“Marty saw you two from the bookstore window,” Sally said. “Called me before you’d even sat down, the busybody.”
“Of course he did.”
“I brought your picture-hanging wire. Figured you wouldn’t be going back for it.” Sally nudged the paper bag an inch closer.
Winnie looked at the bag. She had completely forgotten the wire. The errand that had brought her to town in the first place, gone from her head the moment she’d seen Sam on the sidewalk. Clint’s loose frame in Starfish Cottage. It seemed like it belonged to a different afternoon.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Winnie.”
“I know.”
Sally was quiet for a moment, studying her friend with the particular steadiness that a lifetime of shared history earned. “Oh, honey. What are you going to do?”
Winnie shook her head slowly. “Nothing.” She paused. The word hung there, inadequate and false. “Oh… I don’t know.”
Her right hand drifted to her left wrist. Her fingers closed around the bracelet there. Sea glass, smooth and green, each piece drilled and threaded on silver wire. Sam had made it for her the summer they were twenty-four. He’d collected the glass from the cove below the lighthouse, spending mornings with his pockets full of broken pieces the Gulf had worn smooth. She’d put it on the day he gave it to her. She had rarely taken it off.
Sally glanced at the bracelet, then back at the harbor.
She didn’t say anything else. She just sat there, warm and present, while the charter boat finished docking and a deckhand tossed a line to the pier and the afternoon sun stretched their shadows long across the concrete.
Winnie held the sea glass between her fingers and listened to the water.
Chapter 17
The light was perfect, and Clint was trying too hard.
“Stop holding your jaw like that,” Melissa said from behind the camera. “You look like a police lineup.”
“I’m not holding my jaw like anything.”
“You are. You’re clenching. Relax your mouth.”
“My mouth is relaxed.”
“Clint. You look like you’re biting down on a lemon.”
He exhaled and dropped his shoulders half an inch. She pressed the shutter. Better, but still guarded. She’d photographed warlords who gave more away than this.
They were on the beach behind the lighthouse property, late afternoon sun angling in low across the water and throwing warm gold over everything it touched. She’d picked this spot for the quality of the backlight and because Clint was always easier near the water. Something in him loosened when he could hear the Gulf. She’d noticed that weeks ago and filed it away the way she filed everything, one more detail in the growing collection of things she knew about him that he hadn’t exactly offered.
He’d resisted the portrait session for days. She’d asked twice and he’d said no both times, flatly, the way he said no to everything that required him to hold still and be looked at.
The third time she didn’t ask. She told him she needed him for the series because she’d photographed every other person on the property and the gap was conspicuous. He’d stared at her for a long moment and said fine, but he got veto power over every shot.
She’d agreed. Kind of. Because she was afraid he’d veto every single one, but she’d agreed.
“Look out at the water,” she said. “Pretend I’m not here.”
“If you weren’t here I’d be replacing that loose deck board on Cassidy’s cottage.”
“Then think about replacing deck boards.”
He turned his head toward the Gulf and the tension in his face shifted. His eyes narrowed against the glare, and he reached down and picked up a piece of driftwood. The scar on his left hand caught the light.
She’d never asked about it. It was old, a pale ridge running from the base of his index finger across the back of his hand to his wrist. A rope burn, maybe, or something worse. She focused tight on that hand against the weathered wood and took four frames in quick succession.
