She rounded the steep track. As much as she despised Declan, as poorly as he treated Tilly, it did nothing to suppress the fact that what she was doing with Tilly was deceitful and illicit. Tilly had made a commitment to another person, and this…it felt like an affair.

Frustration bloomed in her chest, spread its wings between her ribs. Tilly thought she didn’t care enough to fight for her? Screw that, Kate thought as she navigated the sharp turn down to the pier. Tilly needed to learn to fight for herself.

Kate yawned loudly as she slid onto a long wooden bench in the middle of the dining hall and dropped Molly’s script onto the table. She sipped at her steaming mug of coffee. If there was one advantage to waking at the crack of dawn to help Molly edit her play, it was that she hadn’t had to face Tilly.

“It’s so weird to be in here without anybody else,” Molly said as she climbed onto the bench opposite Kate, a slice of toast pinched between her fingertips. She licked strawberry jam from her fingertips. “Thanks again for helping me with this.”

Kate turned the pages of Molly’s script—the final draft before she left for Scotland at the end of the month. “Don’t sweat it.”

“I know, but you’ve edited it for me five hundred times and you got up so early to do this.”

“It’s fine, Mol.”

“It’s just that I’m kind of in a rush at this point. I have to print twelve copies to hand out when we start the program and I need to get them bound and everything on Monday afternoon. Thank God it’s a long weekend and I have the staff development day to write. I really only have this weekend to finish.”

Thinking, Kate tapped the pencil against the pages. “I’m a bit swamped this afternoon with phone calls so I won’t be able to get it back to you before you get the ferry back. Is it okay if I scan the pages and send it to you tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, of course, that’d be great,” Molly said. “Or, I mean, are you going to Tilly’s engagement party Sunday night?”

Kate’s eyes snapped up.

“I’m staying at my cousin’s in Mornington this weekend instead of going all the way home, and my cousin’s going to the party,” Molly explained. “You could just give it to her, save you the hassle of scanning thirty-eight pages…”

Kate pushed her glasses to the top of her head and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “Your…your cousin was invited to that?”

“Yeah. And her husband.”

Kate’s stomach hardened. Molly’s older cousin, who simply worked in the vicarage, had scored an invite? Tilly had said it was just a small dinner with Declan’s family. “No,” she said. “I’m not going.”

“Oh.”

Mind racing, Kate lowered her glasses. She turned the page.

“He’s a lot older than her,” Molly said.

“Mol…I can’t discuss them with you.”