When everyone had gone, Gavin headed to his hotel for room service and television, and the others returned to their lives on the quaint and beautiful island. Willa put her forehead on the table and listened to the pounding of her heart. The idea to film a commercial at Marius’s horse barn had come out of nowhere, she thought. But then again, seeing him last night had activated an onslaught of memories. She wanted to see him again even though she knew it wasn’t right.
Chapter Eleven
Amelie
December 2025
It was the afternoon after Amelie’s arrival, and she was hard at work in the kitchen of Pascal’s bed-and-breakfast, up to her elbows in suds, her fingers throbbing from the water’s heat. There’d been a small lunch rush, followed by coffee and pie and cake, which she’d served. And now, she was cleaning everything up, smiling to herself. Although it was across the street from the Caraway Fudge Shoppe, she felt as though she had a purpose in life again, as though everything was simple. And the way Pascal looked at her made her delirious.
Pascal appeared in the kitchen, rubbing the back of his neck. “I think you’ve already earned a week of room and board,” he said.
“I don’t think that calculation is correct,” Amelie said.
“I’ll have to start paying you,” Pascal said.
“I only accept pie as payment,” Amelie said.
Pascal chuckled. “No. Let’s sit down and go through the numbers. I want to make sure you’re being compensated.” He paused, reaching for the coat that hung on one of the rungs near the office door. “I didn’t get a chance to ask, like, what you do.”
Amelie laughed. “I’ve always thought that’s a really strange question.”
Pascal’s cheeks reddened. When he was nervous or embarrassed, his French accent returned with a vengeance. “Oh, oui, yes. I mean, of course. It is very American of me to ask such a thing. What do any of us do? I am a musician, but I also serve cake and pie to tourists. I do a little of this, a little of that.”
Amelie smiled wider. Why was he so darn cute?
“I’m actually a writer,” she said. “Or I’m trying to be one.”
Pascal looked amazed. “What kind of writer? Books?”
“Yeah, books. Sometimes short stories.” Amelie winced. After recently losing her agent, the last thing she wanted to think about was her failed writing career.
“Who are your favorite writers?” Pascal asked.
Amelie thought for a moment, then decided to tease him. “Flaubert? Baudelaire? Simone de Beauvoir?”
Pascal’s lips parted with surprise. “French writers!”
“I do love them,” Amelie said. “Your country has quite the literary history. I used to read long European novels during the summers, when I went to the beach.” She stopped herself from saying which beach it was, because he’d know the one.
For a few minutes, as Amelie dripped with suds and Pascal played with the zipper on his coat, they discussed books, writing, and music. After so many years of solitude, talking to Pascal felt like a revelation. Amelie didn’t want their conversation to end.
But end it did.
“I have to head out to the mainland,” Pascal said, his shoulders hunching. “I’ll be back before nightfall. Do you need anything?”
Amelie shook her head. With Pascal and the bed-and-breakfast, she had everything she needed in the world.
With Pascal gone and the kitchen and dining room clean, Amelie went upstairs with the idea that she’d look over her book an additional time and research new agents. But when she sat at the simple desk, she felt overwhelmed by the view of the abandoned fudge shop across the street. Within ten minutes, she’d flown back downstairs, put on her coat, and run across the street. She couldn’t resist it despite knowing it would hurt her.
She needed to get inside.
Crime rates on the island were low, even in the high season, and barely anything happened in the winter months, which meant that Amelie’s father had put a key under a rock under the back porch. Amelie and Willa had used that key exclusively through the years, never bothering to carry one around. Amelie rushed to the back porch, pausing for a moment to grip the railing and gaze out at the icy water. None of it had frozen over yet, but it looked as though it wanted to, as though in another five minutes of below-freezing temperatures, it would crackle over.
Amelie bent down to find the rock, and it was still there—sturdy, with a sharp point on one end. She flipped it over. No key.
Amelie frowned. Nervous, she flipped over all the rocks and found nothing, no proof of a previous key, no sign of another entry. She stood and stared at the back door, which opened into the mudroom and the staircase that led up to the apartment. The doorknob glinted suggestively.
Amelie tugged a bobby pin out of her red locks and strode toward it.
