Read Chapter 32: The Shipwreck

The wind had teeth in it by the time Camille reached the cottage at Anse du Corbeau. She didn't remember driving there. Her hands were still shaking from the confrontation with her father, from the weight of what he'd told her about the ledgers, about her mother, about the storm that had nearly taken them both. The houseboat was only a dark shape at the end of the jetty, its mast ticking against the sky like a metronome measuring her indecision.

She sat in the car with the engine running, watching the water churn. The bay that had seemed so calm all summer was showing its winter face now, whitecaps marching in from the open sea like an advancing army. Her phone glowed on the passenger seat for the dozenth time. Yann's name. Yann's name. Yann's name.

She reached for it, then pulled her hand back.

The cottage key was warm in her jacket pocket, still new, still strange. Her father's words echoed in the empty space between her thoughts. *The contents will tear the village apart.* And Yann's voice beneath that, calling with something like desperation, though she'd refused to answer long enough that his calls had stopped coming.

She should go inside. Build a fire. Sleep. Decide what to do with the morning.

Instead, she watched the houseboat rock on its moorings, and she thought about how easy it would be to cast off and let the tide take her somewhere she didn't have to choose.

That was when she saw the light.

A small, bobbing glow, low on the water, moving away from the harbor. Lantern light. And behind it, the shape of a man pulling hard at the oars of a dinghy, making straight for her father's boat.

Camille's heart stopped. Then restarted, faster.

She knew that silhouette. She'd have known it anywhere, even in the dark, even against the black water. Yann.

He reached the houseboat and shipped his oars, reaching up to catch the rail. She watched him haul himself aboard, unsteady, and she realized with a jolt of something like horror that she'd left the boat untied when she'd come ashore earlier. It was drifting — slowly, imperceptibly, but drifting. And Yann was on it, and the storm was coming in fast, and he was about to be carried out past the point where the tide turned.

She threw the car door open and ran.

The jetty stones were slick with spray. She slipped once, twice, scraping her palm raw on the granite, and kept running, calling his name into the wind. But the wind threw her voice back at her like a slap.

The houseboat was already thirty yards out. Forty. He'd found the oars on deck and was trying to paddle it back, but the boat was too heavy for that, too slow, and the current was pulling it sideways now toward the mouth of the cove.

"Yann!" she screamed. "YANN!"

He turned. She saw his face in the lantern light, pale and furious and heartbroken all at once. He shouted something back, but the words dissolved in the roar of the surf.

Then the light went out.

No. Not out. *Over.*

The houseboat — her father's boat, her boat, the only home she'd known that hadn't required her to perform some version of herself — gave a long, groaning sigh and rolled onto its side like a dying whale. The mast hit the water with a crack she felt through her feet. And Yann went with it, swallowed by the black.

Camille didn't think.

She tore off her jacket and boots and ran into the sea.

The cold took her breath away instantly, a shock so complete it felt like being born or dying. She fought through the first wave, then the second, and when the third knocked her under she stopped fighting the water and started swimming with it. Her mother had taught her this, years ago, in this same cove. *Never fight the sea, Camille. It always wins. You have to ask it to let you pass.*

She asked.

The water dragged her sideways, slammed her into a rock shelf, tore a cry from her throat that became a mouthful of salt. She surfaced, gasping, and saw the lantern bobbing twenty yards ahead. Just the lantern. No sign of Yann.

She swam.

Her arms were lead. Her lungs were fire. The current pulled at her like it wanted to keep her, wanted to add her to the collection of things it had taken over the years — the fishermen, the tourists, the ones who'd thought they could cross this bay at night and make it home.

He surfaced three yards from her. Gasping, sputtering in the dark. She saw his hand break the surface, then sink again.

She dove.

The water was black. Completely, absolutely black, like swimming through ink. She closed her eyes and felt for him blindly, arms sweeping in wide circles, lungs burning, heart pounding a desperate drumbeat against her ribs.

Her fingers brushed his collar. Then his arm. She grabbed it — both hands, the way her mother had screamed at her never to grab a drowning man, because he would pull her down with him — but she didn't care, she'd already decided she wasn't coming up without him.

He grabbed her back. His grip was iron, panicked. She almost lost him then, almost lost herself, but the wave came like a gift, lifting them both and throwing them toward the shore.

She kept her feet moving. Her knees hit sand. Then stone. Then more sand, and she dragged him with her, the water releasing them reluctantly, inch by inch, until they collapsed on the beach and lay there in the dark, gasping like landed fish, the storm raging above them.

For a long time, neither of them spoke.

The rain came down hard, washing the salt from their faces. Camille's hands were shaking. Her whole body was shaking. She turned her head and looked at him, and he was looking at her, and the anger that had been burning in her chest all night was suddenly, impossibly, gone, replaced by something she didn't have a name for.

"You're an idiot," she said. Her voice came out cracked and raw.

"I know."

"You almost drowned."

"I know."

"You came out in a fucking storm to get on my boat, and you didn't even tie your own dinghy."

He closed his eyes. Water streamed down his face. "I know."

She hit him. Not hard. Just on the shoulder, a weak, exhausted slap that landed more like a plea. "Why?"

He was silent for so long she thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he said, very quietly, "Because I couldn't let you leave without explaining. And I was too much of a coward to walk up to your door."

"You found my boat."

"I found your boat. You weren't there. It was untied. I thought — " He stopped. Swallowed. "I thought you'd already gone. And I couldn't stand it. So I went after it." A hollow laugh escaped him. "Stupidest thing I've ever done."

"It's up there." She sat up slowly, hugging her arms against the cold. "Marie. You were going to tell me about Marie and you didn't."

"I was."

"Why didn't you?"

He opened his eyes and looked at her. In the darkness, she could see the shape of his face, the shadow of his jaw, the way he was holding himself the way she'd seen him hold together every other broken thing in this village — with stubborn, silent determination.

"Because I knew you'd look at me the way you're looking at me now."

"How am I looking at you?"

"Like I'm a liar." He sat up too, shoulder to shoulder with her in the rain. "And I am. I was. I didn't tell you because I was ashamed. Because the story isn't what you think."

"Then tell me the story."

The waves clawed at the sand in the silence between them. He turned his face toward the sea, and she watched the rain carve rivulets down his skin.

"Okay," he said. "But not tonight. Tonight I just need you to know that I came out here because I was afraid of losing you. And I almost did." He looked at her. "I have papers. In my flat. If you want the truth, I'll show you. But don't ask me to tell it to you half-drowned in the dark. That's not fair to either of us."

She should have pushed. Maybe. But the storm was still raging, and her body was shaking, and the anger was gone, replaced by exhaustion and something fragile, like hope.

She looked at the water where the houseboat had been.

It was gone.

Her father's boat, her history, her future — dragged under by the current, or carried out to sea on the tide. She didn't know which. Maybe she'd never know.

"I need to see what your papers say," she said. "Tomorrow. In the light."

"I'll be there."

"You have a spare blanket in your truck?"

He let out a laugh that sounded half like a sob. "Always."