The urge to smile tugged at him despite everything. “Here?” Holt glanced around. “I’m not trying to be overly paranoid. But we have to reason that there are eyes on us.”
June followed his gaze and glanced around the cozy restaurant, then shook her head.
“You’re right,” she stated and caught his eyes. “Not here.”
“Okay, but we should finish dinner first.” Holt looked at the half-finished meal between them, ignoring the tug in his stomach and the excitement that spurted through him that their night together would be prolonged. He shook the feeling off and concentrated on his meal.
“Agreed.” June nodded.
Then they both tried to finish and enjoy the rest of their food, while the food was still good. He knew that, because objectively it tasted of garlic, butter, fresh herbs, and the sort of rich tomato sauce that should have made the meal memorable. But the conversation had shifted the night, and neither of them could pretend otherwise. They both ate a little more, finished their wine, and left enough on the plates to suggest appetite rather than distraction.
When the bill came, Holt paid it, while June stuffed her notepad and pen back in her purse, before standing and walking to the door. They stepped outside into one of those evenings that felt almost too lovely for the case they were carrying. The air was cooler than earlier, touched by salt and the faint sweetness of night-blooming flowers from the planters along the boardwalk. Lights had begun to glow in the storefronts, and the harbor beyond them shimmered with gold reflections from the restaurants and dock lamps.
Holt turned slightly, taking in the boardwalk stretching along the waterfront.
“Do you want to walk and talk?” He patted his pocket where his phone was. “We could record our thoughts.”
June followed his gaze, then pointed instead toward a small bench-and-table set farther along where the boardwalk widened into a viewing point over the ocean.
“That’s a great idea, but why don’t we sit there instead?” June turned and smiled up at him. “I prefer to write down my thoughts.” She shrugged. “I’m old-fashioned that way.”
Holt looked where she was pointing, and his chest gave an unexpected, painful little jolt. It was their old table.
It had been replaced a dozen times over the years, no doubt, and the paint had changed, and the weather had done its work, but the spot was the same. Tucked just enough away from the main path to feel half-private, with the sea stretching out in front of it and the town behind. Their private spot alone.
June smiled, and that smile reached somewhere in him that had never learned how to defend itself against her.
“Remember how we used to sit there when we were teenagers?” she asked, nostalgia darkening her beautiful eyes.
Holt felt the echo of it physically. He had kissed her there for the first time. They had sat there through summer evenings, and every version of themselves that had existed before life had begun to demand harder things from them.
“Yes, of course I do.” He looked at the table and then back at her. “I’m just surprised that it’s still there in the exact same spot where it has been for years.”
“This is a popular lazy day ice-cream spot,” June said with a little laugh. “So I doubt the town council would want to change it.” She glanced around the area. “I think they’d be very unpopular with all the mobile vendors that park near it during the summertime.”
He did smile then, and they walked there together.
The boardwalk boards creaked softly beneath their steps. Holt glanced around out of habit, checking the darkness between the lamps, the couples strolling past, the man in fishing gear carrying a cooler toward the docks, the teenager on a bicycle weaving too close to the curb. Ensuring that no one was close enough to overhear them and that no one was paying them any attention.
June sat first and pulled out her notepad and pen again, setting them neatly on the table between them. Holt took the seat opposite her and rested one forearm on the table.
The sea spread out behind her, darkening by the minute.
“What do you know for certain about ten years ago?” June asked as a starting point.
Holt thought about the reports, the statements, the official conclusions, and the things that had begun to feel less like facts and more like carefully preserved versions of them.
“The fire reports focus on the fires,” he said. “They were all ruled arson. That part was never really in dispute.”
June nodded for him to continue. “There was a fire at the campground first. If you look at the bigger picture now, you realize just how close that first fire was to the cabin Gilbert was renting for the summer.”
June’s pen paused above the page. “Like a warning to him?” she asked. “Someone was trying to make a point that they knew why he was there and what the story he was chasing was.”
“Yes,” Holt said. “Or possibly an attempt to burn the cabin and whatever he had already found out in it.”
“That’s a good point.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
Holt watched as she wrote quickly, her head bent, hair shifting lightly in the breeze. He had spent years trying to forget the small things about her. It hadn’t worked nearly as well as he had told himself.
