“I think you’re the movie star,” I whispered. “Sleep tight, my love.”
She was out before I stood up and flicked on the video monitor. I hoped to get caught up on work and always felt better knowing I could use the monitor to check in on Winnie from the carriage house.
Her lighthouse night-light swept another slow arc across the ceiling as I pulled the door almost shut behind me, the legend book still in hand. I held it against my chest, suddenly unsure whether I was more haunted by the ghost story or the man living in the space next door.
I looked at the wall as if I could sense him, just on the other side.
Austin.
Too young and too charming. He was far too good with my kid. I could never have guessed that one night of letting loose and having fun would haunt me so thoroughly. On many nights, I caught myself lying awake, staring at the paint on the ceilingand recalling every detail of our night in the forest. The cool breeze on my thighs as he lifted my skirt, his warm breath against my skin, the shiver of anticipation rippling down my spine. There was a part of me that desperately wanted to feel that alive—thatfree—again ... and temptation was residing literal feet away.
I exhaled and shook my head as I padded into the hallway. In the quiet of the house, I could hear the slow tick of the kitchen clock and the sound of rainwater still dripping off the eaves. I needed something to keep my mind off my incredibly inappropriate, yet altogether irresistible, neighbor. I slipped on a pair of rubber garden boots to make the trek across the wet lawn.
Once inside the carriage house, I moved to the small desk where I’d stacked the materials Elodie had handed off—fragile, water-warped letters and a few odds and ends from the trunk she had found. She had dropped off the letters after the Keepers’ meeting, each carefully wrapped in acid-free sleeves and tied with string like some forgotten treasure trove.
I placed them next to ledgers from the boardinghouse and old pages I hadn’t sorted through yet. I added the library book to the pile and started looking through some old folders to try to make room for everything.
I sifted through my own stack of historical documents. Most were brittle ledgers or handwritten menus and maps. Cal had let me borrow a stack of water-damaged guest registries from the Drifted Spirit Inn’s earliest days. A few were nearly illegible, the ink dissolved into foggy blue-gray swirls, but others still held faint outlines of names, dates, and room numbers.
Between two brittle pages of a late-1890s boarding ledger, something stiffer caught my fingers. I slid it free, careful not to tear the fragile binding. It was a photograph—faded and curling at the corners. The kind printed on albumen paper, its edgesscalloped like lace. A woman stood at the center, long dark hair coiled beneath a simple hat, her figure posed in front of a familiar porch railing I couldn’t quite place. Her eyes had been scratched out in tiny, deliberateX’s.
I turned it over.
A name had been scribbled on the back in pencil, so faint it nearly vanished beneath the smudges of time.
Barnes? Barlow?
The handwriting was uneven, hesitant and faded. It was hard to tell. The name wasn’t clear, but my pulse quickened anyway.
Barker.
A shiver danced up my spine. There had been Barkers in Star Harbor’s early history, I was sure of it. Not just passing names in a ledger—but landowners. The Drifted Spirit Inn had once been the Barker family’s homestead, long before it was converted into an inn. If I remembered correctly, they’d also owned the land just west of the property—land that eventually became what is now Elodie’s Star Harbor Farms.
The Barkers had two children, a boy and a girl. That much was recorded, but little else.
No marriage records. No graves. Just a surname that faded from town documents like fog lifting from the dunes.
My pulse skipped.Could this be her? The woman from the photo—scratched eyes, secretive smile—could she be the Lady? Not just some nameless ghost, but someone real? A person with a past, a family, and a real name?
The image would need to be stabilized, scanned, and carefully cleaned. But more than that—I’d need to dig deeper. I wanted to cross-reference land deeds. Track ownership transitions. Compare dates. There might be something here. Somethingtrue.
I didn’t know what it meant yet, but I knew better than to ignore it.
I rolled my aching shoulders. I slipped the photo into an archival sleeve and tucked it among the rest of the documents before sucking in a deep breath.
I stretched my neck, reaching back to massage my tight shoulder with a groan. I knew that when I got wrapped up in a project as intriguing as that, it was like my mind raced down a single track. I glanced at my watch. If I wasn’t careful, I could easily stay up into the wee hours of the morning, poring over documents. That would inevitably create a long and tiring following day, so I exhaled and pushed myself away from the desk.
When I locked the carriage house, I heard the low hum of music drifting from the other side of the duplex. My stomach tightened. When I looked up, my belly swooped low and I fought a smile.
Austin sat on the steps, legs long and sprawled in front of him, a bottle of something resting between them. His shirt was rumpled, his muscular arms testing the limits of the short sleeves. I noticed the faint scrape of a bruise coloring the inside of his forearm. Probably from hauling lumber earlier.
He lifted his head as I padded across the wet lawn. “Late night working?”
A smile dusted my lips. “Just organizing some things.” I sucked in a lungful of night air. “Getting some fresh air.”
“Looks like you found it.” He smiled as I walked through the gate he left open. Austin scooted to the far end of the steps, making room for me.
I sank onto the top step beside him, careful to leave a few inches of space between us. He didn’t say anything right away, but he handed me a bottle of bourbon.
