by Maisey Yates
“Yeah.” His lips lifted into a smile. “I get it.”
She rolled away from him reluctantly and got out of bed, dressing slowly.
She put her phone in her purse. Her wedding ring was still in there. She wasn’t going to put it on while she was still with Michael.
“Regrets?” he asked.
“None.”
And that would have stayed true if Michael hadn’t followed her.
But he did.
Right out of the bedroom. Right when her eyes connected with her husband’s.
Thomas was standing at the bottom of the stairs, his expression tense, his left hand resting on the banister.
His gold wedding ring shining bright. His eyes met hers, grave but with no trace of anger at all.
“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you...”
Her phone buzzing brought her back to the moment.
She unburied herself from the sheets and rolled to the side, reaching down and fishing her phone out of her purse.
It wasn’t Thomas this time.
It was her mother.
RACHEL
“You called me?”
Shock bloomed in Rachel’s stomach when her sister walked into the dining room. And it was also shock that registered on Anna’s face when she looked around the room and saw that they were all here.
Her sister no longer looked unflappable. No longer the smooth, perfect pastor’s wife.
No.
She had felt, strongly in her soul, that her brother-in-law had undone all of that with a few words from the pulpit this morning. But she could see, judging by the bruises blooming underneath her eyes from lack of sleep, and the lines that bracketed her mouth, that perhaps Anna had unraveled it herself.
“We were looking for you,” her mother said.
“We were worried,” Emma said.
Rachel felt a momentary stab of guilt that her daughter had been the first one to offer concern.
But Rachel still felt like she was lost in a fog of her own grief, and she resented the guilt. She didn’t have the room for it.
“Is it true?” Wendy asked.
“Is what true?”
“You must have known he was going to announce it today at church,” Wendy said.
“I...”
“You did,” Rachel said. She tried to keep the accusation out of her voice. But why hadn’t Anna warned them? They had just been sitting there exposed to...
“I guess I didn’t really believe that he would,” Anna said. “I mean, I wouldn’t have thought that he would want to make such a—a spectacle out of it. But I guess that he needs to... He needs to have it done.”
“He shouldn’t have done that,” Emma said, the conviction in her daughter’s voice filled with the kind of purity that only the young could feel.
“Were you going to tell me?” Rachel asked. “Ever?”
Anna blinked. “Why would I tell you right now?”
“I don’t know. You couldn’t wait to blow your life up until I was through all of this? You might as well have confided in me. You could’ve talked to me.”
“Enough,” Wendy said. “It’s not time to fight. If you need a place to stay, Anna, you know you can always stay in the Shoreman’s Cabin. It’s available.”
“Right,” Anna said. “I’m sure the Forest Service won’t mind at all if we negatively impact the revenue by giving me a place to stay.”
“We built this place,” Wendy said. “For us. And I reserve the right to benefit this family with what we’ve built. You need a place. We have a place.”
“Thank you,” Anna said quietly.
Rachel couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her sister quite so unraveled. It reminded her of younger Anna. Who used to explode at the drop of a hat and then put herself back together and become a cheerful, sweet child minutes after the storm.
She had been replaced by the smooth creature that had made Rachel’s stomach hurt the day of the funeral. But she wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for windswept, hurricane Anna yet, either.
She wondered what was wrong with her that she couldn’t find any compassion right now. Maybe it was just that the well was dry. Because her husband was dead and Anna had betrayed hers.
Her stomach tightened.
She knew it wasn’t that simple. She knew that it couldn’t be. Because what Thomas had done rang so hollow and so false that even if he was telling the truth... She knew that it wasn’t the whole truth.
But she still couldn’t find it in her to be soft. To be forgiving. To let somebody else have a problem when her own life had been destroyed.
And it hadn’t been her fault.
It hadn’t been her choice.
And when her sister looked at her, Rachel couldn’t bring herself to offer any reassurance.
Their mother had given her a place to stay. That would have to be enough for now.
5
The ghost’s name is Roo. Ron got out the Ouija board and asked her. Don’t tell Mom. And tell her the boys are staying in their dormitories, too. Of course, they would never come over to ours!
—FROM A LETTER WRITTEN BY SUSAN BRIGHT TO HER SISTER, JUNE 1961, WHEN THE CAPE HOPE LIGHTHOUSE PROPERTY WAS CONVERTED TO A SATELLITE CAMPUS FOR LOGAN COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE
EMMA
Emma wasn’t a liar by nature.
But for the past two weeks it had felt like that was her primary method of communication with her mother.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek and pulled her small car into the parking lot of J’s Diner. The shabby yellow building was at the top of a hill that overlooked the main street in Old Town, and she sat for a moment, her interactions with her mom from the past week playing over in her mind...
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“How is school?”
“Good.”
“Looking forward to OSU?”
“Yes...”
Not that it was new. Over the years she had honed omission into an art form, and the subtle bending of the truth into a tool she could wield with ease. She’d become skilled at recognizing things that might add weight to her mother’s already heavy burden.
She couldn’t remove a whole boulder, but she could carry around life’s pebbles all on her own without her mom having to worry about them.
Yes, and sneaking out for coffee and a hopeful glance at Luke is definitely in your mother’s best interest...
She sighed and killed the engine, then got out of the car and looked around. The town was bustling with people on their way to work, getting coffee from their preferred spots.
The town of Sunset Bay consisted of two main segments—the utilitarian segment of town just across the bridge that led to the highway that ultimately connected them with I-5, and the rest of the state. There you could find big-box stores, dentists’ and doctors’ offices, auto-body repair and larger restaurants.
But if you turned right off the bridge that carried you off the coastal highway, you could get to Old Town, the original main street of Sunset Bay, which ran along the Yachats River, extending nearly to where the river met the sea.
There were tourist traps, with an excess of bright wind socks hung outside, and driftwood animals all in a row. Art galleries, a specialty kitchen shop and little farm-to-table restaurants, coffeehouses and fish-and-chips shacks.
Emma had told her mother that she had an early class, and it was kind of a crappy thing to lie about where she was going, but she had to get out of the house.
The grief didn’t feel like she expected it to.
She’d expected a sense of finality. She’d spent her life dreading her father’s death. She’d been so aware of the fact her parents were mortal from the time she was young. Her dad was sick, but if her strong, brilliant dad could be so sick
, then anyone could be. There had been a sense of fear in her childhood over every sniffle.
And to an extent she’d thought... She’d thought this would be an end.
She had done her best not to build up hopes of what she might have had with her dad. Had let go of the idea that he might give her away at her wedding someday, or even sit in the front row during her graduation.
Those stages of acceptance that had all hurt. This was just living in the future she’d been expecting all along.
But she hadn’t guessed all the little things she’d miss. Like him teasing her about all the sugar she’d put in her coffee. Or him texting her throughout the day to check in.
Sometimes she’d found it annoying. Now she kept scrolling back through every text he’d ever sent, taking screenshots of them so she wouldn’t lose them.
It came in waves. An ebb in the pain, where she’d forget, then look at her phone. And remember.
Going toward her parents’ room and then stopping because she suddenly remembered he wasn’t there.
She just couldn’t stand to be home.
The diner was like a strange oasis. A collection of small-town clichés that was comforting in its way. The tile floor was scuffed from work boots, the wallpaper border—with pictures of cars from the 1950s—had seen better decades and no one sat on two of the eight red swivel stools at the counter because the tops were irredeemably lopsided.
But everyone ate at J’s, and had ever since Jack Campbell had opened it years ago, and they came still, with his grandson Adam at the helm.
It provided comforting kitchen noises, muffled conversation and familiarity. It also provided an excellent view of the mechanic shop across the street. Which was where Luke would be.
Normally, she would think it was silly to pine after a guy who didn’t know she existed. But there was something nice about a relationship that had no expectation on it. A relationship that wasn’t a relationship.
These feelings had become a talisman. Something to hold and examine, something else to think of. Away from her house, away from her family. Even from her friends, in a way.
Adam usually asked how she was, but he took her answer at face value and never pressed for information.
She winced. Right. Adam. If he mentioned to her mom that she’d been in today...
She and her mother had been pretty dependent on dinner from here, especially over the past few months.
When things were crazy, Mom always stopped by to pick up burgers or a salad, depending on whether or not she was pretending she wasn’t eating her feelings.
Maybe Emma could offer to pick up dinner tonight...
“Good morning,” Adam said, his mouth set into a neutral position, the lines on his face giving a suggestion of facial expressions he’d made in the past, but not giving much indication of what he was thinking—or feeling—now.
He’d been in town about three years, which made him brand-new, by the standards of this town. So seldom did things change around here that a fifteen-year-old piece of road construction connecting Sunset Bay with the inland town of Pinecroft was still referred to as “the new overpass.”
And Adam was most definitely still “the new diner owner.”
If Emma had to guess, he was somewhere around her mom’s and dad’s ages. But he wasn’t married, and as far as she knew he didn’t have any kids.
She waited for him to ask about Anna. If he did, she was ready to get in a fight in defense of Anna. If anyone asked.
But he didn’t ask about Anna.
She waited for him to ask about the funeral. He didn’t.
She wasn’t sure that Adam had been there.
Adam might have been one of the few people in town who didn’t know her dad in some capacity. Maybe that was another reason she liked the diner. It felt like a different town sometimes.
Maybe that was why this was her mom’s preferred dinner spot.
She hadn’t really thought of that before.
“Coffee and a doughnut?” she asked.
“No protein?” he asked.
“I didn’t ask for a side of judgment.”
“The judgment is on the house.”
The front door pushed open, and her friend Catherine came in, breathless and red-cheeked. They’d been in pretty constant text contact since the funeral and they’d exchanged a few OMGs about church and Anna, but they hadn’t actually talked. Catherine sat down at a table in the corner, the one with the clear view across the street. “Thanks, I...”
“I’ll bring it to your table. Hold the judgment.”
She nodded and walked away from the counter and over toward the white-and-silver-flecked table where Catherine had taken position, her back to the window, offering Emma the best view.
“This is a great sacrifice,” Catherine said.
“I know,” Emma replied. “I appreciate it.”
“Well, are you ever going to talk to him?”
“No. I’m absolutely never going to talk to him. You made a very good point when you said it’s probably for the best he doesn’t know who I am.”
“You’re just going to stare at him?”
“Yes. I am just going to stare at him. I don’t need to date anyone right now. I need to get good grades so I can get into the school I want to go to, and then I’ll be in college and I’ll be busy.”
“Boston still?”
Her stomach fell. She’d been avoiding having this talk. “No.”
“Em, didn’t you get in? I didn’t want to ask because of your dad, but when you didn’t say anything—”
“I—I got in.” She hadn’t said those words out loud. “I lied to my mom about it.”
“Emma!”
“I got the letter the day he died,” she said, her eyes feeling scratchy. “And I was so excited and I wanted to tell him and he was gone. And then I looked at my mom and realized I would be telling her I was leaving and I can’t—I can’t leave her. And I don’t want her to feel responsible for it.”
“Emma, that’s not like you. I mean, it is like you. Protecting your mom. But not lying. And you want to go to Boston...”
“OSU has a great marine-biology program and it’s like three hours away.”
Catherine’s face fell. “But it’s not the same as Boston. By any means. You could go live in one of the most historic cities in the country, and isn’t there a specific aquarium there you want to work with?”
“It’s not important,” she said.
“It’s not important that we go to the same school?” Her friend looked wounded and it made Emma want to growl. She didn’t have the energy for someone else’s wound.
“That’s not what I mean.” She looked down. “I wanted it, but things changed. Anyway, it’s not like I’m abandoning my plans to go to college. I’m just altering course a little bit.” Her friend just stared at her. “Don’t look at me like that. It makes sense.”
“I mean, I guess. I mean, it makes more sense than never talking to the guy you had a thing for for years.”
“I didn’t ask.” She was grateful, though, for the conversation shift.
Catherine shrugged. “That’s fine. I don’t need to be asked.”
The coffee and doughnut materialized, as did a mug of coffee for Catherine, even though she hadn’t ordered it.
“I don’t want coffee,” Catherine said.
“Why not?” Adam raised an eyebrow.
“Because diner coffee,” Catherine said.
“I can see how somewhere in your teenage head that made sense, but you know I run a diner, so maybe diner coffee being used to explain why you think my coffee is terrible isn’t the best route to take. Especially when it’s being given for free.”
“Our judgment is free, too, Adam,” Emma pointed out.
She nearly earned a smile from him. But onl
y nearly.
“Sorry,” Catherine said, and she immediately began emptying sugar packets into the cup.
Satisfied, Adam turned and left them.
And that was when he appeared. His truck was loud driving down the quiet main street of town, and when he pulled into the driveway of the mechanic and turned it off, he got out and shut the driver-side door hard enough for her to hear it inside the diner.
Torn jeans and a tight black T-shirt, broad shoulders and the first lips that had ever made her curious about kissing.
All things that were much more fun to think about than her real life.
Fantasy, of any kind, was better than real life right now.
But if that fantasy came with broad shoulders and a compelling mouth, all the better.
“You’re embarrassing yourself,” Catherine said. “It is so obvious that you’re staring at him.”
“Who’s going to tell? Do you think that Buzz is going to tell?” She indicated the gray-haired man sitting at the bar on one of the red stools.
“No,” Catherine said. “But if he looks this way...”
They both stared at Luke as if they were willing him to do just that. But he didn’t. He never did.
Instead, he went into the garage, and even then it took Emma’s heart rate a full twenty-five seconds to go back to normal.
“Okay,” Catherine said. “We have stared long enough. Finish your stuff and let’s go.”
She chugged down the coffee and picked up the doughnut, leaving five dollars on the table. Adam gave her a nod as she walked out the door, and she waved.
She waffled between going back inside and asking him if he would please not tell her mother that she had come in that morning, but that might just guarantee he’d call her mom.
Of course, Adam didn’t seem like the type to get involved too deeply in people’s lives.
She walked out into the damp, cold morning. The fog hung low over the buildings on Main Street, rolling in off the sea. The air smelled sharp like salt and pine, with an earthy hint of asphalt and dirt thrown in for good measure. The street was mostly empty, with nearly everyone gone off to work or settled in to wherever they might be spending their mornings.
