I tried to relax my grip on the steering wheel. Rolling down my window, I breathed in the briny scent of the sea and pulled to the side, letting an impatient driver pass before easing back onto the road.
“Low tide,” Ocean said, her head hanging out her open window.
“You used to complain about it whenever we came back here,” I reminded her.
“That was because we never stayed long enough for me to get used to it.”
A fair point. We never did stay long enough. Three days in New York, a weekend here to visit Clare, and back to LA again. That was the way Rhys liked it, just enough time to soak up the New England charm before retreating to the possibilities of Manhattan. And then back to the West Coast.
Clare never once complained, though. She took whatever time we were able to give her.
Ocean waved a hand out her window. “Do things look different?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, different from when you were growing up?”
Some of the shops along Washington Street were new, but a lot of them were the same.
“That breakfast place. The grocery store. The bakery. They all had different names back then.” Faces flickered across my memory. People I hadn’t seen in years but had once seen almost like family. “Maybe I already told you this, but when I was growing up, nobody paid cash at the grocery store. Not unless you were a tourist. The butcher’s son or daughter, whoever was working, would just jot down what you owed in a spiral notebook at the register. You’d come back at the end of the month and settle up. No interest. Just your total.”
Ocean gave a disbelieving snort. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that system would last about five minutes in North Hollywood.”
“I’m not even sure it would work here anymore.”
She pointed out the window. “That lunch place on the corner. Didn’t you take me there once? We had grilled bread and hot chocolate.”
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “Grilled Portuguese Sweet Bread. Clare and I used to go there all the time. I always got hot chocolate. She drank tea.”
The wash of emotion in my chest grew stronger.
“You said Harbor View was pretty dead off-season. Those sidewalks look packed.”
She wasn’t wrong. For a town that supposedly slept through the spring, Harbor View was wide awake today. Summer was still three weeks off, but the streets buzzed like it was mid-July.
I eased off the gas and glanced up the cross street we were passing. Second Street. The narrow sidewalks were still flanked by Colonial and Greek Revival houses, just like I remembered. Some wore fresh paint like new clothes; others had faded under salt air and too many New England winters. But the bones of the place hadn’t changed.
I used to know every shortcut, every broken fence and hidden path in this village.
A few more blocks down, as I turned left onto First Street, my eyes caught sight of the top of the lighthouse, standing solidly in place down at the Point, just like always. From the time I was Ocean’s age, I always saw it as something more than beacon for passing ships. I thought of it as a guiding light, pointing me toward something bigger and better than Harbor View.
Now, it suddenly felt like it stood for everything and everyone I left behind.
“I know there’s a ton of stuff we have to do before we head back to L.A.,” Ocean said, her voice soft, almost unsure. Not her normal tone. “But maybe we could take a day? Just one. So you can show me around? Like, really show me the village?”
I looked at her, surprised and a little moved.
“Yeah. Of course.”
First Street looked exactly the same. In front of the old red brick building that once served as the Borough Hall and volunteer firehouse, two men sat in folding chairs like sentries of the past. One waved a fat cigar as he talked, the other shook his head and took a long pull from a beer bottle. On a sign above them, the names of the three original firefighting teams—Neptunes, Steamers, Pioneers—stood out in crisp relief against the freshly painted white doors and trim.
Halfway down the block, colorful flags fluttered outside Rainbow Reef Bookstore, Arthur’s shop. Its front door was propped open to catch the breeze. But that wasn’t what drew my eye.
Across the street stood Clare’s house.
The two-story Greek Revival looked tired. The once-bright red door was peeling. The white picket fence that framed the yard was chipped and leaning, a few slats missing entirely. On either side of the stone steps, overgrown lilacs fought to keep their purple blooms above the tangle of weeds trying to swallow them whole.
The place was a little neglected, but it was the house I grew up in. Whatever I’d been feeling before, my emotions now spun out of control.
