Page 42 of Beachfront Pages

At the top she wrote a word, crossed it out, wrote another. A series. Not Hank. Something new. A light that did more than guide ships home. A lighthouse keeper who'd kept secrets. A stranger who came to a small town to disappear and found a story there instead.

The pen moved. It kept moving. The light faded and she didn't get up to switch on the lamp. The work was warm under her hand, awake in a way nothing had been awake in months. And in the gray of her laptop screen, Hank Carson stayed where she'd left him. Out in the rain, patient, waiting for a woman who wasn't coming back for him tonight.

Chapter 14

The sky had been the color of a bruise when she left the cottage, so Fiona took the car. Good thing too. The rain came down in earnest before she'd parked, the kind of fat Gulf downpour that turned the harbor into raging water and emptied the sidewalks in under a minute.

She ran the last few steps to Tides & Tales and ducked inside, shaking water off her hair, carefully balancing their coffee.

"You picked a fine afternoon for a book emergency," Marty said from behind the counter.

"It wasn't raining when I made the decision."

"It's Florida. It's always about to be raining."

She'd brought coffee, two of them, the cardboard cups gone soft and warm in her hands. Jan had drawn a little wave on the side of his lid, the way she did now. Fiona set his down on the counter and kept her own.

The shop was empty. Of course it was empty. Nobody bought a book in weather like this, and most days nobody bought one in good weather either, which they both knew but neither of them talked about. The rain drummed on the roof. Out the front window the street had gone gray and streaming, the harbor lights smeared into long gold ribbons.

"Well," Marty said. He pushed his glasses up into his hair. "Looks like you're stuck here a while."

"I can think of worse places to be stuck."

"Can you. I'll alert the chamber of commerce."

She laughed and pulled the stool around to her side of the counter, the one that had somehow become hers over the last few weeks. She wasn't a woman who had a stool anywhere. She'd had a whole townhouse and not felt like she had a stool in it.

"You should reread Welty," he began, ready to start into their daily discussions. "The early stories. You'd see what plot costs you."

"Plot doesn't cost me anything. Plot is the part where things happen."

"Things happening isn't a story. Things mattering is a story."

"Things can matter and happen. The two aren't at war, Marty. And by the way, you're a literary snob. Has anyone ever told you that?"

"A time or two. And I am a snob," he agreed, with no fight in it at all. He seemed to enjoy it being true. "It's the only luxury I can afford. Have you seen what I charge for paperbacks?"

She laughed. The conversation drifted while they were trapped by the rain and neither one of them had anywhere they needed to be.

The conversation turned again, before she really noticed. Marty looked at her. "Annette used to read me the last page first. Drove me up a wall."

Fiona went still.

He'd said her name before. Once, in the back room. She'd known not to ask questions then. She didn't now either. She just waited.

"She said she wanted to know if the ending was worth the trip," Marty went on. "Spoiled every mystery she ever picked up. On purpose." He looked down at the counter before glancing back up. "She would've loved arguing with you. She'd have taken your side, mostly, just to watch me lose."

"How long were you married?"

"Eleven years." He said it plainly. "It's been sixteen since."

She did the math. More years without her than with.

"I tell people I resigned," Marty said.

"You did resign. You told me."

"I gave you the nice, clean version." He turned the cup again. "Everybody gets that version. I resigned, I drove south, and I bought a bookshop. Sounds almost brave when I say it fast. A man making a new start." He looked up. "I didn't resign. I stopped showing up."