"I bought a boat from a guy in Portsmouth. Sailed it up the coast. Hit a storm. It sank. I washed up on shore and a woman pulled me out of the water."
"You — Jack. You could have died."
"I didn't die."
"You could have DIED and I wouldn't have known for WEEKS because you don't CALL?—"
"Jos. I'm fine. I'm okay. I've been staying at a lighthouse while I recovered."
Another pause. Shorter this time. He could hear the gears turning — Josie processing information, sorting it, filing it into the mental system she used to manage everything in her life that was falling apart, which was most things.
"A lighthouse," sherepeated.
"Yeah."
"With the woman who pulled you out of the water."
"Yeah."
"For three weeks."
"...Yeah."
"Jack Callahan. Are you sleeping with the lighthouse woman?"
He should have seen that coming. He absolutely should have seen that coming.
"Her name is Clara."
"That's not a no."
"It's not a—look, it's complicated."
"It's not complicated. You're either sleeping with her or you're not. This is a yes-or-no situation. Even Brody can handle yes-or-no questions and he's six."
"Yes."
"HA." The triumph in her voice could have powered a small city. "I knew it. The second you said 'lighthouse' I knew it. You had that voice."
"What voice?"
"The voice. The one you get when something actually matters and you're trying very hard to sound like it doesn't." She paused. "Tell me about her."
So he did.
Not all of it — not the details that were Clara's to share, not the Sam stuff, not the late-night conversations about fear and hiding and what it cost to be brave. But the shape of it. The lighthouse. The town. The drafting table and the webcomic and the way she yelled at seagulls and the fact that she'd pulled a drowning stranger out of the ocean and given him a place to heal.
The way she looked at him like he was worth knowing.
Josie listened. Actually listened, which meant it was serious, because Josie didn't do quiet unless something mattered.
"She sounds great, Jack," Josie said when he finished. Her voice had changed — softer now, the anger banked. "She sounds really great."
"She is."
"So what are you going to do?"
The question sat there. Simple. Direct. The kind of question Josie specialized in — the kind that had one honest answer and a dozen ways to dodge it.
