Serena's POV
I'm running before I know I've decided.
Down the passage in my socks. Through the front door, banging in the wind. Across the gravel, the wet grass, the slope I've run down a thousand times in summer with a sketchbook under my arm. The storm has blown itself out, but the whole sky is still shifting, black cloud and a rinsed white moon, and the air tastes of salt.
Ahead of me, a small grey shape.
It reaches the end of the pier, and stops.
"Tessa!"
She doesn't turn.
The pier is a long grey finger pointing into the dark. Wet planks. The black water slapping at the pilings. At the end, a bench, a rusted ring, a single lamp on a post, and a girl in a nightdress and a shawl with her arms wrapped round herself.
I slow to a walk.
I can't help it. Every step is a step toward something I haven't said for three years, and my legs are shaking.
"Tessa," I say again, more quietly.
"Go away."
"You'll catch your death."
"I don't care."
"Please."
"Why are you here?" She spins round. Her face is wet and furious, and her hair is stuck to her cheeks. "Who are you? Why are you in this family's house? Why do you keep looking at me?"
"I'm not..."
"You hum. You stir your tea. You look at Dom like..." She stops. A sound tears out of her. "I'm going mad. I'm actually, properly going mad."
"You're not."
"I am."
"You're in shock."
"I killed my sister!"
It goes out across the water and doesn't come back.
I can't move.
She's standing at the very edge of the pier, tiny, shaking, her toes over the planks and the dark water churning behind her heels.
"I killed her," says Tessa. "I told him where she was. He asked, so kindly, and I told him. Like a little girl showing a man the way to the bathroom."
"You didn't know."
"I should have known."
"How?"
"Because it was Edmund!" She presses her fists to her eyes. "Because he's never done a kind thing in his life! He's never brought me a coffee! He's never remembered my birthday! And the one time he asked me for something, I said yes, because I was flattered."
My throat is closing.
I want to cross the planks. I want to put my arms round her.
I want to say: I'm here. I'm right here. You didn't kill me.
"I've never told anyone," she whispers. "Not Dom. Not Caleb. I've been to the grave every month for three years and I've never said it to a single person."
"Why now?"
"I don't know." She laughs, thin and helpless. "Because you looked at me. In that bathroom. Because you hummed. Because I think I'm so desperate to be forgiven that I'll take it from a stranger."
"Then take it."
"What?"
"Take it."
I walk forward.
I put my hand on her shoulder.
She stops.
It's the first time I've touched her in three years. Her bones are like a bird's. The wool of her shawl is cold and wet, and under it, her whole body is shuddering, in long, helpless waves.
"You were twenty-eight," I say, very low. "You were trusting. You were kind. A man you'd known for years, a man your sister's husband trusted, asked you a small, gentle question, and you answered it."
"Don't."
"You didn't build the bomb. You didn't carry it. You told a man where a woman was sitting. And he used you."
"Don't, don't, don't..."
"You didn't kill her," I say.
Tessa looks up.
Her eyes are enormous.
"How do you know?" she whispers.
I can't answer.
Because my throat has locked. Because her face is the face of a nine-year-old who fell off her bike and wants to be told it won't hurt. Because I have never wanted so badly to say a thing that I cannot say.
"I just do," I say.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
She stares at me.
Something shifts in her face. A flicker, quick as a fish.
Then she falls against my shoulder, and I put my arms around her, and she cries.
It isn't pretty. It's raw, stripped, undignified: a child's crying, hiccuping and wet. I hold her tight. I rest my cheek against her wet hair.
I haven't smelled it in three years.
Apple shampoo. A cheap one. She's always used it. I used to tease her.
My eyes burn.
Tess. Tessie.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I left you with this.
I rock her.
I don't know what I'm doing. Some ancient part of me takes over, a big sister's body, a little girl's name, a hand moving in slow circles on her back. And as I rock, my throat starts to move.
I'm humming.
Softly. Not even a tune. Just a long, low, steady note, a lullaby with no words, the one I sang to her when thunder frightened her, when she was seven and I was twelve and our mother was in the hospital.
The water is wide...
She goes still in my arms.
I realise what I've done.
I freeze.
"Don't stop," Tessa whispers.
My heart stops.
"I'm sorry..."
"Please don't stop."
Her face is pressed into my shoulder. She isn't looking at me. Her voice is thick and muffled and almost inaudible.
"I don't know who you are," she says. "I don't know why you're doing this. I don't want to know. I just..." She breathes. "I just want to hear it. For a minute. Please."
I close my eyes.
I hum.
The moon comes out from behind a cloud. The water glitters. Somewhere out in the bay a buoy bell clangs, slow and sad. And my sister, who is thirty-one years old and has the shoulders of a child, lets me hold her at the end of a pier at one in the morning, and doesn't ask me a single question.
We stay like that for a long time.
At last, there's a step on the boards behind us.
Caleb, hesitating at the end of the dock, a coat in his arms, his hair plastered flat. He's shaking from the cold and his eyes are swollen almost shut.
I lift my head.
I don't let go of Tessa.
"Please," says Caleb, hoarsely. "Tess. Please come in."
"Not yet."
"I love you."
"I know."
"I'm so sorry."
"I know. Me too." She wipes her face, and takes the coat, and puts it round her own shoulders, and looks at me for the first time.
Her eyes are red and tired and very, very clear.
"Thank you," she says.
"Of course."
"I don't know why."
"You don't have to."
"No," says Tessa. A long beat. "But I'm going to."
She turns and walks into Caleb's arms.
I stand alone on the pier with my hands cold and empty.
The first grey light is creeping across the bay, a thin silver line on the black. The water has begun to turn from ink to pewter. A cormorant lifts off the pilings and glides away.
It's nearly five.
I look at my watch.
I'm meant to be at the herring weir at six.
I've no coat, no sleep, and a fever in my blood, and an old man is waiting for me with a story about my father.
I turn to go.
And on the shore, at the end of the path, in the thin dawn light, where a figure has no business being, I see a silhouette. Tall. Silver-haired. Leaning on a black umbrella that he doesn't need.
He lifts one hand, as if to wave.
Augustus Brandt has been standing there for a very long time.
And he saw everything.