Wait.
Clara stared at the panel she'd drawn last week. The one with the lighthouse keeper—a woman who talked to seagulls and kept the world at arm's length—giving relationship advice to a lost sailor.
She'd based the lighthouse keeper on herself. Obviously. That's what writers did—mined their own neuroses for material and called it art.
But now, looking at it with fresh eyes after last night, after this morning, after Jack Callahan had trusted her with his broken pieces, the dialogue felt... wrong.
The lighthouse keeper was telling the sailor to give up. To respect that some people didn't want to be found. To accept that isolation was a choice, not a prison.
But what if that was bullshit?
What if Clara had been lying to herself for three years, calling solitude a choice when really it was just fear wearing a different name?
Her pen moved before she could talk herself out of it. She flipped to a new page and started sketching.
A lighthouse keeper. Walls built high. A sailor asking for directions. But this time, instead of turning him away, the lighthouse keeper looked... uncertain. Like she wanted to help but had forgotten how.
The dialogue came easier now:
Sailor:"How do I tell someone I care about them without scaring them off?"
Lighthouse Keeper:"Why would honesty scare anyone?"
Sailor:"Because sometimes people have been hurt so badly, they mistake kindness for manipulation."
The lighthouse keeper didn't have an answer to that.
Clara stared at what she'd drawn, her chest tight.
This was too close. Too real. Her readers would know. They'd see right through the metaphor to the terrified woman hiding behind it.
She should erase it. Start over. Draw something safer.
Instead, she kept going.
An hour later, Jack appeared in her peripheral vision, climbing down from the ladder. He wiped his hands on his jeans—they were covered in rust and what looked like ancient paint chips—and gathered his tools.
Clara told herself she was just taking a break. Resting her eyes. Definitely not tracking his movement toward the lighthouse door.
He came inside carrying the toolbox, setting it down by the door with a satisfied sigh.
"Shutters are done," he announced. "They won't bang anymore. Also, I found a wasp nest the size of a grapefruit behind the left one, so you're welcome for not getting stung to death in your sleep."
"My hero," Clara said dryly.
"I accept payment in coffee and sarcasm." He moved to the sink to wash his hands. "How's the work going?"
"It's... going."
"That sounds ominous."
"Deadlines always are."
Jack dried his hands on the dish towel—the one with the lighthouse pattern that hergrandmother had embroidered—and leaned against the counter. Not hovering. Not pushing. Just... present.
"I gotta ask something about Tidal Lock. How autobiographical is it?"
Her pen froze mid-stroke. "What makes you think it's autobiographical?"
