PART 2 — “MY FIVE SONS ALREADY LOVE YOU”
June eased herself into the wooden chair near the stove, one hand braced at the small of her back. The cottage smelled of yeast and rosemary. Outside, the wind worried at the shutters like an impatient child.
“You’re not too busy?” June asked.
“I’m never too busy for a restless baby,” Brynna replied, reaching for dried chamomile and lemon balm from the top shelf—yes, still the top one.
She measured carefully, explaining each step the way Martha Quinlan once had for her. June listened with the solemn intensity of someone about to cross into a country she’d only seen on maps.
“Do you think it hurts?” June asked suddenly. “The having?”
“Yes,” Brynna said honestly. “And it’s also the bravest thing some women ever do.”
June nodded, satisfied with that answer. Then she glanced around the cottage, at the single chair opposite hers, the second cup that was never used, the quiet that pressed gently against the walls.
“You’d have been such a good mama,” she said, softly, as if offering a compliment.
The words struck harder than cruelty ever had.
Brynna’s smile did not falter. “Drink your tea before it cools.”
The giant arrived three days later.
No one in Havelock Cove saw him come ashore, but everyone saw him when he walked up from the docks—because a man like that could not slip quietly into any place.
He was broad-shouldered, towering well over six feet, his dark coat stretched across a chest that looked carved from oak. A thick beard framed his face, shot through with early gray. A scar ran from his temple into his hairline, pale and unapologetic.
Five boys trailed behind him like mismatched shadows.
The oldest carried himself stiffly, trying on manhood too soon. The youngest clutched a wooden boat missing one oar.
“Who’s that?” someone whispered outside the general store.
“Name’s Rowan Mercer,” came the answer from old Hal Brewer, who claimed to know everything before it happened. “Veteran. Came down from Anchorage. Wife passed last winter.”
Five boys. No mother.
The arithmetic of the village began immediately.
Brynna first saw him when he ducked beneath the doorframe of Martha’s old cottage—now Brynna’s responsibility since the midwife’s passing.
He stood awkwardly inside, hat in his hands.
“I was told you’re the one who helps,” he said, voice deep as distant thunder.
“One of them,” Brynna replied.
He stepped aside, revealing the second-youngest boy, whose arm was wrapped in a dirty cloth.
“Fishing hook,” Rowan explained. “He said he could handle it.”
The boy lifted his chin stubbornly. “I did handle it.”
“Of course you did,” Brynna said, kneeling to his level. “But we’ll clean it anyway.”
She worked gently, steady hands and softer words. The boy never cried.
Rowan watched her the way men watch a shoreline in fog—careful, searching for danger or safe harbor.
“You’re good with them,” he said.
“I’ve had practice,” she answered.
She did not elaborate.
The boys came back the next week. And the week after.
Sometimes for scrapes. Sometimes because one of them had eaten too many green berries. Once because the youngest had a nightmare and refused to sleep unless “the lady who smells like plants” said the monsters couldn’t swim.
Rowan always paid. In cash at first. Then in fish. Once, awkwardly, in a neatly split stack of firewood that appeared by her door before dawn.
Havelock Cove noticed.
It was Mrs. Tolland who finally cornered Brynna outside the church steps.
“He’s a decent man,” she said, lowering her voice. “Strong. Provides. And those boys—Lord help them—they need a woman’s guidance.”
Brynna stiffened. “They need their father.”
“And he needs a wife.”
The whisper returned, that old, poisonous one: You’re not enough.
“I cannot give him what he truly needs,” Brynna said evenly.
Mrs. Tolland frowned. “Men remarry for many reasons.”
“Not the ones that matter here.”
The older woman’s expression shifted. Understanding, then pity.
Pity was worse than gossip.
