For Sale.
Grace stares at it for at least a minute, hardly able to move. All the air drains from her, like her body is being deflated. When she finally springs into action again, she turns, and without even thinking, marches to the end of the block. A melting pot of mixed-upemotions—anger, sadness, uncertainty—bubbles inside her. A few feet ahead, other renters trickle down the dune, sunburned and sandy. But Grace isn’t heading to the dune, not waltzing off to pass a casual few hours. Instead, she stops right before it at the pink house on the right.
“Grace?” Caleb answers the door, surprised and maybe annoyed to see her standing there. “Um, hi.” He looks over his shoulder at something—or perhaps someone—inside. His breezy, at times flirtatious, demeanor is gone. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
Grace felt confident on her way over here, though now Caleb’s tone throws her off. “D-did you tell someone that I was coming here? Back to Sea Drift, I mean. This week.”
“What are you talking about?” Caleb’s brows furrow. “Is something wrong with the house or—”
“Caleb?” a voice—a female one—calls out from inside. The sound of it makes something inside Grace shift, her cells pulsing with regret. “Sweetheart,” the woman continues, “is everything okay?”
A woman—older, closer in age to Birdie than Grace—appears behind him in the entryway. Grace blinks, momentarily caught off guard. It’s not her, obviously. But for a second, something about her hair and breezy dress is enough to make Grace look away.
“Yeah, Mom.” Caleb’s brows settle. “I’ll be back inside in a minute.”
He steps out onto the porch, gently closing the door behind him.
“I-I’m sorry,” Grace says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s fine,” Caleb assures her. “Really.” A hint of his usual brightness sneaks back into his tone, though it sounds less natural this time. “So what’s going on? Why did you ask if I told someone you’re down here?” He strains his neck, maybe to see if something is noticeably wrong at his rental property. “Which—to be clear—I didn’t. I mean, legally all my renters’ agreements are confidential. Not that I’m even sure who I’d tell.”
Of course, he didn’t. Because he’s right. Whowouldhe tell? What would he even tell them (Hey—I rented a house to someone ... because, youknow, that’s what I do for a living.)? And also, why would he divulge Grace’s whereabouts? They don’t know each other. Not really. They’ve had a few conversations. A casual meal. Maybe a hint of something—flirtation, perhaps, or at least she’d thought.
But now she sees it for what it’s really been. Pity. Mortification after mortification, stacked on top of each other like blocks. The tide pool. The seaweed. Even Caleb’s initial call, which she was still second-guessing just a moment earlier (Did he know something? Did he tell Ray?), was one, too. The fact that Grace had been available to come back here at the last minute. No weekend plans. No end-of-season getaways already on the calendar. Just Grace. Alone. Stuck at home, surrounded by boxes of memories, putzing around a house that has become its own form of grief, trying her hardest to draft a story she’ll probably never have the chance to truly understand.
And now this: showing up on her landlord’s porch (because, technically, that’s what he is—allthat he is—to her), looking like a sweaty mess, running on sugar and limited sleep and hoping maybe he—a near stranger—can help her make sense of anything.
“I-I’m confused. I thought the house wasn’t going up for sale until the fall,” Grace says now, subtly shifting gears and realizing how foolish she must sound. What did it matter when it went up? Now? A few weeks from now? Today? Never? What difference did it really make in her life? It didn’t. Yet seeing it there made something in her ache. “Why’d the sign go up today? Are the owners really anxious to get rid of it?”
Caleb squeezes the back of his neck, tense with something he needs to work out. He looks behind him at the door, then back at Grace. “Give me a half hour. I need to finish up some things with my folks.” His eyes fall in line with hers. “You up for grabbing a midday drink?”
Unlike their first meeting on the beach, when Grace’s initial reaction was to turn down his offer for a beer—old habits, old hopes, still guiding her small choices—this time, the answer comes to her right away.
“Without a doubt,” Grace states, no hesitation in her voice. “I definitely am.”
Eighteen
What’s your poison?”
Grace looks up from the bar top and sees Caleb, who’s just returned from the restroom, taking a seat on the stool next to her. It’s the middle of the afternoon on what, weather-wise, is a perfect beach day. Even so, the Dive, Sea Drift’s one and only classic dive bar (hence the clever, ocean-inspired name), buzzes with at least a dozen customers. There are a few older men at pub tables, sipping cheap beer and laughing about something. A trio of early-twentysomethings—just barely old enough to be in here—dance near the jukebox in their flimsy cover-ups and damp bathing suits.
“Whatever’s cold,” Grace says, feeling impossibly parched from her long walk down the island. “And maybe a snack.”
Caleb laughs, waves down a bartender—a college-aged guy who wears a T-shirt printed with a new, updated logo for the bar on its front. “A bowl of pretzels and two Miller High Lifes.” He looks to Grace for her approval. “It’s the Dive,” he adds. “I’m not sure they’ve advanced to artisanal cocktails just yet.”
Unlike every other establishment here—all boasting water views, coastal knickknacks, and a light, airy feel that matches the setting—the Dive is unapologetically dark. Only two windows, both covered with broken slatted blinds. Wood-paneled walls. Countless framed maps of the island hung at uneven angles. Multicolored Christmas lights. A scratched-up shuffleboard game and decades-old pool table in the back.
Grace used to come here in her younger years—first with a bad fake ID, then later with the real thing. She was never alone, always walking in with Meg or Ray or other summer friends and stumbling out in a tipsy and giggling group. It was a place of fun times and bad decisions, of dollar drafts and late-night dancing. The August she brought Adam to Sea Drift, they popped by after dinner one night. It was packed. Drunk kids everywhere. People smoking cigarettes just outside the doors, the smell wafting in. They sat at the bar, its surface sticky from other people’s good times, and each ordered a bottle of beer.
“This place is pretty vintage, huh?” Adam joked. “Straight out of the seventies.”
“I know.” Grace laughed. “It’s a total time stamp.” She noshed on peanuts like a circus elephant. “Honestly, it’s sort of a mess.”
Back in New York, Adam was a regular at a rotation of Midtown establishments—places with white table linens and multiple forks for different parts of a meal—where he took clients to talk about their futures, make sure they were prepared and had solid plans.
“This place is prime real estate, though.” Adam sipped from his beer bottle. “A few lots in from the beach. Decent square footage.” He looked around, lost in a daydream. “If they gutted it, opened it up, added a bunch of big windows, they could make a killing,” he pointed out, even though the line to order drinks behind them was three people deep.
“Seems to me like they’re already doing all right,” Grace countered as someone sloshed part of their drink down her back.
