Family Tree - sneak peek

First chunk of this story (Simon retires to sea)

The storm brings Simon to town.

He arrives on its heels, blown in by the gale like a gull, clothes already salted from the ever present seawater that seems to lash at every surface.

It’s sleepy. Small. Clapboard houses stacked on switchbacks with long windows all looking downward at the docks, siding peeled under the pressure of sun and storm, bleached white to the bone.

Simon gets his own. Looked at the pier’s weeping planks and the pub, the small grocer and petrol station, the defunct but still shining lighthouse, and made up his mind to retire at sea. The people aren’t overly friendly to him either, more cautiously polite, as if they’re holding out, which is  Gets something threadbare and slowly fills it with what he can find, a couch from down the street, a bed in a box. Has to keep the windows shut tight and a towel under the door to keep the damp out, but he supposes that’s just the way it is. His whole life will be crusted with salt by the end of it. It’ll be growing on his bones when he’s in the ground.

It was safe, enough. Far, enough. Distance put between himself and Ghost, spurred on by his insistent friend.

“Find yourself a place you can fuckin’ relax for once. It’s time to let go, Simon.”

He finds you on the street. Head down, striding down the sidewalk as a rusted old truck slow rolls past you. He swears the person in the passenger seat trains their eyes on you to the point their neck turns, still focused as they leave you behind. You look up when his shadow crosses your path, face brighter than the sun that never seems to shine here, and his heart pounds, sending blood rushing to his ears. His pulse is jumping beneath his jaw like he’s a teenager.

You’re a pretty thing, more than pretty. Stunning. Turning him stupid. A beautiful creature, something unknown to him completely.

Sea swept with a mouth full of razor clams, two pearls for eyes and salted skin.

A tide pool full of wonders.

A prize worth hunting.

Because Simon is a hunter, after all. He’s not a fishermen like these people, doesn’t cast a wide net. He follows a trail, narrows in on his prey, lines them up in the scope and then pulls the trigger. Anyone or anything that gets between him and a target never lasts. It’s all he’s known, this brutality. This penchant for pain. There hasn’t been softness in his life since he was a child at his mother’s knees, rare moments alone in the house when there wasn’t a monster in the corner of the room.

Now he thinks, maybe, he might have room for something soft, something sweet enough to rot his teeth.

It doesn’t take long to convince him.

In the pub, a dark bar with nearly no windows and a steel door, he finds you at the end of the polished, worn wood, hands wrapped around a pint. You’re in the corner with your back to the wall, flipping the pages of a tattered paperback. At first glance, you seem relaxed, but your eyes flick around every minute or so, touching on faces, watching. There are people in here, more than a handful, and he’d expect the entire lot of them to be falling over themselves, sticking their filthy fingers in the creases of your skin, but no one seems to try. No one approaches you. They say hi as they come, nod as they go, but they don’t get too close.

It doesn’t seem to bother you, it’s like you hardly notice.

A boon for him. Less people he may have to hurt.

All eyes wander when he takes the seat on your side of the bar. Not too close, two stools away, but he feels the pressure of their stares on the back of his neck as he orders and takes out his phone, thumbing through the thing to find the Tetris app, his daily therapy.

Minutes pass in silence. He’s in this bubble with you, insulated, where the only sounds are the turning of pages and glass settling against wood. He glances at the book, fighting the urge to google it when the title is something he doesn’t recognize. You politely smile each time he looks your way, but say nothing.

He’s the one who has to burst it.

“I’m Simon.” Surprise pulls at your mouth before it shifts into something gentle.

“Simon.” You swallow it, sounds like a mouthful of salt water from your lips. “Nice to meet you.” Your book hits the bar with a thump and you offer your own, allowing him to chew it, taste it. It’s perfect. It fits you.

“Buy you another?” This time, your surprise sticks. Sticky toffee on your teeth, your jaw is sealed shut before you nod reluctantly, glancing around.

“Guinness.” He gets two, tries not to smile when the foam lines your top lip and you lick it away. Too fucking sweet.

It’s been so long since he’s had conversations like these, small talk, trying to get to know someone. If he needed a fuck, he’d say so. He’d find a dark place and pull what wanted, always leaving in the morning, never saw by them again.

This isn’t that.

This is something else, and he’s at a loss but you save him.

“Just move here?”

“‘Bout two weeks ago. Interesting place.” He can’t even say nice, because that’s not how anyone would describe it. This town is not nice. It’s ocean ravaged and hardened and brittle. Cracked like scattered seashells on the shore.

And the people are strange. Insular. Friendly, but only to an extent, like they’re hiding a knife behind their backs, waiting to carve something up. Hungry glints flash in their eyes, and there’s a rusted edge to their smile, like their chests are empty hulls.

“Interesting…” you smile again. It’s small but it’s true and he wants to keep it somehow. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“You from here?” You nod, thumb the rim of your half finished beer. You’re outpacing him.

“My whole life.” You take a swig. “Born and raised.” There’s no pride in your voice, no fondness, just rotted fruit on a vine, bitter wine. “You? The U.K. somewhere, I’m guessing?”

“Manchester.” You shake your head. “North west of London a fair ways.” You’re down to a quarter left in your glass, and his matches. He’s never felt the pressure of time like this before, the desire to make some sort of connection, to hook a tether so he can have more.

“What brought you over here?”

“Retirement.” You laugh.

“You’re a bit young to be retired aren’t you?” Young to be retired in your eyes, maybe. Too old for you, definitely. A decade, probably. Though it doesn’t seem to throw you off.

“I’m older than y’think. Plus I’m retired from the military. It’s a bit different.”

“Well,” you lift your mostly empty pint towards him, “happy retirement.” You whisper conspiratorially, a secret held between just you two, and when you finish your beer, your eyes linger, waiting. Wanting. You’re trying to hide it, but he’s good at masks.

“Another round?”

Everyone fishes.

Or almost everyone.

Some are longshoremen, commuting down to the major port an hour each way, and some work on the other side of it all, processing, packing, shipping. Of course, there are jobs that keep the town running, from the grocer to the medical clinic to the post office, but the heart of the town, its lifeblood, is fishing.

Small boats, big boats, lines flung from the shoreline in search of anything from bass in the fall to flounder in the winter, lobster June through December. They harvest shellfish too, the whole range, clams to oysters.

Winter is the hardest. Scalloping and the end of lobster season is the bread and butter, along with flounder, and it’s not easy. Not in the slightest. Some even dive for the shellfish, braving single digit water temperatures to bring in their catch.

It’s a hard life. Harder still when bushels and nets are light, when the sea is reluctant to give away its gifts, clinging to them with cold, watery clutches.

Fishing is what matters. Fishing is what keeps the heat on, the lights on, puts food on the table.

And if you don’t fish, you love someone who does.

Except you.

You’re sixth generation here. Matriarchal line. Mother, Grandmother, and so on, so forth, though you’re the only one left. Last in line, you joked, and last of too, but the words felt dead. Grief buried somewhere so deep he’d have to crack you wide at the hinges to get to it, shred the abductor muscle keeping you clammed up and spill your secrets as if he’d gutted a fish.

Too messy.

Too soon.

Someone says your name behind him. A man, no a boy, stares at you with hope in his eyes, and Simon doesn’t like it. You shake your head.

“No, Ryan. I already told you.”

“If you’d just-” Your glare is ice and cuts the kid to the quick.

“I said no.” He shuffles away, casting one more hopeful glance over his shoulder, which you ignore.

“Friend o’ yours?” The tide has shifted, it’s undertow dragging you away, and you glance at the front door of the pub, lip tucked beneath your top teeth.

“Not really.” He saves his breath, knows what’s coming next. “I’ve gotta get going.” You tell him with a shade of sadness. “But this was… thank you. For the beers. And the… talk.” He’s not going to give you an out, not going to let you wriggle off the hook. He’s going to reel you in.

“We’ll do it again then.”

You work at the library.

He spots you in the children’s section while he’s there getting the deed to his new house notarized, circling some shelves with an armful of colorful books, and he realizes-

you like kids.

You love them, even. You’re the children’s librarian. Their adoration of you rivaled only by their love of the two teachers who manage the three room school down the road.

Your care for them is so apparent in the way you crouch down in front of the little girl who’s crying on the floor during story time, painfully obvious by how you speak to her, how you wipe her tears. You’re so gentle, so kind, it almost feels like he’s intruding on a private moment by watching through the glass.

Last in line, and last of too.

There’s nothing wrong with not wanting kids, but your firm lipped refusal strikes him as odd, considering.

“Hi.” Breath fogs in front of your face, knit hat pulled down around your ears. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”

“Figured I’d try to snag you for a pint.” Your cheeks lift with the corners of your mouth before it seems as if your happiness is dashed altogether and you shake your head.

“I’m not really feeling up to it.” There’s something you’re not saying, but he’s still trying to learn the balance with you, what’s too much, what’s too little. “I uh, we could… I have some beers at my place?”

Jackpot.