."

Isla frowned. "Tam—"

"Of course you should." He moved to the table, pulling out a chair. "An eye for an eye. A lie for a lie. Her deception meant yours could go unpunished, didn't it? The Morven was already compromised when you sabotaged it for Cleary's investigation. Her damage gave you cover."

"That's not—" Isla started.

"It is true." He sat, not looking at her, looking at Mrs. Kincaid. "I know your mind, Isla. I've swum in your thoughts enough to see the calculations you make. You're practical. You weigh justice and mercy on scales you think are even. But they never are."

Mrs. Kincaid was crying now, silent tears tracking down her cheeks.

Tam turned to her. "You lost a son. You found him. And in the finding, you broke the trust of the woman who brought him home." He placed his hand over hers. "Why did you wait so long to say it was you?"

"Because I was ashamed." Mrs. Kincaid's voice barely registered. "Because every time I looked at you, I saw someone I'd ruined things for."

"You haven't ruined things." Tam looked at his own hands, at the faint webbing between his fingers that appeared when the moon was high. "I spent my whole life not knowing who I was. I woke on this island with no memory, no name, no past. And now I know I'm the son of a woman who never stopped loving me."

Isla's chest tightened. "Tam, you can't just forgive—"

"Why not?" He looked up at her, his sea-gray eyes calm and warm. "You forgave me for being a stranger on your beach. I gave you nothing but questions and offered no answers. Yet you kept me. You protected me. Why?"

"Because—"

"Because you saw something worth loving." He smiled, small and sad. "She sees that too. She's my mother, Isla. She's held me in her arms when I was small enough to fit in a single hand. I don't remember it, but my body does. Somewhere in my bones, I know her."

Mrs. Kincaid let out a sob, and Tam moved to her, wrapping his arms around her thin frame. She buried her face in his shoulder, and Isla watched the two of them—mother and son, reunited after decades of the sea's cruel silence.

Isla's anger still simmered, but something else rose to meet it. A tenderness she couldn't name. A grief for her own father, who never came back to her, whom she'd never had the chance to forgive or be forgiven by.

"I won't press charges," she said quietly.

Mrs. Kincaid looked up, eyes red. "Isla—"

"The Morven was old." Isla reached for her jacket. "She'd seen better days. And you'll not do anything like that again, or I swear I'll hand you to the harbor master myself."

Mrs. Kincaid nodded, unable to speak.

"Tam," Isla said, moving toward the door. "We need to talk. About what happened on the shore. About what Cleary was trying to do."

Tam released his mother and rose. He looked at Mrs. Kincaid, then back at Isla. "There's something I need to tell you both. About who I am. About what I am."

"I know what you are," Mrs. Kincaid whispered.

"No," Tam said, and his voice carried a weight Isla had never heard there before. "You know what you think I am. The son you lost. The selkie you dreamed of. But there's something else—something the pelt hid until tonight. The scar on its surface, the one that hurts when I touch it—it's not an old wound. It was made the night I was born."

The kitchen fell silent.

"Made by whom?" Isla asked.

Tam looked at his mother, and the truth rose in his eyes like dark water. "By the woman who gave me to the sea. My mother—my human mother—she cut the pelt before she sent me into the waves. She did it so I could never fully return to the seals." His voice trembled. "And she did it to give me a mortal's deadline."

The night wind made the window rattle.

"A deadline for what?" Isla whispered.

Tam's hand went to his chest, over the place where the pendant had hung. "To stay human. Or to die trying."