Dominic's POV
There's a sound a man makes when the floor drops out of him, and it isn't a cry.
It's quieter.
It's a breath going out and not coming back.
"Say that again," I tell my brother.
Caleb is on the leather sofa in my father's study, with a tumbler in both hands and his tie hanging like a dead thing round his neck. Behind him, the portrait of Charles Hale glowers down from the wall. Rain slides over the windows. The fire is almost out.
He doesn't look up.
"Edmund gave me a bottle."
"When?"
"Nine o'clock. The foredeck. You were in the saloon with Serena. Shouting." His mouth twists. "Everyone could hear. Tessa went white as a sheet. Edmund came over and put a hand on my shoulder and said, They need a gesture, Caleb. Take this to her. Say it's from Dom. He had a lovely Krug in a silver cooler with a white card."
"What did the card say?"
"From D. Happy anniversary."
"In whose handwriting?"
"Yours." He looks up, at last. His eyes are red. "At least, I thought. I didn't check. Why would I?"
I sit down very slowly on the arm of the chair.
"Where did he get it?"
"I don't know."
"Was it sealed? Was the cooler heavy?"
"It was heavy, Dom, it was a bottle of champagne in a block of ice, what do you want me to say?" He laughs, a cracked, terrible sound. "I put it on her bed. She was crying. She said, Is he sorry? I said, He's an idiot, but he's sorry. She kissed my cheek."
My chest is a fist.
"And then you went up on deck."
"And then I went up on deck and had a drink. And twelve minutes later..."
He doesn't finish.
He doesn't have to.
I've been in that moment so many times. I know what happened next. The sound that wasn't a sound. A flash like the end of the world.
I close my eyes.
A bomb technician from the Coast Guard, three years ago, in a hospital corridor. A charge of about a pound and a half, Mr Hale. Contained. Whoever placed it knew how much to use to take out one cabin and leave the hull.
A cooler.
An ice bucket.
A pound and a half of something quiet, in a block of ice, in a silver cooler with a white card.
It was never in the engine room. It wasn't under the bed.
It was a gift.
"Dom," says Caleb. "I'm so sorry."
I can't speak.
I want to hate him. I've wanted to hate someone for three years. I look at my little brother's face, at the wet smear on his cheek and the whisky shaking in his fist, and I can't find a single splinter of anger.
I only feel a vast, grey, aching pity.
"You didn't know," I say.
"I should have..."
"You couldn't have."
"I carried it. I carried it myself."
"And somebody wanted you to." I get up. I cross the carpet. I put my hands on his shoulders, hard. "Look at me. Caleb. Look at me."
He does.
"You were used."
"That's no..."
"You were used," I say. "You, and Tess, and me. Whoever did this picked three people who loved her and used us like knives. Do you understand? They made us the weapon."
He starts to cry.
It's an ugly thing, a boy's crying, shoulders heaving and breath snagging. I pull him against me. I haven't held him since he was eight years old and broke his wrist falling out of the apple tree.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm so sorry, Dom, I'm so sorry."
"I know."
"I loved her."
"I know. So did I."
"Why didn't I say? I should have said three years ago."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I thought you'd think it was me."
"It's not you."
"Because if you thought it was me, I'd have had nothing."
I tighten my arms.
"You'd have had me."
He's quiet.
Then, in a tiny voice, he says: "I've been gambling."
"I know."
"You know?"
"I've known for a year."
"How much?"
"Thirty-one million." I let him go and hold him at arm's length. "You're an idiot."
He laughs. He wipes his nose on his sleeve like a twelve-year-old.
"I'm an idiot."
"We'll fix it."
"You can't."
"I can. I'll talk to the bank. We'll talk about it in the morning." I give him a small shake. "But Caleb. I need you to do something for me."
"Anything."
"Don't say a word of this to anyone. Not Edmund. Not Augustus. Not Tessa."
"Dom..."
"Not Tessa."
His face changes.
Slowly, like a dawn.
"Why not Tessa?"
I hesitate.
I have no good answer.
I only know a girl in a velvet dress in a powder room, saying, Do you like her? I know a letter in a storage unit, and a pair of red eyes on a lamp post.
I know that Tess has lived three years with a secret, and she's not sleeping, and she's about to break.
"Because she's not ready," I say.
"For what?"
"The truth."
Caleb stares at me.
"What truth?"
I open my mouth.
And I hear, behind me, a small sound, a click, the sound of an old brass latch being lifted.
I turn.
The study door has swung open on its hinges. A cold thread of air snakes across the floor.
Tessa stands on the threshold in her dressing gown.
Her face is bone-white. Her hair is a wild dark tangle. One of her hands is pressed flat against her mouth, and the other is gripping the door, knuckles like pebbles.
She has heard.
I can see it in her eyes.
She has heard all of it.
"Tess," says Caleb, getting to his feet.
"Say that again."
Her voice is small and level and perfectly calm.
"Tess. Darling..."
"Say that again, Caleb." She takes a step into the room. Her eyes go from him to me, and back. "You carried what? From whom?"
"Tessa..."
"A bottle. From Edmund."
"I didn't..."
"He told me." Her voice cracks, and rises. "He told me it was from Dom. He told me it was you. He said you'd arranged something for her. He said I should tell him the cabin so he could send it down."
The room is dead still.
I feel the cold coming up from my feet.
"He asked you the cabin," I say.
"I thought it was a surprise."
"Tess."
"I thought..." She's shaking so hard that the cord of her dressing gown rattles. "I thought it was flowers. I thought it was a ring. I thought it was kind."
Caleb makes a terrible sound.
He takes a step, and she takes a step back.
"You told him?" he says. "You told Edmund where she was?"
"You gave her the bottle!"
"I didn't know!"
"Neither did I!"
They're facing each other across my father's carpet, my brother and the woman he loves, both of them white and shaking, and I realise what Vance has done.
He didn't just kill my wife.
He sat these two down and made each of them kill her separately.
And he let them live with it.
"Stop," I say.
"Dom," says Tess, in a thin, broken voice. "I didn't know."
"I know."
"I didn't know."
"I know, Tess."
She sways.
Caleb lunges. She pushes him off, flings the door wide and runs.
Barefoot, down the long dark passage, past the portraits and the gun cabinet and the hall clock. I hear the front door crash against the wall. A wild gust of wet air blows through the house.
Caleb stands in the middle of the study with his hand out, like a man who has watched a bird fly into glass.
"Go after her," I say.
"I can't."
"Caleb."
"She won't want me."
"Go."
"Dom..."
"Go!"
He's gone.
I stand there alone, in the silence, with the ashes of the fire and my father's eyes on my back, and a thought arrives, cold and clear.
If Vance told Tessa to ask me for the cabin, he knew she'd ask me.
He knew the first person Tess would run to after the blast was me.
And that I'd say, in my grief, It's all right, I know you didn't mean it.
He knew I'd forgive her.
He knew I'd never tell the police.
He knew I'd take it to my grave.
I walk to the window.
And through the rain, in the garden below, I see a small figure in a grey shawl, running down the slope to the pier.
Someone is running after her.
Not Caleb.
A woman in a nightdress with a coat thrown over it, red hair streaming.
My wife, going after her sister.