TEN
CLARA
Kit had already claimedthe corner table when I walked into the café, a half-empty latte in front of her and her boots kicked out like she owned the place. The bell over the door jingled, and she glanced up, eyes brightening when she saw me.
“You’re late,” she said, even though I very clearly was not.
“I’m exactly on time.” I shrugged out of my coat and draped it over the back of the chair. “You’re just dramatic.”
“Runs in the family,” she shot back, but there was a flash in her eyes that told me exactly where her brain had gone—wedding, runaway bride, big small-town gossip.
I pretended not to see it and busied myself with the menu board like I hadn’t already memorized it in high school. The server took our drink orders with a nod before giving us time to decide on our food.
Across the table, Kit was watching me like a cat who’d spotted a bug.
“Don’t,” I warned, palming my latte as soon as it arrived. “I can feel you about to pounce.”
She widened her eyes innocently. “What? I’m just spending time with my favorite black-sheep sister. Can’t a girl enjoy brunch without ulterior motives?”
“Please.” I teasingly kicked her boot. “You don’t even know what ‘ulterior’ means.”
“Rude,” she said, but she grinned around the rim of her mug.
Kit mentioned Mom had already started “reclaiming the house” now that I wasn’t camped out in my old room—more dinners out with Dad, fewer big grocery runs, talk of finally repainting the hallway.
It was all perfectly normal empty-nester stuff, but it still landed a little sideways. I’d barely moved my suitcases into Wes’s house, and it already felt like my parents were quietly resetting back to life without me. Elodie was neck-deep in farm renovations and restaurant plans, Selene was buried in archives and old paper, and Hayes was ... Hayes. He’d apparently managed to lock himself out of his truck at the gas station while it was still running, which felt right on brand for the most cursed man in Star Harbor.
We traded a few more low-stakes updates, but I could feel the real conversation pulsing under the table, waiting. My move into Wes’s house sat between us like a third cup of coffee neither of us wanted to acknowledge yet.
“So,” she said, drawing the word out. “There is a Keepers meeting coming up. We’re learning how to knit.”
I blinked. That was not the topic I’d expected. “Wow, okay. Hard left.”
Her eyebrows bounced. “Seriously, though ... you’re coming to the next meeting, right? Selene has more stuff about the Lady. She actually squealed on the phone, and Sel never squeals.”
“Obviously I know the basics,” I hedged, not really sure where Kit was going with it. “Lady of the Dunes, tragic love story, cursed town.” My eyes sliced to her. “Cursedbrother,” I mumbled low enough for only her to hear.
Kit scoffed. “That was the Disney version. This is the messed-up version.”
I couldn’t help it—I leaned in. “Messed up how?”
She glanced around like someone might be eavesdropping, then lowered her voice anyway. “So they found her letters.”
“Afraid, hiding, not waiting for some shipwrecked sailor but running from someone,” I recited.
“Right,” Kit said, eyes lighting. “Well, Selene’s found even more references to this man. The one in the photograph.”
I shivered, remembering the way my sisters had described it. The grainy black-and-white picture, the Lady’s eyes scratched out, and the eerie figure in the corner who looked like he could’ve walked right out of our century and into theirs wearing Hayes’s face.
“The guy who looks like our brother,” I said.
“Exactly.” Her voice dropped into something reverent and gleeful. “We still don’t know who he is. We’ve checked the obvious stuff—marriage records, death notices, land deeds—but nothing concrete yet. Selene thinks he might’ve worked on the Barker family land. A farmhand, maybe. Someone who slipped through the cracks.”
The Barkers were the old-money family tied to the Lady’s legend, the ones whose property stretched from the dunes to half the town. If there was a place for secrets, it was their land.
I frowned at my mug. “Maybe she was knocked up,” I said, half joking, half not. “Terrified and pregnant. That would’ve been about as scandalous as it gets back then.”
Kit froze, her eyes going huge. Then she slapped the table. “Oh my god, can you imagine? Secret baby? Town scandal? This is exactly the kind of thing the Keepers live for.”
