"That's more like it."
He reached over and squeezed her knee. Didn't offer a pep talk. A year of loving Clara Hawkins had taught him that pep talks made it worse — they gave her something to argue against, and she was very good at arguing. What helped was contact. The physical language they'd built between them over twelve months of sharing a bathroom and a bed and a kitchen where two mugs sat on the shelf like a pair.
She covered his hand with hers. Looked out the window.
He let her have the silence. Some moments needed privacy even when you were sitting two feet apart.
"For the record," he said after a minute, "Josie already bought six copies. One for her, one for Mom, one for each kid, and two for people at her office. She's been texting me about it since five this morning."
"It's not even out yet."
"She pre-ordered. She's very aggressive about supporting family."
He watched it land. The word.Family.Watched Clara's face do something complicated — not a flinch, not anymore, but the particular stillness of a woman receiving something she hadn't expected to be offered.
"I'm family?" she asked. Quiet.
"Clara. You've been on three video calls with my mother where she cried. You sent Brody a birthday card with a custom drawing of his hamster. Josie has you saved in her phone as 'Lighthouse Clara.'" He glanced at her. "You're family. And I might add, your nickname is far kinder than the one she has for me. 'Butthead brother.'"
Clara chuckled and looked out the window so he wouldn't see her face.
He saw it anyway. In the reflection. The way her eyes went bright and her mouth pressed together — not sadness, but the effort of holding something too big to show. He knew that look. He'd worn it himself, that first Thanksgiving video call when his mother had saidbring her home, Jackand he'd had to mute his end for a second to collect himself.
Family. Not the one he'd lost pieces of. The one he was building.
He kept driving. The ocean scrolled by on their left — the same view Clara had seen a thousand times, the same pines and rocky beaches and occasional white steeple. He'd learned to love this coastline the way you learn to love anything worth keeping: slowly, then all at once, then so deeply that you forgot there was a time before it.
***
The Founder's Festival was in full swing by the time they parked.
Same beach. Same strings of lights. Same food stalls — lobster rolls and corn on the cob and Tim's dad's pie table, which had expanded this year to include what Tim optimistically called "artisan cider" and everyone else called "hazardous."
The stage Jack had built last summer stood in the center of it all. Weathered now — the raw wood aged to a silver-gray that made it look like it had been here for decades instead of twelve months. Which was exactly what he'd intended. Good work didn't announce itself. Good work looked like it had always been there.
"Still standing," he noted.
"Were you worried?"
"I'm never worried about my work. I'm offended anyone wouldquestion it."
"Nobody questioned it."
"Thomas asked if the supports needed rechecking. In March. I'm still deciding whether or not we should have words."
Clara laughed — the easy kind, the kind that belonged to good days — and followed him down toward the beach.
Maeve found them first. Because Maeve always found them first. Some things in Beacon's End operated with the reliability of natural law: the tides came in, the lobster traps went down, and Maeve appeared at the precise moment you arrived anywhere, as if she had sonar.
She pulled Clara into a hug and launched into the bookmarks, the line, the fans. Jack stood slightly behind and to the left — the position he'd learned was correct for these situations. Close enough to be present. Far enough to not be in the way.
He watched Maeve hold Clara at arm's length. Watched Mrs. Conley intercept them at the pie table and deliver a monologue about font sizes and her cousin Dorothy. Watched Clara navigate the attention with the slightly panicked grace of a woman who'd spent three years hiding behind a cartoon avatar and was still getting used to being seen.
She was getting better at it. Not comfortable — Clara would never be fully comfortable with attention, the same way he'd never be fully comfortable with standing still. But she leaned into it now instead of flinching. Answered questions instead of deflecting. Let people tell her they were proud without immediately changing the subject.
He thought about the woman he'd met. The one who'd hauled him out of the ocean. Who'd flinched when anyone got too close to her real work, her real self, the parts she'd learned to hide because someone had taught her they weren't worth showing.
He couldn’t say without his throat closing up that Clara inspired him in ways no one else ever had and he’d made a silent promise that he’d work every single day to be worthy of a woman like her.
