“They’re so alike.” She looked down at her tea. “Both hiding. Both stuck.” She turned the cup slowly between her palms. “Melissa had her camera out again this morning. Same angle on the lighthouse, same distance. And Clint walked right past her with his toolbox. Didn’t even slow down.” She shook her head. “I keep waiting for one of them to crack.”
“Have you told either of them that?”
“I’m their landlord, Sally. Not their therapist.”
“Since when has that stopped you?”
She let that pass. Sally was right, and they both knew it. But Clint was family, and pushing family had never come naturally to her. Her father had been a man of quiet example. He showed you what mattered by doing it, by keeping the light burning, the grounds tended, and the logbooks filled in his careful hand. He didn’t sit you down and tell you where you’d gone wrong. Winnie had inherited the approach along with the lighthouse.
She wondered sometimes if she’d inherited the wrong thing.
She picked up her tea again. Through the store’s front window, she could see a couple walking past with ice cream cones, the man pointing toward the marina.
Sally rearranged a stack of paper bags behind the counter and straightened a jar of pens. Her busy-hands routine. Winnie recognized it. Something else was coming.
“I heard something interesting the other day.” Sally picked up her rag again.
“From whom?”
“Marty Fuller. He came in for his weekly box of Earl Grey and mentioned someone had been in his shop asking about historic buildings around town. Wanted to know about getting information about the older structures, original construction dates, and architectural details. Very polite, very specific questions.”
Winnie’s hand tightened on the cup.
“And then I saw him.” Sally stopped pretending to organize. She looked straight at Winnie. “Across the street from here, walking past the bank. Tall. Gray hair. I only saw him for a few seconds, but I’m sure it was him.”
Winnie set the cup down carefully. The small click of ceramic on the counter was the loudest sound in the store.
“Sam,” she said.
“Sam.” Sally’s voice was gentle. The cheerfulness she wore every day had dropped away, and underneath was the careful attention of a woman who had held this particular knowledge for forty-five years.
“I thought he might leave after I saw him at the Harbor Festival.” Winnie kept her voice steady. She focused on the honey display across the store. The jars caught the afternoon light coming through the front window, turning the wildflower honey amber and warm.
“Nope.” Sally shook her head. “He’s still here.”
Winnie fingered her sea glass bracelet. She caught herself doing it and dropped her hand back to the counter.
Forty-five years. She had been twenty-five when she’d told Sam Copeland that he had his life to live and she had hers. College for him. The lighthouse for her.
She’d made it sound practical. A sensible decision when two people’s paths pointed in different directions.
It had been the worst lie she’d ever told.
Her father had asked her to end it. Robert Lockhart hadn’t explained why, only that the friendship between the Lockhart and Copeland families was over, and that whatever Sam’s father, James, had done could not be forgiven. Winnie pressed for details and got silence. When she pushed harder, her father walked out of the room. He died before he ever told her the whole truth. A heart attack, sudden and final, and whatever he’d been carrying about the Copelands went with him into the ground.
So she’d done what Lockharts did. Their duty. She’d kept the lighthouse and let Sam go.
She realized Sally was watching her.
“I’m fine,” Winnie said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were about to.”
Sally poured more tea into Winnie’s cup, though it was still half full. The gesture said everything her mouth didn’t.
“Do you know where he’s staying?” Winnie asked.
