She doesn’t look back. Doesn’t slow. Just walks with that hurried, shoulders-high stride that speaks of someone who’s learned to make herself small when the world feels too big.
At the turnoff to the bluff road, she pauses again. Pulls the phone out once more. This time, she doesn’t type. Just reads. Her face crumples for half a second—quick, gone before anyone who wasn’t watching closely would catch it. Then she powers the phone off, slips it into her pocket, and starts up the hill.
I stay where I am, half-hidden by the hardware store’s awning. The mist clings to my jacket. I watch until she disappears around the bend, until the sound of her footsteps fades.
The words she said on the roof echo back to me. No. He doesn’t know I’m here. No ties.
But someone’s texting her, someone who makes her flinch under streetlights.
I turn back toward my truck, hands shoved deep in my pockets. The walk home feels longer than it should.
Inside the cabin, I lock the door, hang the jacket, and move to the kitchen without turning on more than the small lamp over the sink. I pour a glass of water and drink it standing at the counter. The quiet presses in.
I think about the fear in her eyes today, not when she talked about the past, but when she looked at that screen. The way her fingers shook just a little when she typed.
I set the glass down harder than I meant to. It clinks against the granite.
She said no one would follow. She believed it. Or wanted to.
I walk to the living room window, stare out at the dark stretch of trees and the faint glow of the harbor below. Somewhere up the hill, she’s in that cottage alone, probably double-checking locks, maybe sitting with the lights off so no one can see her silhouette.
I rub a hand over my jaw. Feel the stubble. Feel the pull I’ve been fighting since she said my name at the center.
Declan would’ve wanted me to watch out for her. He never asked, but he didn’t have to. Brothers don’t need to ask.
But this isn’t just duty. Not anymore.
I turn away from the window and head to the bedroom. Strip down, slide under the covers. The sheets are cool. I stare at the ceiling, listen to the wind move through the pines.
Sleep doesn’t come easily tonight.
When it finally does, I dream of phone screens glowing in the dark, of messages that read like threats, of a woman walking alone under streetlights while shadows stretch too long behind her.
And in the dream, I’m running, boots pounding gravel, heart slamming, but no matter how fast I go, I can’t quite reach her before the dark closes in.
I wake before dawn, sheets tangled, chest tight.
The cabin is quiet.
But something inside me isn’t anymore.
Tomorrow I’ll go back to the cottage. Fix the sink. Check the windows. Make sure the locks hold.
And maybe, carefully, I’ll ask her about the phone. About the messages that make her flinch.
Not because I have the right.
Because I can’t stand the thought of her carrying that fear alone.
Not when I’m close enough to do something about it.
Chapter seven
Isla
The fog is thicker tonight than it’s been all week, rolling in off the Pacific like a living thing, soft and smothering. I pull my coat tighter around me as I leave the cottage, the door clicking shut behind me with a finality that makes my chest ache. It’s been exactly one year since Declan died—one year since the knock at the door, since the uniformed officer’s careful words, since the world tilted and never quite righted itself again.
I don’t plan to go far, just to the lighthouse. It’s a half-mile walk along the bluff path, gravel crunching under my sneakers, the beam sweeping slow and steady across the water like a heartbeat that refuses to stop. Declan loved lighthouses. He used to send me postcards from every port he visited, always with the same message scrawled on the back: “Still standing watch, sis.” I kept everyone in a shoebox under my bed until Travis found them one night and called them “sentimental garbage.” I moved the box to my car the next day, hidden under the spare tire. It’s still in the trunk now, safe.
