Page 22 of Beachfront Pages

The bell jingled again on her way out, and the heat of the afternoon settled over her like a hand. She walked the harbor road slow, the journal a small weight in her bag, knocking against her hip with every step.

A notable site of linguistic interest. J. Copeland.

She should have been thinking about Hank Carson, still stranded over the rain-soaked body in an alley that had gone six months without a single new sentence. She should have been thinking about Rachel, and the deal, and the call she kept not returning. She should have been thinking about the manuscript with her real career inside it.

Instead she was thinking about a one-line footnote in a journal nobody had opened in seventy years.

By the time she let herself into the cottage she'd half-decided it was nothing. A coincidence. A bored academic padding his sources. She set the journal on the writing desk, made tea, sat down with the firm intention of opening her manuscript file and finally, finally moving Hank out of that alley.

"Work," she told the empty room. "You're here to work."

The empty room didn't argue. It also didn't help. She opened the journal instead.

"That's not work," she said. "That's the opposite of work."

She read it anyway, start to finish, then the one before it, then the one after, looking for the name again. Copeland. It didn't come back. One mention, one clause, one initial. A door cracked open exactly far enough to show there was a room behind it, and not one inch more.

Who studied a lighthouse for the way people talked? And what had Winnie heard in four generations of keeping that light that made her change the subject so fast a man got whiplash?

Fiona pulled a clean notebook from the desk drawer, uncapped a pen, and wrote J. Copeland at the top of a blank page. Under it, linguistic interest, meaning what? Under that, ask W, but careful. The tea went cold at her elbow while she filled half the page in her small, fast hand, the way she used to fill pages when a story still had its hooks in her and wouldn't let go.

Chapter 8

The fire pit was already lit when Fiona came across the courtyard, and she told herself she wasn't nervous. She'd been to a few of these now with the same loose ring of chairs around the flames, the same easy noise of people who enjoyed each other's company. She promised herself she wouldn't count off five minutes and bolt tonight.

The journal had been on her mind all day, though. That single strange line, a notable site of linguistic interest, and the name under it. She'd come out here half meaning to ask about it and half hoping she'd talk herself out of it.

"There she is." Sally Morris patted the chair beside her, the one with the cushion that had gone flat years ago. "Sit. I saved you the good seat."

"This is the good seat?"

"It's next to me. That's what makes it good." Sally pressed a plate into her hands before she'd even sat down. "Winnie's been baking. Eat before the men find it."

Across the pit, Bryan looked up from the fire he was poking. "I heard that."

"You were meant to."

Fiona sat. The chair creaked as she eased down. They kept the fire small, since the warmth still hung in the air. Late August did that here. The sun went down and the heat only changed shape.

"You look better than when you got here," Sally said. "Few weeks ago you had a look like you might bolt for the door if anybody breathed wrong."

"I did not."

"You did. We all clocked it. Winnie told me to feed you and not crowd you."

"That explains the biscuits you insisted I take when I walked by your store."

"That explains the biscuits." Sally grinned and bit into one of Winnie's sugar cookies.

Winnie sat on the far side, a mug cradled in both hands. She was listening to Melissa, who was telling Emily about some long day of photographing the lighthouse from a boat. Clint sat close beside Melissa with his arm along the back of her chair, putting in the occasional dry word that made her swat at him.

It was a good circle to sit in. Fiona still felt like a guest in it, but a guest who'd been told to make herself at home, and she was starting to believe the invitation.

"How's the writing?" Sally asked.

"Slow."

"That's what you said last week."