“Clint, the work is extraordinary. The series needed a center, and these are the strongest pieces I’ve?—”
She stopped. She heard what she was saying. She heard the justification, the appeal to craft, the argument that the quality of the image excused the breach of trust. She’d heard this argument before. She’d made it before, two years ago, standing in a Chicago gallery while Maria LaBelle’s attorney explained what Melissa’s award-winning photograph had cost a woman and her son.
“I told you things I’ve never told anyone,” he said. “And you turned it into content.”
He walked past her, down the porch steps, across the courtyard toward the beach path. He didn’t slam anything. He didn’t raise his voice. He just left. And his silence was so much worse than shouting that she stood on his porch for a long time after he was gone, her phone still in her hand, the images still glowing on the screen.
She walked back to Captain’s Watch and sat down at her kitchen table. She opened her laptop and stared at the two portraits in the exhibition folder.
They really were extraordinary. His face in that unguarded light, honesty in every line of his expression. The best work she’d done in years, maybe in her life.
The better the image, the easier it was to forget that the person inside it hadn’t offered it freely.
She sat alone in the dark cottage while the lighthouse beam swept past the windows. The screen glowed on the table in front of her.
Chapter 21
Clint locked the door to Driftwood Cottage and stood in the dim front room with his back against it. The latch had a small catch that stuck if you didn’t lift the handle. He’d been meaning to fix it for months.
He could fix it now. Sand it down, apply graphite, test the mechanism. Twenty minutes, tops.
Instead he stood there, hand still on the knob, staring at nothing.
I told you things I’ve never told anyone. And you turned it into content.
He’d said that and meant it. And the look on her face when the words registered told him she knew he was right.
Clint crossed to the kitchen, filled a glass of water, and drank it standing at the sink. His hands were steady, which surprised him. Everything inside felt like it was shaking apart, but his hands were fine. A steadiness that came from twenty years of holding fast in rough seas.
He set the glass down and gripped the edge of the counter.
She’d promised. That was the thing he kept circling back to. She looked him in the eye and said he could veto any shot. And then she took unguarded moments of his life and handed them to Grant like gallery inventory.
The anger was clean and familiar. He understood anger. But underneath it was something worse, something that made his chest ache in a way he hadn’t felt since Sean’s hospital room. Grief. He was grieving something that hadn’t even fully existed yet.
You let her in. You knew better, and you let her in anyway.
He wiped his face with both hands and moved to the porch. The courtyard was quiet. Captain’s Watch sat dark across the way, curtains drawn. Good. He didn’t want to see her light on.
Bryan’s truck was already at the Sandpiper when Clint pulled into the gravel lot the next morning. He almost kept driving. But his refrigerator was empty and the alternative was Harbor Brew, which meant Jan’s questions and Sally’s knowing looks.
He found Bryan behind the bar, prepping limes for the lunch service. Grant sat on a stool with a coffee he wasn’t drinking.
“There he is.” Bryan didn’t look up from the cutting board. “Sit down. I’m making you breakfast whether you want it or not.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you slept in your truck.” Bryan pointed the knife at a stool. “Sit.”
He sat. Grant shifted on his stool, turning the coffee mug in slow circles.
“I owe you an apology,” Grant said. “I mentioned the photos to you without checking with Melissa first. I assumed she’d already shown you.”
“She hadn’t.”
“I know that now. And I’m sorry for my part in it.”
He nodded. He didn’t blame Grant. Grant wasn’t the one who made a promise and broke it.
