Page 25 of Beachfront Pages

She let herself in. She didn't reach for the lamp. She crossed to the writing desk and put her hand on the cover of the journal, just to feel the small hard fact of it under her palm.

Two authors. One named Copeland. A historian in town who answered to the same name. And a lighthouse no linguist had any business writing up.

"Hank's still in the alley," she reminded herself.

"Hank can wait," she answered, and pulled out the chair.

She switched on the desk lamp. The beam from the lighthouse slid once across the far wall and was gone. Under J. Copeland and linguistic interest, meaning what? and ask W, but careful, she drew a line through the last note. Then, in her small, fast hand, she wrote something new.

Leave W out of it. Talk to Sam Copeland, historian, here, working w/ Melissa. Same name. Coincidence?

Chapter 9

The names had gone soft under Winnie's thumb. William. Henry. Robert. Three Lockhart men, their names cut into the stone back of the memorial bench. She'd touched them so many evenings the letters had worn smooth.

She sat with her hand resting over her father's name.

The garden had finally let go of the day's heat. Late August on the Gulf held its warmth like it had something to prove. Evenings were kinder. A breeze came up off the water, smelling of salt and the green of the courtyard plantings. Past the cottages a screen door banged. One of the girls, in for the night.

"You could have told me more," she said to the carved name. "You could have warned me better than you did."

Her father said nothing back. He never did anymore.

Fiona had asked her a simple thing. Whether the Copelands had any connection to the lighthouse. That was all. A reasonable question from a curious woman who read too much and noticed everything. Winnie should have laughed it off. Should have said the families had known each other ages ago and let it lie flat and harmless on the grass between them.

Instead she'd gone stiff as a fence post. She'd felt it happen. Her shoulders climbing. Her thumb stopping on the bracelet. The smile freezing onto her face. A woman like Fiona didn't miss that sort of thing. Winnie had handed her a clue without saying a single word.

"I held my tongue," she told the stone. "For all the good it did."

Fifty years she'd carried this. She'd dodged questions. She'd given vague answers. Then one name out of a stranger's mouth had undone her in her own courtyard.

J. Copeland.

She wrapped her arms around herself though the evening wasn't cold. Some chills didn't come from the weather. Her father would have known what to do with a woman like Fiona. He'd had a whole life of practice at saying nothing in a way that sounded like saying plenty. Winnie had only ever managed the saying nothing.

Gravel shifted on the path. The particular unhurried crunch of a man in no rush to be anywhere.

She didn't have to turn. She'd have known that walk in the dark.

"They told me you'd be out here," Sam said.

"Did they." She kept her eyes on the lighthouse. "And here I thought I'd found the one bench in Starlight Shores nobody could track me to."

"Melissa pointed. I just followed orders." He stopped beside the bench, a camera bag slung across his chest, his gray hair mussed from the wind off the gallery deck. "We lost the light a while back. She wanted the north door before the shadows went long."

"Did you get it?"

"We got something. Whether it's the picture I wanted, I won't know till I'm home and it's bigger than a viewfinder." He nodded at the open stretch of bench. "This seat taken?"

"By three dead men and me." She slid over anyway, making room. "Sit down, before your knees give out and I have to explain to Melissa how I broke her historian."

He sat next to her. He smelled of salt air and the faint chemical tang of whatever he carried in that bag. Under it was the warm ordinary smell of the man himself, and she remembered it without wanting to.

"The north door," she said. "What is it you think you'll find in a door?"

"Honest answer? I don't know yet." He patted the camera bag. "It's older than the rest of the build. The hinges sit wrong, the framing doesn't match. A door like that was put in for a reason, and nobody puts a door in a lighthouse to admire it. Somebody wanted to come and go without being seen from the courtyard."

"Or wanted to bring something in."