Winnie wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic. The arthritis in her right hand loosened slightly in the heat. “Emily and Grant are good. Better than good, actually. He’s been talking about expanding the gallery, maybe adding a workshop space for visiting artists. And Emily’s painting every day now. Big canvases, bold colors. She’s doing this series of the harbor at different hours, and Grant put three of them in the front window last week.”
“I saw those.” Sally nodded. “The sunrise one stopped me on the sidewalk.”
“She’s got four more in progress. Grant says she paints until the light goes and then sits on the porch and talks about the next one.” Winnie could picture it. The studio in Starfish Cottage that Emily had once locked because it felt like an accusation. Now that same room had paint on the floor and canvases stacked three deep against the wall.
“Are they still pretending they aren’t planning a wedding?”
“Grant dropped something the other evening about Emily planning to stay in Starlight Shores permanently. Emily turned the color of a Gulf sunset.” Winnie smiled. “So yes. Still pretending.”
“Good for them.” Sally meant it. Winnie could hear it in her voice, the same warm approval Sally offered to anyone who found their footing in this town. She wiped the counter with a rag that materialized from her apron pocket. “And Cassidy?”
“Cassidy runs that cottage like a small corporation. She’s on the historical preservation committee now, did you know that? Organized the whole spring schedule in two weeks flat. Color-coded binders. Timelines. Bryan just follows her around looking stunned and pleased.”
“Those two still bickering?”
“Constantly. And then he brings her grouper from the Sandpiper, and she reorganizes his filing system, and they sit on the porch arguing about festival logistics until the sun goes down.” Winnie shook her head. “It works for them.”
“That girl found her people.”
“She did.” Winnie sipped her tea. Cassidy had arrived a stranger, wound tight with ambition and running from a career that had nearly swallowed her whole. Now she walked into Harbor Brew like she’d been born here, teasing Jan about the coffee and debating town business with anyone who’d listen. She’d even won over the Harbor Hens, which was a feat Winnie still didn’t fully understand. Some people arrived in Starlight Shores and the town simply absorbed them.
Melissa was not one of those people.
“What about your photographer?” Sally asked, as if she’d followed the thought right through the counter between them.
Winnie set her cup down. “The same.”
“Still?”
“Still.” Winnie ran her thumb along the rim of the cup. “She photographs the lighthouse every morning before dawn. Same angle, same safe distance. Comes back, closes her door, works on her laptop. She’ll come to the courtyard gatherings if I ask, but she sits at the edges. Watches everyone through that lens. Emily tried talking to her a few weeks ago, really talking, and I thought something might shift. Melissa listened. She was gracious about it. And then the next morning she was right back out there with her tripod, shooting the lighthouse again.”
“It’s been months, Winnie.”
“I know it has.”
“Does she talk to anyone? Go into town?”
“She went to the Sandpiper once with Cassidy. Took some photos of the festival setup when Bryan asked her to. But she treats every interaction like an assignment. Something to complete and check off.” Winnie could hear Melissa’s polite deflections in her head, the way she smiled and nodded and then slipped away the moment a conversation turned personal. Professional distance dressed up as courtesy. “She’s pleasant. She’s cooperative. And she’s completely absent.”
Sally frowned and set her rag down. “What about Clint?”
Winnie’s fingers stilled on the cup.
Three years. She’d watched her nephew for three years now, and the picture hadn’t changed. “He fixes things,” she said. “He patrols the property. He checks the locks, clears the gutters, and replaces whatever needs replacing. Then he goes back to Driftwood Cottage and does it all again the next day.”
“He’s young for that kind of life.”
“He’s mid-forties. That’s not young.”
“It’s young for giving up.”
Winnie didn’t argue. She could still see the day Clint had arrived at the lighthouse with a duffel bag and a face that looked like someone had drawn a curtain behind his eyes. She’d given him Driftwood Cottage because it was closest to the lighthouse, closest to her, and because she thought being near family might help. Three years later, he’d traded the Coast Guard for a maintenance checklist, and he held onto that checklist with both hands.
His friend Sean had moved on. New career, engaged, building a life. Clint had mentioned it over coffee, his voice flat, and then changed the subject to the drainage problem behind Compass Rose Cottage. He was happy for Sean. Winnie believed that. But happy for someone else and stuck in your own life was a particular kind of lonely.
“I worry about both of them,” Winnie said.
Sally waited. She was good at waiting. Thirty years of running a general store had taught her when to push and when to just leave the register open.
