I'm laughing now, and it feels good. Jasmine talks about the office the way other people tell stories around a campfire — vivid, funny, full of characters.
The charter is a small jet, eight seats, quiet engines. Jasmine stops on the tarmac and stares at it.
“Logan. This is a private jet.”
“It's a small one.”
“Still, it's a private jet.”
“I told you I'd sort out the flights.”
“I assumed you meant a commercial airline.”
“After what happened on the last plane I was on, I want a pilot I trust and an aircraft I've inspected. This is my guy. He's flown me to Maine four times.”
She shakes her head and walks up the steps into the cabin. I follow her with the bags. The pilot greets us and runs through the basics, and we settle into seats across from each other with the aisle between us.
The flight is ninety minutes. Jasmine falls asleep twenty minutes in, curled up in her seat with her head against the window and my jacket draped over her shoulders. I sit across from her, look out the window, and watch the landscape change from city to suburbs to forest to coastline.
We land at the regional airport and take a cab to the house. The drive is thirty minutes along a two-lane road that follows the coast. The trees are bare, and the ocean is gray-green, and the sky is low and heavy.
A thought comes to me so clearly and so completely that it takes my breath away. I’m going to marry this woman. Tomorrow, if I could. I'm going to make her a Shaw and bring her back to this house and fill every room with the life we should have been building for the last ten years.
17
Jasmine
The cab turns onto an unpaved road that winds through a tunnel of bare pine trees. Gravel crunches under the tires. The air coming through the cracked window is cold and carries the salt-heavy smell of the ocean. I sit forward in my seat as the trees thin and the road opens up into a clearing.
“Oh my God,” I say softly, completely overwhelmed.
The house sits on a rise overlooking the Atlantic. It's a sprawling Cape Cod with gray cedar shingles that have gone silver from years of salt air. A circular driveway sweeps around a manicured front lawn.
The roofline is steep with dormer windows and a stone chimney rising from the center. A wraparound porch stretches across the entire ocean side of the house. Beyond the porch, the land slopes down to a rocky beach where the waves are breaking in steady, white-capped sets against dark stone.
There's a three-car garage to the left, a flagpole with an American flag snapping in the wind, and what looks like a small putting green tucked into the landscaped grounds near the driveway. A pool sits between the main house and a smallerguest cottage, covered for the winter, surrounded by a stone patio.
“You called this a small place on the coast,” I say.
“It's on the coast.”
“Logan, this is an estate.”
“It's a house.”
I get out of the cab, and the wind hits me immediately, sharp, cold, and full of salt. The sound of the ocean is everywhere. Seabirds wheel overhead, calling to each other in short, sharp cries.
Logan pays the driver and grabs our bags. The cab pulls away down the gravel road, and the engine noise fades until all that's left is the wind and the waves and the crunch of our footsteps on the driveway.
“How long have you had this place?” I ask.
“Three years. It was a wreck when I bought it. The previous owner let it go for a decade. Roof was leaking, the porch was rotting, the kitchen hadn't been updated since the eighties.”
“You renovated all of this yourself?”
“The kitchen and the porch. I hired contractors for the rest.” He unlocks the front door and pushes it open. “After you.”
I step inside and stop. The entryway opens directly into a living room with high ceilings and exposed wooden beams, the color of honey. Wide plank floors, sanded smooth and stained a warm gray.
