“Wrong number,” she lied, smoothing her expression out. “Some extra-breath-y telemarketer. I’m sure they wanted to sell me extended protection on my blender.”
Mateo gaped at her. “Is that... an actual scam?”
“Oh yes,” she said, sliding the phone face-down. “Apparently, my toaster’s social security number is also compromised.”
Walter didn’t laugh. He lifted his mug to his lips without drinking and said, “Thought the past can’t find you here, huh?”
Lena went still.
No one else seemed to react—Lisa fired off a text and Mateo asked about post-shift entertainment options—but Lena was aware, in a visceral way, of the call traces still lingering in her mind. That voice. Her name. The very specific creep factor of being known.
She looked at Walter, who gave her a look only people who’d already lived through their own storm could wear. Not pity. Recognition, perhaps, mixed with empathy.
“It can’t,” she said finally, airily. “But if it does, it better book a premium suite and prepare to be spectacularly disappointed by my customer service.”
Walter smiled but didn’t argue.
Four cookies later, Lena tossed her napkin and stood to leave the room. The chill had faded from her skin, but not her spine.
Twilight on Mimosa Caybrought long shadows and breezes laced with salt and secrets. Lena trudged up the walk to her cottage with a sigh that came from somewhere around her kneecaps. Her calves ached, her tablet in her tote bag stewed in sunscreen goo, and she had two voicemails from the operations director about “guest hover-boarding behaviors.” Not a phrase anyone expected to hear.
She trod halfway up the steps when something crunched beneath her foot. Crunch wasn’t a sound you wanted from a wooden porch.
She paused.
Looked down.
Froze.
Her foot hovered above a trail of tiny, glinting pieces. At first, she thought broken glass—but recognition hit her like a riptide.
Shell shards. Familiar ones.
The shards weren’t scattered naturally, like the aftermath of an overenthusiastic iguana party. No, they lay in a meandering, deliberate pattern—leading from the bottom step around to the far side of her porch… where the rest of them waited.
Her conch. Cracked in pieces, like a warning. The ridged pink-and-ivory whelk, the baby cockleshell that resembled a tiny heart if you squinted sideways at it. Ruined. Shattered.
She dropped her purse and crouched, a queasy chill creeping up her spine. She reached out and picked up the largest fragment, the edge gritty and jagged against her palm. Gonewas the natural gleam. These weren’t accidentally dropped. They were crushed. Someone had taken the time to destroy her shells.
The solitude deepened. The breeze rustled the palms overhead, but her cottage lay eerily still, like it held its breath. For a heartbeat, the temperature seemed to drop—her skin prickled like it knew something her brain refused to name.
She said nothing, just stared at the destruction like she could unsee it through pure concentrated denial.
She pushed to her feet and forced herself to scoff. Loudly.
“Wow. Okay. If this is a dramatic breakup from Neptunian art school—please note, I only flirted with Poseidon once, and it was low tide.”
She had no idea who she was talking to. The breeze? The nagging image of Chester’s smug grin in a courtroom hallway? Or herself?
Pride—or maybe spite—propelled her forward. She nudged the trail of debris off the steps with the toe of her sandal, grabbed her tote, and jammed the broken conch into the outside bin like that’d end it. Like destroying the mess meant the message died with it.
Not that there was a message. Probably.
She took a long, deliberate breath, held it past the cold spike behind her ribs, then exhaled like she meant it. No cameras. No witnesses. Whoever did this hadn’t hung around.
She wasn’t some fainting heroine in a Gothic novel. This island didn’t get to rattle her.
Still.
