by Maisey Yates
That complete strangers couldn’t cope with her father’s death. Because that was what it seemed like.
That they were uncomfortable with her because someone she loved had died. That they expected her to be uncomfortable all the time.
It clung to her like a film and made her feel separate from everyone around her. At first that had been fine, but now she just felt...outside. And she didn’t like it.
She had messed up a test, and a teacher had been nice to her. Sympathetic. Had said that it was understandable.
But that wasn’t true, and it wasn’t fair. If people didn’t know her, they wouldn’t be okay with her failing at a test or at something basic, just because of her circumstances.
She didn’t want to be held to some kind of weird low standard just because something in her life was sad.
There was no sanctuary, no escape.
Except for at the diner.
She liked the sound of food cooking, loved the smells. The chatter of the people. The customers ran the gamut, from friendly to absolutely terrible, and she even enjoyed that.
There was something about dealing with a grumpy old man who didn’t bother to smile, not even at her, that made her feel...human.
It made her feel like a normal person.
And then, of course, there was Luke.
Luke came in and got dinner at the diner almost every evening.
He would walk across the street from the mechanic shop, in a pair of battered, dirty jeans, and a faded T-shirt, even though it was cold out, and lean over the counter, getting an order to go.
And she would watch him.
Sometimes he would catch her watching him, and then she looked away quickly. Eventually, she started trying to smile, because she realized the looking away quickly was not only suspicious, but it was also weird.
And so it went on like that, for the whole month.
And now Adam wanted her to take Luke his lunch order.
Adam’s face was too neutral, which meant he was probably well aware of how she felt about Luke. “Yeah, Luke wasn’t able to get away for lunch, so he said he needed some food, and he was going to come pick it up, but I think he got caught on the job, so I thought it might be nice to run it over to him.”
That was nice. And it also meant that she was going to have to be face-to-face with the object of her very distant crush.
He’d been an escape. A distant, easy fixation. And this was about to bring him into reality.
“Okay,” she said, taking the bag and whipping out the door, letting it close hard behind her.
She moved quickly and decisively across the street, looking both ways as she did. Because if she stopped and even took one breath, she was going to get all weird.
It was crazy, how handsome she thought he was. With his dark hair that was always sticking up at odd angles, like he’d run his fingers through it. His dark brown eyes, and his square jaw. When she looked at him, sometimes her heart pounded so hard against her breastbone it made her feel dizzy.
She understood the term lovesick now. Because she definitely felt a little bit sick when he was near.
She’d never felt this way about any of the guys at school. They were all too narrow and awkward, and she was awkward enough for all involved and didn’t need anyone else contributing to it, thanks.
But Luke...
Luke wasn’t awkward at all.
She wished that she could be like Catherine, who didn’t seem to get all that bothered about boys, even when she liked one. If they didn’t like her, she just sort of shrugged and moved on.
Emma did not feel like she was in a shrug-and-move-on place.
She walked into the front office of the mechanic shop and saw that it was empty. She moved cautiously toward the side door that led to the actual garage and peered inside. She could see legs sticking out from under a car, legs that she was sure were Luke’s and didn’t belong to the owner of the garage, Dusty, who was round in the middle and had stick-thin legs that pointed outward, in opposite directions from each other.
She cracked the door open slowly. “I—I brought food.”
The legs moved, and then his whole body emerged as he pushed forward on the roller board he was lying on and maneuvered himself out from under the car. He had streaks of oil or some other car-related something on his face.
And she had never seen anyone more handsome.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said.
“I did. My boss...asked me to. Not that I wouldn’t have done it just because. But in this instance... I work for him. And he told me to. So. I did have to.”
That was too many words.
“Well,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Busy today?”
“Dusty is laid up at home with a broken leg. So it’s going to be a hell of a couple weeks.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Does no one else work here?” She was a little embarrassed that she had to ask that, but her awareness of this place boiled down to Luke.
“No,” he said.”
She handed the bag to him, and he took it. “That’s...too bad.”
“No kidding. But gotta keep overhead down.”
He opened up the bag and set it down on a workbench, then sat down on a stool. There was a cheeseburger and he took it out, biting into it.
She grimaced.
“What?”
“You didn’t even wash you hands,” she said.
He huffed a laugh and took another bite. “What’s your name?”
“Me? Emma.”
He swallowed. “Luke,” he said.
As if she didn’t know. But she wasn’t going to say that she knew.
“I know.”
What was wrong with her?
A smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “I would offer you a French fry. But I didn’t wash my hands.”
“That’s okay. I kind of have...limitless French-fry access.”
He shook his head. “What a life.”
“Are you going to come for dinner tonight, too?” she asked.
“Probably,” he said. “I’m never going to get all this done if I don’t put in some late hours.”
“You always eat dinner at J’s.”
“Mostly.”
“No one’s waiting for you to come home for dinner?”
“Nope,” he said, stuffing another fry into his mouth.
She wanted to ask more questions. Why he lived by himself. Why he didn’t have a girlfriend. If he didn’t have a girlfriend. Where his family was. Why he was here all the time, and why, if there was no one here to wait for him for dinner, did he live in Sunset Bay at all, when he could have gone anywhere else.
Cars broke everywhere, after all.
But she didn’t have an excuse for staying and chatting with him, and she had to get back to work.
“Maybe I’ll see you later,” she said. “I have to go.”
“I’ve been working late all week,” he said. “Do you work Friday night?”
She was supposed to go home Friday night and help with dinner at the inn. Their inaugural dinner, which was fully booked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll be here.”
“Maybe you can bring my food over after your shift ends? If that’s not too much to ask. And bring something for yourself?”
She froze. Was he...asking her out in a very strange way? Or was he just asking her to be a food-delivery person who lingered?
She didn’t have any idea. So the only thing to do was ask, since she’d already revealed that she knew him and scolded him for not washing his hands. It wasn’t like she was knocking it out of the park here.
“You...want to have dinner with me?” she asked.
“Yeah. It gets kind of old eating alone.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I’d like that. But only if you wash your hands.”
A slow smile crossed his face. “I think I can handle that.”
When she turned to head back to the diner, she could barely breathe, and her hands were shaking. She had no idea how she was going to make it through the rest of her shift. Or the whole day tomorrow.
And she needed to come up with some excuse to tell her mom, or anyone in her family for that matter. Luke was hers. Her crush on him was hers. And whatever might happen next was hers, too.
She needed something. Something separate and safe from all the tangled, snarled things in her real life and her family.
As soon as she got back inside, she sneaked into the back and grabbed her jacket, pulling her phone out of the pocket. And she fired off a quick text to Catherine.
More secrets. More little lies.
But if her mom thought she was having dinner with Catherine, it would only be easier for her.
Luke hadn’t looked at her like she was sad. He didn’t treat her like an alien. He wanted to have dinner.
She wasn’t going to worry about anything else. Not when something was finally going right.
13
Surprise inspection. We were warned by the keepers in Yachats they were coming. Rose and Naomi helped me push the laundry into the parlor closet. We locked it and when they went to check the closet, we claimed we’d lost the key some weeks earlier. When the Coast Guard left, we laughed so hard our sides hurt.
—FROM THE DIARY OF JENNY HANSEN, FEBRUARY 20, 1900
RACHEL
“I bet you’re so glad to be back,” Rachel said, stripping the linens off the bed. She looked around carefully to make sure there were no hidden undergarments anywhere.
“Sure,” Anna said cheerfully. “I missed vacuuming up beetles.”
It was a cleaning day, and a bread-baking day, and Rachel and Anna were busily straightening guest rooms.
Rachel had been a widow for a little more than two months. Cleaning felt like a gift next to that reality, as did planning dinners at the lighthouse.
Even ladybugs felt like a decent distraction.
Anna was standing up on a chair, her vacuum pointed at the light fixture as she did her best to deal with the influx of ladybugs.
Rachel remembered being a kid and thinking it was mean to dispatch the ladybugs in such a way, but over the years they’d become the bane of the inn, and while in small numbers they could be somewhat charming, when they got to this point, it wasn’t charming at all.
Any animal in large quantities was unsettling.
A collection of ladybugs all over a guest room wasn’t the best look.
“Well, I missed having you here. This reminds me of when we used to clean the rooms to try and make an extra couple of dollars when we were kids. We were severely underpaid.”
“That’s the point of using family,” Anna said.
“I suppose so.”
Over the past two months she and Anna had begun strengthening their relationship. Their honest conversation that had happened over pastry making weeks ago had set the tone, and things had been easier between them since.
They were sisters. Friction still existed, along with moments of perfect ease. But the balance of good and tough had started to shift.
“I wish that Emma were here,” Rachel said. “I mean, she would still be in school now, even if she was working here. But... I want to spend this time with her. Things are going to change after she graduates. And I’m not ready for any of it.”
“That’s what happens, though,” Anna said. “They grow up. And, hey, at least she’s not obsessed over some boy like the two of us were.”
“I can’t even think about that. Her birthday is coming up. By the time I was her age I was already with Jacob. Having sex with Jacob.”
“Yeah, better not think about that.”
That comment brought Rachel right back to what it had been like to be seventeen. Desperately in love, giddy with the prospect of being naked. Having his hands on her.
That was a bygone era. The kind of thing that only came with youth and innocence in a new relationship. It had faded a long time ago for the two of them. But then... Then they hadn’t been able to have physical intimacy at all. Not in that way. And she’d been fine with it.
There was no point in... There was no point in missing it now.
She had been focused when she’d been with Jacob. Focused on everything they did have. And it was only now that he was gone she was starting to think about all the things they hadn’t had. It didn’t feel fair. It felt disloyal.
“What?” Anna asked, stepping down from the chair, the ladybugs thoroughly vanquished.
“Just thinking about Emma.”
“Are you?” It was clear from the look on her sister’s face that she didn’t quite believe her.
Rachel hesitated. “No. I’m thinking about me. But it’s stupid. There’s no point to it. Not to any of it.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“I just...” She blew out a breath, trying to ease the knot of tension that had built in her chest. “I keep thinking about what you said to me. About the way that Michael made you feel. I haven’t thought about my body in a long time. I haven’t thought about being beautiful. I’ve been comfortable. I’ve been with a man who loved me, and he always... He always made me feel beautiful. And it’s hard to explain the way that our relationship changed, because I feel like I’m saying it was lacking something, but it wasn’t. It was all that it could’ve been. And I never dwelled on what we didn’t have. But now I’m starting to feel like I... Like I miss it. Because I could have it. I mean, that’s the thing. When I was with Jacob, I had Jacob. Now that I don’t have him—”
“It makes sense,” Anna said. “You miss what you don’t have. All that you don’t have. Because you don’t have anything to fill the void.”
“Exactly. And Emma would be a great distraction. I don’t like thinking about me. I don’t like thinking about my feelings. It was easier in so many ways to just throw myself into being a caregiver. Then it wasn’t about me.”
“And how bad you felt.”
“I guess,” Rachel said. She laughed. “God knows it’s not because I’m actually selfless.”
“I don’t know,” Anna said. “You’re about the most selfless person I know.”
Rachel shook her head. “That’s the thing. I’m not. I’m just a person.” She saw a ladybug crawling on the wall, and she moved her hand, letting the little thing crawl up on her finger. She opened up the window, the old thing sticking as she shoved it upward. The view of the ocean was below, and the mountains that curved around the inlet—stunning. She let the little bug out onto the roof. “This one gets to live.”
“But if it comes back, I’m just going to vacuum it up.”
“Do what you have to in pursuit of debugging,” Rachel said. “Anyway. It’s not as simple as me being a good person, you’re right. There was a blessing in being busy, and having something to do. There’s a reason that I never hired someone to come care for him at home. Better to stay busy. To focus on everything that was right there, Emma and Jacob, and it kept me fulfilled. Even though my heart was breaking, I was fulfilled. My life was full. Now I’m sitting around thinking about me. And I want to feel pretty.”
The admission caused a whole avalanche of terror to rain down inside her. “Anna,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to go out and find a man to have sex with. A new man. The very idea horrifies me.”
“It’s not really that horrifying,” Anna said. The corners of her mouth kicked up into a smile. “Rachel, you’re—you’re a woman and you’re beautiful and don’t you want to be able to feel that?”
“I mean, I can feel it on my own,” she said dryly. “I’ve had to a great many times over the years.”
Anna cackle
d. “Well, you and me both. But don’t you think it would be nice for you to...be with someone who could take care of some things? At least...climax things?”
“I love Jacob. I loved being married to him. But the idea of being in a relationship again makes me want to crawl into that bed and sleep forever. Ladybugs be damned.”
“You don’t have to be in a relationship with someone to have sex with them,” Anna said.
“Speaking from your vast experience?”
“Well, no. Okay, I didn’t go into my... I thought I was in love with him,” she said. “I thought he was going to take me away from Thomas and marry me. And I would have gone. I still wanted to get married. Even though I hated my marriage. That’s still... In my head that’s the inevitable end.”
Rachel sagged, feeling defeated. By everything. If the one champion of casual sex in the whole room couldn’t even claim an experience of it, there was no hope. “I can’t imagine that. Getting married again. I don’t want that.”
“I don’t think I do, either. But I don’t know how to imagine... I want to be loved,” Anna said. “I want to be loved in the way that I think I can be.”
“I was loved,” Rachel said, her voice hushed.
But she ignored the yawning cavern in her chest. Wouldn’t it be nice to be loved again? Wouldn’t it be nice to have it be different?
A man who could take care of her.
Her heart kicked violently against her breastbone. Guilt assaulted her. She couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t. It wasn’t fair.
“You really want to never be loved again?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to be loved, it’s that...” She swallowed. “I mean Mom has never dated anyone, has she?”
“Uh, yeah...no. I mean how many times did we watch her friends from town throw eligible single men at her while she destroyed them with a single look? Unless she has a layered secret life we know nothing about.”
They exchanged a glance, and Rachel knew that both of them were thinking there was no way Wendy McDonald lived her life with secrets. She was too...her.
“I doubt Mom has dated,” Anna said. “But she’s also been bitter about Dad and everything for years. She’s...held on to that. And I don’t want to hold on to my past. I needed to get out of my marriage. I don’t want to keep pieces of it with me.”
