Jack's truck sat in the gravel drive — same dented F-150, same crack in the dashboard, now with a Beacon's End resident parking sticker on the bumper and a toolbox bolted to the bed. It had survived its first Maine winter, which Jack considered a personal triumph and Clara considered a minor miracle.
"Ready?" Jack asked, opening the passenger door for her.
"Define ready."
"Willing to leave the house."
"Barely."
He grinned. The real one — the full-face, crinkle-eyed smile that she'd spent a year learning to trust, the one that still did something stupid to her pulse evenafter twelve months of sharing a bathroom. "You're going to be great."
"I'm going to throw up."
"You can do both. I believe in you."
She shoved his shoulder and got in the truck.
The drive into town took twenty minutes. Jack drove — he'd learned the coastal road's moods by season, though Clara still braced on the tight curve at mile two where the shoulder dropped off toward the rocks. He was whistling. Off-key, as always. The same tuneless, infuriating sound that she'd pretended to hate for so long but it had become the background music of her life (and she loved it.)
"Nervous?" he asked.
"No."
"Liar."
"Fine. Terrified. Nauseous. Questioning every decision I've ever made."
"That's more like it." He reached over and squeezed her knee. Didn't offer a pep talk. Didn't tell her it would be fine. Just left his hand there in a silent show of support.
Clara covered his hand with hers. Looked out the window at the ocean scrolling by — the same view she'd driven a thousand times, the same pines and rocky beaches and occasional white steeple, all of it so familiar it had become invisible. Except today it felt sharper. More real. The way things looked when you were about to do something that couldn't be undone.
She was about to sit in a bookstore in her town, with her face on a book, and sign copies for people who would look at her and know. Know that the lighthouse keeper was Clara. That the sea witch's cruelty was drawn from experience. That the lost sailor's fear of staying was — well. That one was sitting next to her, whistling off-key, with sawdust permanently embedded in his knuckles.
"For the record," Jack said, "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."
Clara's chest did something complicated. "I'm family?"
Jack glanced at her. "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.' You're family. And I might add, your nickname is far kinder than the one she has for me. 'Butthead brother'."
"Oh," Clara chuckled but looked out the window so he wouldn't see her face. It was an oddly wonderful thing to be considered close enough to be granted a nickname.
The Founder's Festival was in full swing by the time they arrived.
Same beach. Same strings of lights crisscrossing between poles. Same food stalls lining the dunes — 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 "the stuff that could pickle your insides."
The stage Jack had built last summer stood solid in the center of it all, weathered now, the raw wood aged to a silver-gray that looked like it had been there for decades.
"Still standing," Jack noted with satisfaction.
"Were you worried?"
"I'm never worried about my work. I'm offendedanyone would question it."
"Nobody questioned it."
