I pour coffee, sit at the desk, and open the cookbook notes. For the next hour, I pretend to work.
I approve a photo caption. I leave three comments on a recipe revision. I answer one email from my publicist with the calm professional language that makes it sound like I have not recently catalogued the sounds a beach cottage makes at night. I try to write a paragraph about summer meals meant to be eaten barefoot and end up thinking about Cole standing in the surf with water curling around his ankles.
Barefoot, apparently, is now a dangerous word.
By late morning, I give up. Not permanently. Just strategically.
The pantry has enough welcome-basket snacks to keep a normal vacationer alive for a day or two, but I am not normal about food, and I refuse to survive on crackers, strawberries,and sparkling water while surrounded by one of the prettiest kitchens I have ever rented. I change into linen shorts and a loose white shirt over my swimsuit, leave my hair down because there are no cameras here to impress, and make a grocery list on my phone.
Eggs.
Greens.
Good bread, if the island has mercy.
Citrus.
Something fresh for dinner.
Before I leave, I check the front door, the porch door, and the bedroom window. Once each. Then, because honesty matters even when no one is watching, I check the front door again.
The drive into the center of Sunbreak Harbor takes less than ten minutes. In daylight, the town looks even more charming than it did when I arrived yesterday. The candy-striped lighthouse rises at the far end of the island like something from a painting, red and white bands bright against the blue sky. Golf carts share the road with SUVs and bicycles. Tourists cluster outside a surf shop. A woman in a wide-brimmed hat carries flowers wrapped in brown paper. Two kids trail after their father with inflatable pool rings bouncing against their knees.
No one looks at me twice. That helps. Then one woman near the crosswalk frowns at me a little too long, and my stomach tightens until she smiles and says, “You’re the chef with the lemon pasta video, aren’t you?” I stop because politeness is muscle memory.
“That’s me,” I say.
Her face brightens. “I knew it. My daughter makes that every Friday. She thinks she invented adding extra garlic.”
I laugh because this kind of recognition is normal. Sweet, even. It has happened in airports, grocery stores, hotel lobbies,and once in a dentist’s office while my mouth was still half numb.
“That sounds like a smart daughter,” I say.
The woman asks for a quick selfie, and I agree because saying no to kind strangers still feels unnatural, especially when they only want thirty seconds of proof that the internet exists in real life. She thanks me three times and walks away smiling.
Normal. Everything is normal.
I buy coffee from a tiny café called Driftwood & Cream, a few groceries from a market with hand-painted signs, and a bottle of sunscreen because I forgot mine in Orlando.
By the time I return to The Sandpiper, I almost believe last night’s little noise beneath the porch was exactly what I told myself it was … nothing. I park beneath the cottage, grab two canvas bags from the passenger seat, and start toward the stairs. Then I stop.
The storage room door beneath the house is open. Not wide, just a few inches. Enough that I can see darkness beyond it. I stare at it, my heart shifting from calm to pounding so quickly I feel dizzy.
It was closed yesterday. Wasn’t it?
I try to picture it the way it looked when I pulled in. I definitely remember the lattice screen and coiled hoses. The outdoor shower I didn’t notice then. I don’t know why. But I know that storage room door was closed. I remember noticing it because the road-facing side of the house felt so practical compared to the pretty rental photos. Closed. I’m almost certain it was closed.
My fingers tighten around the grocery bags until the handles cut into my skin. The sensible explanation arrives fast. Maybe the wind pulled it open. Perhaps there are beach chairs inside and someone from the cleaning crew forgot to latch it. MaybeI’m tired, stressed, and turning every ordinary detail into evidence. Still, I don’t move closer.
I set the grocery bags down slowly on the stair landing and pull my phone from my pocket. My thumb hovers over Vanessa’s name first, then Talia’s, then the emergency contact number the rental owner sent.
In the end, I call Marianne.
She answers on the fourth ring, cheerful and breathless. “Kara, hello. Is everything okay?”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I say, already embarrassed by the tightness in my voice. “I just got back to the cottage, and the storage door underneath is open. I wondered if that’s normal.”
There’s a tiny pause.
