by Maisey Yates
It wasn’t high season yet, and the town was populated mostly by locals. Once things picked up, Emma would be busy with the inn. She always helped her family work the inn during the busy season, and they would need her help more this year than usual.
She sighed heavily. She had no idea what it was going to be like at school today. In some ways she could see why her mother had been tempted to call in sick to life.
“Better to just face it,” Emma said.
“People probably won’t ask,” Catherine said.
“Why not?”
“Because it makes them uncomfortable.” Catherine smiled and reached for Emma, wrapping her arm around Emma’s shoulder. “I’m not uncomfortable, though. I’m here for you. Even if I have to be...here for you while I’m in Boston and you’re in Oregon.”
ANNA
She was standing frozen in a deserted aisle of the grocery store in front of bags of quinoa with reality bearing down on her like a herd of wild horses.
Thankfully, it was early and the store was mostly empty.
The past two weeks of Anna’s life had been like a competition for just how far the phrase going from bad to worse could stretch.
Jacob’s death.
Her decision to take her emotional affair and make it physical.
Thomas finding out.
She kept replaying that moment over and over in her head. That rush of elation that had turned into dread, her scalp and face hot as her eyes met his.
He hadn’t spoken to her for days. It was the silence that had killed her. If he’d yelled, if he’d screamed, if he’d cried, even, she might have felt...
Like it mattered. Like they mattered.
And then she’d had to move back in with her mother.
Even a cabin on the property was a little bit much. Rachel might be able to deal with living in such tight proximity to their mom, but Rachel was...
Well, Rachel was a saint. And that wasn’t helping anything, either.
She could still remember, though, when her mom had caught her sneaking in one time, on the cusp of what might have become a misspent youth...
“You have to take your life seriously, Anna. You have to surround yourself with the right people.”
“We weren’t doing anything! Just hanging out.”
“Good people make the difference. Good men do. I was married at eighteen, and I did right, but he didn’t. And it’s what he did that hurt me for years. You have to be careful whom you associate with, because even if you don’t mean to do wrong, the people around you might...”
Thomas had been a good person, in her mom’s opinion. And she’d been relieved that Anna was settling down with him. Because, of course, that meant Anna would be spared the ugliness that her mom had experienced in life.
Then she’d gone and made her own ugliness.
Maybe it would be different if Michael had asked her to run away with him.
She waited for some kind of jolt of excitement, a lift in her spirit, but it didn’t come.
Honestly, that he’d sort of vanished over the revelation of the affair had killed a good amount of her elation over him in general.
Well, reality had done that.
Fallout.
And she was living in the debris.
She looked down at her hands, wrapped around the cart handle. They were bare. And it was weird how not weird that felt after fourteen years of marriage.
She had taken off her wedding ring with ease. But, then, she had taken it off multiple times over the past few months. Every time she’d gone to talk with Michael. Every time she’d kissed him.
And definitely when they’d...
She sucked in a sharp breath and forced herself to move forward. She had a list. She needed to go down the list and get the groceries. She did not need to stand in the dry goods aisle grappling with a minimeltdown. She pushed the cart ahead, and nearly into another cart coming from the left.
And she nearly ran into Laura Keller.
Just great.
Laura had been kind to her at the funeral, but that had been prior to...well, Anna becoming a scarlet woman.
“Anna.” Laura sounded surprised, but not unhappy. And that was weird to Anna. But some people were busybodies. Some people would have seen this moment as a full-fat cream indulgence opportunity.
Laura wasn’t one of them. In many ways, Laura was one of the most genuinely nice people Anna knew. But Laura was also...good.
She was good in a way that made Anna uncomfortable sometimes.
Her smile seemed too easy. Her laugh too bright. It chafed against the hidden meanness inside her, made her feel emotionally claustrophobic. The weight of pretending she was as shiny, as good, as someone like Laura, had been one of the things that had made her go so brittle over the years.
And she was sure Laura wouldn’t—couldn’t—like the person she’d been revealed to be.
“How are you?” Laura asked.
She seemed like she might really want to know.
How many times had Anna asked parishioners, “How are you?”
And hoped they’d respond with something light and generic so she didn’t have to stay and talk too long?
“Good,” she said.
Light and generic it was.
That was a lie, but it was the kind of lie that didn’t invite questions.
“I mean, it’s been very hard for Rachel,” Anna said, just pretending that Sunday hadn’t happened.
“Good. But you know, I wasn’t actually asking about Rachel.”
Anna tightened her grip on the shopping cart and for some reason became incredibly conscious of the song that was playing over the speakers in the store.
About someone saying it best when they said nothing at all.
It felt painfully ironic on multiple levels.
“I...”
“I didn’t like that he did that to you.”
Anna blinked. “I...”
“It didn’t feel right to me. He’s taught, many times himself, that you’re supposed to let your critics say what they will and you just go on. Well, he didn’t give a chance for anyone to criticize him, did he? He just handed you to all of them.”
Anna hadn’t expected that at all. Laura had always been such a sweet, sunny presence at the church and she’d assumed her loyalty to Thomas would be absolute.
Apparently not.
Laura looked around, and then she reached out, pulling Anna into a hug. “I’m praying for you.”
And, stupidly, Anna wanted to cry. Instead, she forced a smile. “Thank you. Thank you, that’s always welcome.”
She didn’t know what to do, except the quinoa in her shopping cart was looking lonely. And as Laura walked in one direction, Anna walked in the other and took two boxes of cupcakes off the bakery table. They were terrible, store-bakery cupcakes with frosting that would coat her tongue like Crisco, and she didn’t even care.
The frosting was bright red and it would stain her mouth, too. Which seemed appropriate. Scarlet cupcakes instead of a scarlet letter.
She stopped in front of a display of local wines, her heart thundering.
And she grabbed one, shoving it in her cart with everything else.
She could never have done this two weeks ago.
She made her way up to the counter and began to put her items on the belt. She recognized the cashier, but she didn’t know her. Clearly, judging by the look on the woman’s face, she knew Anna.
For all that Sunset Bay was a small town, Sunset Church was large. People drove in from outlying areas to attend, thanks to the popularity of her husband’s teachings. He’d garnered a small amount of fame online, which had grown when he’d written a book about peace in troubled times.
It wasn’t fame on a grand scale, but in their circles he was well-known.
Consequently, so was she.
Now...
Well, now she wasn’t the only thing that was well-known.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
That scripture jumped right to the front of her mind and refused to recede. She was sure the words were hanging visibly between herself and the cashier.
Anna pushed her quinoa forward, and the woman looked down meaningfully at Anna’s bare hand.
She decided just not talking would be the best route to take in this instance.
The sound of each scanned item seemed comically loud.
When she was finished, she bagged the items.
“Have a nice day,” Anna said.
The woman just looked at her. So Anna picked up her things and carried them out to her car.
She paused for a moment and looked across the street, at the gray line where the steel-colored water met the low-hanging clouds.
There had been a time when she hadn’t been able to walk through the store without everyone talking to her. Smiling. Telling her their problems.
Taking note of what she had in her cart.
She could never buy wine. She couldn’t walk around looking sad. She could never be short-tempered with anyone.
She could never be honest about the fact that she never felt more alone than she did when she was home with her husband. Her husband, who seemed to have inexhaustible energy for parishioners and none left at all for her.
Anna had wanted an escape. Another life.
She’d gone from pastor’s wife to pariah overnight.
She didn’t know what it said about her that somehow pariah felt more natural than the other role ever had.
6
I’ve found friends in the lightkeepers’ wives. Rose and Naomi are kind, and their children provide a nice distraction. Friends help make the darkness of this endless winter seem brighter.
—FROM THE DIARY OF JENNY HANSEN, JANUARY 8, 1900
RACHEL
It had been a month and she hadn’t changed anything in the room.
The bed still sat at that strange angle, facing the window, and his nightstand was still full of medication.
It smelled antiseptic. She had washed everything. She had washed it a hundred times. She had thrown out the bedding. She had a backup saved for when it was over.
And now she regretted some of that cleaning. Because it all felt too clean. Like she had tried to wipe away his presence, when she had just been trying to wipe away that heaviness left behind by sickness and pain.
She walked over to the nightstand and picked up one of the prescription bottles. Oxycodone. She shook it and turned it over.
Jacob Henderson
His name was printed on it, along with his date of birth.
This was what was left behind of her husband. This was what she was letting sit here. These bottles of pills with his name on them. Evidence of his pain, like some men left behind a stamp collection. Suddenly, it horrified her. She went down to the kitchen and grabbed a plastic bag, and went back up the stairs. And she threw every pill bottle into the trash. Then she looked back at his photos on the wall. That picture of their hands.
Jacob. Rachel. Emma.
Those photographs that were windows into how he saw the world. What he cared about.
The beautiful views of the ocean, gorgeous angles of the house, where the light played across the stained glass.
Rachel paused for a moment, looking at their wedding picture. At the two of them so young and happy, and with no idea of what lay ahead. She was clutching him and a bouquet of yellow flowers. Bright. Happy. New. Those same flowers had been artfully dried and arranged on their dresser for years, but now it felt like a sad metaphor. She related far too deeply. From vibrant and full to simply...preserved.
She opened up the drawer in her dresser and pulled out an envelope. The envelope that contained photos of her. Photos he’d taken before she’d had Emma, and then again maybe ten years ago. Sexy photos that she had joked were only for him, but now that she was nearing forty, she appreciated them more than she had before. That there was a record of the way her body had looked when she’d been twenty-one, and didn’t have a stretch mark in sight.
And then, even after she’d had Emma, and he’d still found her beautiful, and had wanted photos of her lying on the bed wearing nothing but her underwear.
She wished that she had pictures like that of him.
He’d been the photographer, and he was always behind the camera. He’d given her this gift. This moment to let her see herself the way he had. How he found her beautiful through the years. A gift he left for her, that she hadn’t even appreciated at the time.
“I just miss you,” she said. “You used to joke about sending me dirty pictures and you never did. And I really wish you would have.”
He had been so handsome when they’d been younger. And she found his body beautiful. Even as sickness had eaten away at him, she found him beautiful, because he was the man she loved. But she had definitely mourned the loss of some of his looks. She just wished that...
She wished that there was more time.
She shoved the photos back into the envelope, back into the drawer. And she took the bag of medication and carried it downstairs and dumped it in the trash.
By the time she was finished she was hungry.
That was significant because for the past two weeks she hadn’t felt a single hunger pang. Only the appearance of food in front of her had reminded her to eat at all. And even then, she had struggled to get much down. Everything had sat like lead in her gut and had made her feel like throwing up. But she actually felt hungry today.
She got into her car and decided to brave the drive down the mountain and into town. She hadn’t been since church last week.
As overwhelming as the idea of town had been when the only thing to talk about was her loss, the idea of having to make excuses for Anna, explain Anna or hear bad things about Anna along with it was unbearable.
Rachel had too much of her own pain washing through her to give Anna’s the attention that it needed. She would get to it.
Maybe after she ate.
Somehow that felt like hope, that desire for food. It felt like waking up.
She turned off the main road and onto a small offshoot that would take her down into Old Town. J’s Diner wasn’t particularly touristy, like a great many of the places down there, and hadn’t been made into something farm-to-table and hipster.
The idea of Adam putting kombucha on the menu was laughable. And that was why it remained popular with the locals.
It was real food.
And as someone who liked fussy food herself, Rachel didn’t feel all that guilty thinking that. She made a great many things with a poached egg on top for the bed-and-breakfast. But sometimes all that would do was greasy, fortifying food. And in that case, J’s delivered.
And for Rachel it had become something of a refuge to her over these past couple of years. Like a break from life that included French fries, and who didn’t need one of those now and again?
The side streets in Old Town were all steep hills, and J’s was at the top of one. The parking lot was full, so she pulled her car up against the curb, praying the parking brake did its best work. Then she got out and wrapped her coat more firmly around herself, trying to buffet herself against the wind. The clouds had rolled in, thick and gray this afternoon, and what had started out as a sunny morning up at Cape Hope had turned into a mess of gray soup. But that was part and parcel of living here, and there was something about it that Rachel had always loved.
Because along with weather like this came the urge to curl up with a blanket, a cup of tea and a book. The need to light a scented candle, and simply sit for a while. To pause and reflect.
Of course, she didn’t really want to pause and reflect at the moment. But
then, maybe that was why, rather than sitting at home with hot soup and a blanket, she’d driven down to J’s. She pushed open the worn white door, letting it swing closed hard behind her.
The tables were full, and the bar was mostly full as well, but there were two empty stools—the ones that no one sat on because they needed to be fixed, and for reasons unknown to her, Adam hadn’t done it since they broke over a year ago.
She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the sounds of conversation and laughter wash over her.
It was funny how a small town with so few people could contain so many layers.
There were the people who went to lunch after church on Sunday, and the early risers who went to breakfast before. The people who didn’t go out on a Sunday at all, least of all to church. There were the people who preferred the trendy cafés, or who never went out unless it was to one of the nice Italian restaurants, which might cost more, but made for an infrequent and welcome treat.
There were those who went to Fog in the morning for their coffee, served in cups that were only one size, the brew containing a tangy aftertaste that Rachel just couldn’t acclimate to. And those who went to the Sunset Bay Coffee Company, which had been there for more than twenty years.
J’s attracted the older crowd that had lived in town for years. It attracted the loggers, the ranchers, the fishermen.
And it suited her perfectly.
Because it was where she went to be known only by name.
Her life had changed in the weeks since she’d been down to town.
But she also knew that they wouldn’t have changed here.
When she saw Adam come out from the kitchen, her whole chest lifted. Like a breath had been drawn for her.
They had an unconventional friendship, that much was true. One that existed with a diner counter between the two of them, but that didn’t make it less important than any other friendship.
In fact, over the past few months it had been the most important friendship she had. Because there was a freedom in it.
She’d met him when he’d first come to town—J’s had been a go-to for her to get takeout for years—but it wasn’t until Jacob had gotten cancer that she’d started to rely on the diner, and Adam.
