Melissa watched her. Winnie’s eyes had gone to the window, to the lighthouse.
“Shame does the same thing, you know. If you let it.” She was still looking at the lighthouse. “It closes doors you didn’t even know were open.”
She didn’t say anything else. She picked up her tea and took a sip, and the conversation was over. Winnie had never been one to repeat herself.
She found Clint on the Driftwood porch. He was sitting in the single chair with a glass of water, looking out at the courtyard. His posture was still. Not relaxed. Just still.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked from the bottom of the steps.
He didn’t invite her up or tell her to leave. He looked at her and waited.
She stayed where she was. The words she’d rehearsed on the walk over fell apart, and what came out was simpler.
“I broke my promise. The photos were extraordinary and I wanted the world to see them, and I put that ahead of your trust.” Her voice was steady but her hands were shaking, so she pressed them flat against her sides. “That’s exactly what I did to Maria LaBelle. I prioritized the image over the person. I am so sorry.”
His jaw tightened. He looked past her at the courtyard, then back.
“I pulled the portraits from Grant’s exhibition this morning. I deleted them from his files.” She took a breath. “I understand if you can’t trust me. I’m not asking you to. I just needed you to hear it from me, and I needed to not run this time.”
He was quiet for a long time. Long enough that she could hear a gull call out. The sound of a truck engine down the road.
“Okay,” he said.
That was it. One word. She couldn’t read it. She didn’t try.
“Okay,” she said back.
She turned and walked across the courtyard to Captain’s Watch. She went inside, closed the door, and stood in her kitchen with her hands flat on the counter next to her camera. Her eyes burned but she didn’t cry. She’d said what she needed to say. She hadn’t made excuses. She hadn’t explained her artistic intent or how the series needed a centerpiece.
The counter was cool under her palms. Outside, the courtyard was quiet.
Chapter 23
The courtyard smelled like charcoal and garlic, and Melissa almost turned around twice before she made it to the fire pit.
She could hear them from the pathway. Cassidy’s laugh and Bryan arguing about something over the clink of bottles. Normal Friday sounds. The sounds of people whose lives hadn’t cracked down the middle days ago.
Melissa smoothed her shirt and kept walking.
Emily spotted her first. “Hey, you made it.” No pity in her voice. Just warmth, and the slight over-brightness of someone trying not to make a big deal out of something that was clearly a big deal.
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Melissa sat in the empty chair next to Emily and accepted the glass of wine Cassidy poured without asking before heading over to the grill.
She scanned the circle before she could stop herself. Bryan at the grill, tongs in hand, already losing an argument with Cassidy about cook times. Grant and Emily side by side. Winnie in her usual spot near the fire pit, hands wrapped around a mug.
No Clint.
She let out a long breath. She wanted to be brave enough to face him. She just wasn’t sure she was.
“Festival prep is officially ahead of schedule,” Cassidy announced, walking over and raising her glass. “For the first time in the history of this town, probably.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Bryan called out from the grill.
“I’m not jinxing it. I’m celebrating competent project management.”
“She’s jinxing it,” Bryan told Grant.
The banter loosened something in her shoulders. She’d missed this. Days of hiding in Captain’s Watch, editing photos she couldn’t look at without her chest going tight, and eating crackers because cooking felt like too much effort. Days of the same thought taunting her. I did it again.
