“Ouch!” she hissed loudly, dropping the knife with a clatter and sucking on the finger she’d just cut.

“Oh dear,” Mabel tutted, coming forward. “Come here, Tali, let me see to it.” She pulled Tali’s bleeding finger away from her mouth and dragged her over to the sink, forcing her hand under the cold water. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Tali muttered. “Fine. Think it looks worse than it feels.”

“That’s not what I mean, dear. You’ve been distracted all day. Now, I don’t mean to pry, but it wouldn’t have anything to do with that tiff I saw you get into with Hudson last night?”

Tali’s face fell. Absolutely it did.

She couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said about Cole. It had kept her up all night, eating away at her, robbing her sleep. She’d been so furious with him for coming at her again with his judgment and pushiness, and she still felt a wave of nausea whenever she remembered what she’d said to him about Matty.

That was wrong. That was really wrong. No matter how furious she’d been, she should not have touched his memories of Matty. She couldn’t stop thinking about his wounded expression, and that trickle of doubt she’d seen pass over his features. It wasn’t right. She didn’t have the details of what happened the night her brother died, and she didn’t want them. But she knew without a shadow of a doubt that Hudson would have done absolutely anything he could have to save her brother. She would need to fix that, or try, at some point.

But then there was Cole.

She had been content to wait. To let Cole open up to her at his own pace. But the word he’d chosen. Dangerous. It was so severe. She couldn’t reconcile it with the Cole she knew, but neither could she ignore it. She’d hardly be the first girl in the world to be fooled by a handsome face and easy charm.

It’s public knowledge. Ask anyone.

She’d been teetering on the edge of asking Mabel about him all morning.

She bit her lip. The silence had gone on for a long while, and Mabel’s soft brown eyes were full of concern. “He can be a bit gruff, Tali, but he’s a good soul, really. I think he’s quite fond of you. If he did something stupid and put his foot in his mouth, perhaps you might give him a chance to take it out and set things right.”

“Mabel,” she interrupted, “it’s not about that. Not really. I...I’m wondering if you can tell me about...what you know about...Cole Blackburn.” She rushed his name from her mouth before she had a chance to stifle it.

Mabel’s face hardened for a flicker of a moment, but then she simply shook her head, patted Tali on the arm and muttered, “Oh dear. I’d hoped it was only foolish rumors, but...let’s sit down, darling.” She took her by the elbow and pushed her into a chair by a small table they sometimes sat at to chop vegetables or sip tea and chat when it was quiet.

“Foolish rumors, huh?” she said glumly. “So the whole town really has been discussing my love life behind my back, then?”

Mabel gave her a guilty look. “It’s only because we’re so fond of you, Tali. Really. We’ve all come to care for you so much. And we’ve been concerned.”

“Why?” Tali demanded. “Why are you concerned?”

Mabel looked truly upset. “Oh dear. I wish now I’d had the decency to bring it up sooner. Perhaps it would have saved you some pain. I regret that now, sweetheart, I really do, I just hoped it wasn’t true...”

“Please, Mabel. Just tell me,” she said, with tears in her eyes.

“Well, the thing is, Tali, he’s...he’s not a good man. Not a good man at all. If you’d asked me about earlier, I’d have told you in no uncertain terms to stay away from him.”

“Why?” she asked again, her heart feeling sick as she saw Mabel’s normally jovial face so wrought with worry.

“Well...this all happened, oh, seven or eight years back. He showed up in town about ten years ago. A kid. Around sixteen. No one knew where he came from and he didn’t seem over-inclined to tell, but he was just a kid. Esther Libell had a sort of boarding house at the time she rented out, and she let him stay free the first couple of months. He went around asking for work, and folks gave work to him if they could. He didn’t talk much, but he did what he was asked and seemed honest enough. I think he worked a summer on your brother’s boat, come to think of it.”

Tali frowned. So far that matched up with the vague details he’d provided about how he’d ended up here, though he hadn’t told her where he was before that either.

He’d been quiet, closed off, but upright when he talked about his youth.

Where had it gone wrong? She had to know.

“Mabel, please. Tell me what happened.”

“Well, there was an...incident one night. He was in the bar, drinking a lot. He usually drank alone, though on quiet nights you might catch him talking to someone a bit. He was only eighteen or nineteen, not old enough we all knew, but well...we don’t enforce that much around here...and he was so alone and self-sufficient, it was hard not to think of him as grown,” Mabel said, frowning.

“Anyway, this new fella rolled into town that night. None of us had ever seen him before, but Cole and him had some words. Don’t know if anyone can recall what they were about, but it wasn’t pretty. Seemed like maybe they knew each other from somewhere. Turned into a fight. Real vicious. They really went at it. Couple of folks jumped in to try to break it up. Ended up hurt. Max Porter got his nose broke.”

Tali listened attentively, a feeling of dread building up inside her.

“Well, he got thrown out of course, but the other fella, he had a room booked. This was back when I had enough help to keep a few rooms open for rent. We sent him on up there and thought that would be the end of it. Only…” She paused, looking hesitant, but then sighed and continued. “Libby, the girl I had working for me at the time, went in to service the room the next morning and found... a horror scene. Blood everywhere, soaking up the floor and the sheets, streaked on the walls.”

Tali slapped a hand over her mouth, both in shock and to make sure that bile that had shot up into her throat didn’t escape.

“Darling, I’m so sorry to have to…to tell you about this, and that I didn’t come to you as soon as I heard, but I just wanted it to be rumors, for your sake—”

“Please, Mabel. Enough about that. Did he...did he kill him?”

“They were never able to prove he did,” she said grimly. “Never found a body, not that it would be hard in these parts to get rid of one. We’re about two minutes from the damn dock, and the currents out there are strong. They found the guy’s DNA all over him, of course, and marks on Cole’s body, but they’d fought and everyone saw it. Couldn’t conclusively say what had happened. They never found any ID belonging to the stranger, and no one ever came looking for him.”

Tali was shaking, but she forced herself to ask, “But...you think he did it?”

“Well, he sure was downright vicious when the cops picked him up. Wouldn’t offer any information about who the other man was, what they’d quarreled about. He was tight-lipped when they asked him questions and hostile when they pushed him too. In the end, there wasn’t enough evidence to put him away. They had him tried in Nome, where folk didn’t know what we’d all seen. How hard he’d fought. It was downright animalistic. I never saw so much hate in a man’s eyes,” she said with a visible shudder.

“They had to let him off, and for some reason he stuck around here, even though damn near everyone knew he was guilty. It never got better. He started drinking. More than once, some other young folk would think it was a good idea to provoke him. He got in more than a few fights. Never seemed to lose one. Ended up doing jail time for a couple of them. Always ended up back here though,” she said, shaking her head.

“I guess he managed to pick up enough work on the bigger boats that came through here and spent some time on oil rigs, enough to get that plane of his. Folks tolerate him on account of there’s only two pilots in the town, and Ernie’s getting on in years. But I tell you, I never let my girls fly with him unless I know there’s someone else on board. And I shudder to think of you alone with him, darling. I know it’s only been a couple of months, but I’m fond of you, Tali. And as your friend I’d caution you to stay well away from him,” she finished.

Tali could only sit in stunned silence, trying to digest the tale.

Cole.

Her Cole.

A murderer? It was laughable. But the concern in Mabel’s eyes was real, as was the regret and sympathy. She felt ill. Truly ill. She staggered to her feet and just about made it to the garbage can in time to puke into it.

“Oh honey,” Mabel soothed as soon as she’d bustled over. She brushed Tali’s dark waves out of her face, holding her hair back with one hand and rubbing her back with the other. “Oh honey,” she said again as Tali stood up shakily. Mabel reached for her, encircled her in warm arms and held her in a tight hug. Tali shut her eyes tight, but there was no stopping the tears from falling.

“I feel…I feel so fucking stupid,” she choked out. “We…he…he wanted to be discreet and I…I just went with it—”

“Honey,” Mabel said, stroking her hair. “It’s all right. You’re all right, and that’s the important thing. And we’re all here for you.” She petted Tali’s hair and Tali cried into her dress.