“It sure is,” Caleb insists.
Grace turns to him, her brows arching in question. “Really?”
“Really,” he confirms, and nods to prove that he means it. “Sea Drift is funny that way.” He lifts his chin by a degree. When he does, their eyes meet in the dimming light. “There’s something about this place,” he adds, a sense of wistfulness in his tone. “For whatever reason, things on this island don’t tend to stay lost for very long.”
Eight
It’s officially dusk by the time Grace stumbles into the outdoor shower—tired, embarrassed, devastated, like a contestant voted off a reality show she didn’t know she was on. She hangs a too-small bath towel over the doorframe, wrestles with her bathing suit—the damp fabric clinging to her like a story she’d rather forget—then hangs it on a rusted hook and twists the ancient plumbing to life.
“Oh my God!” she squeals, her breath catching in a gasp, the water unbearably freezing right before it turns excruciatingly hot. “Are youkiddingme?”
She hops on the planks, fumbling with the knobs, desperate for something between arctic blast and molten lava. After a brief battle, the temperature evens out, just as her foot slides across the slippery wood flooring, inviting a sharp, foreign object into her heel.
“Come on!” With a huff, she bites back an obscenity, bends, and spots the splinter. It’s small. A nothing. Still, after today’s events, she’s so frustrated she could cry. “You’re fine, Grace. It’s a splinter, not a knife wound.” The water runs down her face and trickles over her lips. “You’re thirty-seven, almost thirty-eight. Not five.”
Through the opening at the top of the shower, the steam curls into the fading light. Out there, the world hums with August. Seagulls squawk. Up the street, kids shout. Music plays. The water rushes over her, though she can still hear the distant pulse of the ocean—certain andsteady—like a white-noise machine she can’t click off. Even so, every cell inside her feels tense.
She lets the stream pound against her back, hoping it’ll wash away the last few hours. It doesn’t. With a heavy exhale, she rummages through the simple toiletry bag she threw together this morning—shampoo, a bar of soap, just the basics. Her fingers trail her skin while she works herself into a foamy lather and tries to ignore the new, unwanted vacancy on her chest. Impossible. Such a minor thing, yet the void it’s left behind feels vast.
“It’s not a big deal,” she whispers, hoping to calm herself. “It’sonlya necklace,” she adds, which, of course, isn’t true. The bubbles wash away, slipping down her arms, over her flat torso—another empty space—and through the slats at her feet. “Not in the grand scheme of things.” Still, that doesn’t make it feel like less of a loss.
Grace sets down the soap and presses her hands against the slatted wall, trying to believe her lie. A cool breeze blows in, a contrast to the warm water. Suddenly, her ears perk up.
“Hello?” she calls out, thinking she’s heard footsteps on the crushed-seashell lot. A trail of residual shampoo stings her eyes. She squints, peers through the cracks in the wood. “Is someone out there!”
But it’s only wishful thinking. She’s alone. No one here but her.
Grace straightens, rinses her face, then reaches for the soap again. Instead, her hand gravitates to the bottle of strawberry shampoo. She flips the lid, squeezes out a dollop of pink, telling herself it’s only her imagination, that she hasn’t just heard that noise, which sounds like footsteps—again. The gel turns into a mountain of suds as she rubs her palms together, bringing them to her nose.
She stays there, lost in a memory, until the water runs cold.
Back inside—dressed in sweats and a stretched-out tee, her wet hair twisted up—Grace sinks into the comfortable new sofa. She inspectsher foot, pressing her thumb against her heel to see whether the splinter is close enough to the surface to easily slide out, but it’s in too deep. The irritation is mild enough for her to momentarily ignore it—something to deal with later. She abandons the task and clicks on the home’s sole television, a years-old thing set on a wobbly stand. There are no streaming services. No movies on demand. She flips—news, a reality series, renovation shows—in search of background noise. Finally, she lands on a Hallmark movie, the type of silly, predictable story she’s always loathed (terrible writing, so clichéd) but her mother loved.
She shuts it off, pulls her laptop onto her knees. By force of habit, she clicks open her email. Her inbox doesn’t load right away. The signal flickers—a lone black bar holding on for dear life. Her account opens. She scrolls through digital piles of junk, barely registering them. Not-so-new news alerts. Stores already pushing sweaters and pumpkin-spice everything. She doesn’t expect to find a message from Mollie, sent late last night.
Subject: Re: Checking in!
Sender: Mollie Grey, Chapter One Literary Agency
Hi Grace,
Touching base again! Turns out the Wi-Fi up on the Cape isn’t too bad. Knowing me, I’ll likely check in on my emails from time to time in case you want to send the manuscript along now (even if it’s still messy!).
I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but as you know, this next delivery date is pretty crucial in keeping your contract and the terms of your advance in place. When you have a minute, will you let me know where things stand? I’m rooting for you.
xx,
M
Grace exhales. Hard. The deadline. The contract. The advance. A different kind of drowning. Quickly, she closes the tab—something to deal with later—and clicks open her book document. That’s part of why she came here, right? To embrace a fresh perspective. To at leasttryto find her voice again. The file appears. She swipes, though it’s practically blank, same as the last time she looked at it. Some scattered notes. A handful of incoherent and unfinished paragraphs. The sad, unspecific words “Book Three” staring back at her on the first page.
The day Grace finished writingThe Tides—therealversion, the one that’d been edited and cross-checked by everyone on her team dozens of times—the first thing she did (after calling Birdie to squeal about the fact that it was complete) was print out a copy for Adam. Three days after she gave it to him, he called her at lunchtime and asked if they could meet for dinner.
By the time Grace walked into the restaurant that evening, she’d convinced herself she was minutes away from Adam ending their roughly yearlong relationship.
“Hi,” she said when she entered the dining room and noted her manuscript on the table like a piece of incriminating evidence. “I guess that means you finished reading it.”
“I did,” Adam said, his voice not doing much to reveal any emotion. “Late last night.”
