Page 64 of Beachfront Pages

The fire popped. Down the beach a gull complained at something.

"The man I saw on your porch the other night," Melissa said carefully.

"That was Drake. He came to tell me he'd made a mistake." Fiona shook her head. "He hadn't. He'd seen my name in the news and done the math on what it was worth. He's gone now. For good this time, on my terms."

She saw Winnie's chin lift a fraction. Approval, maybe. She held onto it.

"There's a third thing," Fiona said. "This one I want to get exactly right, because it touches all of you and the lighthouse. I won't have anybody worried I'm going to sell their lives out from under them."

"Now I'm worried," Bryan said, but he was half-smiling.

"You shouldn't be. Hear me out." She found Winnie's eyes and held them. "When I came here I was stuck. The book I owed was dead on the page. Then I started reading about this place. The lighthouse. Four generations of one family keeping a light. A blurred child in a hundred-year-old photograph. A little seaside town that decided it would rather stay itself than get rich." She lifted one shoulder. "I'm a novelist. That's a story. The story grabbed me, and I started taking notes, and I couldn't stop."

She watched the wariness move across Winnie's face, the same wariness she'd put there once before, at the fire, the night she'd asked about the Copelands.

"I've been thinking about writing a book," Fiona said. "A new series. A lighthouse that's been in a family for generations. A small town on the water. That was the spark. This place was the spark."

"Fiona." Winnie's voice stayed even, but her thumb had found the bracelet.

"Let me finish, because here's the part that matters." Fiona stepped closer to her. "I would never put your family's real history on a page. Not yours. Not anyone's. Whatever's buried out here is yours to tell or keep, and it stays yours. Any book I write will protect the privacy of every person in this courtyard. You have my word. I'll put it in writing if a word's not enough."

"A word's plenty," Winnie said quietly.

"And the truth is, it's already not really about you anyway." Fiona almost laughed at herself. "My characters do this. You give them a spark, and they walk off in their own direction, and they stop answering to it. The family in my head isn't your family. The town isn't this town. The keeper's nothing like you. They took off the way they always do. The lighthouse just lit the match."

For a long moment nobody said anything. Then Emily smiled.

"So we're your muses," Emily said. "That's kind of wonderful, actually."

"You're my neighbors," Fiona said. "The muse part was an accident."

That was where she could have stopped. She'd said the truth. The pen name. The divorce. The book. She could let them clap her on the shoulder, pass the cookies, and she could go back to her cottage knowing she'd been brave and truthful.

But she didn't stop. "There's one more," Fiona said.

The circle settled. Sally took a half step toward her without seeming to know she'd done it.

"I've been telling everyone I'm fine since the day I got here." Fiona looked at the fire, then made herself look at the faces. "I'm fine, just road-tired. I'm fine, just a headache. Fine, fine, fine. I have said that word to every one of you. And it was a lie every single time."

"Honey," Sally started.

"I'm not saying it for pity. Please don't." Fiona held up a hand. "I'm saying it because I want to stop. Here's what was under the fine." She wrapped her arms around herself, then made herself drop them. Hiding was hiding, even when it was just your own arms. "When Drake left, he told me why. He said I lived more in my books than I ever lived with him. Too closed off. Too far inside my own head, my own made-up people, for anyone to really get in. And I believed him."

She heard somebody breathe in. She kept going.

"I believed it so hard that I came to a place full of the kindest people I've ever met, and I decided in advance that none of you could possibly want to know the real me. So I gave you a fake one. A woman whose husband was traveling. A woman who writes 'nothing you'd know.' I was sure that if I let you see the actual person, you'd do what Drake did. Decide she wasn't worth the trouble."

"That's not—" Cassidy stopped herself. "Sorry. Keep going."

"It's all right." Fiona's mouth tugged. "You can argue with me in a minute. I've got it coming." She let the small joke steady her. "The thing is, I was wrong. Not about the lying. The lying was real, and I own it. I was wrong about you. About all of you. You kept feeding me. You kept inviting me down to this fire. And the whole time I waited for the day you'd see through me and pull back. That day never came. You just kept showing up."

"Of course we did, hon." Sally smiled.

Her throat went tight. "I'm done acting like someone I'm not. That's all I came down here to say. I wanted you to know the real Fiona. She's standing right here. She's a mess, and she'd like to stay, if you'll have her."

The fire snapped. The lighthouse beam swept over them. For one terrible moment nobody moved, and the old fear had time to whisper its old line.

Then Winnie crossed the space between them and put both arms around her.