‘It isn’t the same and you know it. One is a pure freak accident. The other...you’re deliberately putting yourself into a hostile environment. I can’t have Seth living like that. Always watching the door and wondering.’
‘You’re telling me not to go.’
‘No.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘I’m desperately hoping that you won’t want to, any more.’
It was like a black, oily slick, spreading through his body, into his brain, clogging his mouth.
Something in him wanted to oblige. He could feel his throat tightening and loosening as though preparing for the words, but they never came.
All he could do was shake his head. Once. Brusquely. As though that might ease the white light pain slicing through his head.
He heard the sob thicken her throat even as she pushed her words past it, valiantly holding herself together.
‘That’s what I thought.’ The words so sorrowful, so wispy, that he barely heard them before the wind whipped them away.
And when she stumbled away from him, he didn’t try to stop her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AS THE LIGHTWEIGHT, fast vessel powered its way through the churning waters, Tia held tightly to the grab-rail and scanned the expanse of water, along with the other three crew members.
There was no sign of their Mayday call-out—a young girl whose dinghy had apparently been swept out of the bay—and Tia’s last shout with Delburn Bay’s lifeboat crew.
With everything that had happened with Zeke, staying here was no longer an option. The place held almost as many memories for her as Westlake. It was time for a fresh start, in a completely new place. And even if her heart was breaking, she had no time to indulge it; her son needed her to be strong.
He needed her to be good enough to make up the role of two parents. And she wouldn’t let him down.
‘There, what’s that just off your bow?’ she yelled, suddenly spotting a movement on the jagged rocks below the towering cliffs that lined up either side of the bay. ‘Redheart’s Point.’
The crew all peered harder, the glare of the sun off the water hampering their efforts. But eventually Billy, the lifeguard she had met that first day in the office, bobbed his head in agreement.
‘There’s someone on those rocks and it looks like they’re trying to hail us. Have we got any more intel on the scenario?’
‘Nothing. I’m taking her in,’ the helmsman concurred, as he turned the boat and headed towards the cliffs.
Tia pursed her lips. This was a dangerous stretch of coast. The water was never very deep and the wrecks of multiple fishing boats posed an additional danger to the hull of their lifeboat. But there was no way down to, or up from, the beach at Redheart’s Point. And twice a day it got swallowed up by the tide. Whoever was waving to them would have no way off their rapidly shrinking beach if her lifeboat crew didn’t get in to them.
Dan, their helmsman, made several attempts, but the swell kept lifting and buffeting them, threatening to smash them against the small jagged rocks that occasionally tipped their sharp heads above the swirling water, like razor fish coming to the surface of the sand.
‘We could veer out?’ Billy suggested.
Dan shook his head.
‘There’s too much submerged just below the boat. It’s too great a risk.’
‘I don’t mind getting in and heading onto the beach,’ Tia suggested.
‘You stay here,’ Vinny, the third crew member, jumped in immediately. ‘It’s bad enough that you’re leaving. We can’t have anything happening to you, as well.’
‘Funny.’ Tia punched him lightly on the arm, but it was heartening to hear she would be missed. Her ego could do with a bit of massaging at the moment.
‘Wait, let these three waves go and then I’ll get you as close as possible.’ Dan delayed his crewman. ‘We’ll come in as soon as you radio us.’
‘Stay safe,’ Tia instructed as Vinny began to scramble over the side.
They watched as he braced himself and dropped into the water.
‘“Smoke me a kipper,”’ he quoted, taking the bag Billy was passing him and getting clear of the boat before a wave smashed him against it.