Page 45 of Beachfront Pages

And there it was. The decision she had to make. She crossed to the window. The Gulf had gone calm and silver, the storm pushed off down the coast.

"I have something," she said.

"You have the Maxwell book?"

"Not that." She breathed. "The new series. I have it."

Quiet on the line. Then carefully, "Tell me."

"A lighthouse. On the coast of Florida." The words rushed out. "Run by the same family for generations. There's a mystery wrapped around it. A small town. The kind where everybody's in everybody's business and they'd all show up at your door with a casserole anyway." She stopped. "The mysteries live there. Book after book. That's the series."

"Fiona."

"Tell them that. All of it."

"You're sure?"

"I have notes. Character sketches. The first three books, near enough to outline." Which was true. The stack of it stood three inches deep on the desk behind her, alive in a way the Maxwell book hadn't been in months. "Tell them I'm ready."

She heard Rachel let out a breath, the one she only let out when a deal was real. "Okay. Okay. I'll send the contract over today. You read it, you sign it, we're off and running."

She paused for only a moment. "Send it."

It came through by the time she opened her laptop. She sat at the little desk with the lighthouse standing white out the window and read every line of it. The advance. The signings. Her own name on the cover, after a whole career spent hiding behind a man who'd never existed.

But somehow, telling Marty that Drake had left her. That partial truth out in the open had made her feel brave. Nudged her to move on.

It was new and it was scary. She signed it anyway.

She set the pen down and let herself feel it. Not fear, for once. Something closer to hope. She'd built a whole new thing out of a town that still had no idea who she was.

Then her eye slid to the other stack. The dead one. Hank Carson, frozen over a body in a rain-soaked alley, waiting since February for her to tell him what happened next.

She still owed them that book.

One problem at a time.

Chapter 15

The bell over the door of the Bayview General Store had a particular voice. Winnie knew it the way she knew the lighthouse stairs, every creak in its order. She let herself in before the shop sign was flipped to open. The same as she had for more years than she cared to count. Sally didn't look up from the carton she was slicing open.

"Coffee's fresh," Sally said. "Or what passes for fresh around here."

"That's a low bar."

"Drink it anyway."

Winnie poured a cup and took it black, the way she always had. She carried it down the canned-goods aisle where Sally was opening the boxes. The store smelled of cardboard and floor wax. Underneath that ran the faint sweetness of the penny candy Sally still kept by the register, though no child had paid in pennies for fifty years.

"Hand me those," Sally said, nodding at a stack of soup cans. "Might as well make yourself useful. Standing there looking decorative."

"Decorative." Winnie set down her cup. "There's a word nobody's used on me in some time."

"Their loss."

They worked the way they'd always worked. In half-sentences and easy quiet. Sally talked, and Winnie answered when an answer was needed, and stayed silent when it wasn't. The cans went up in their rows, labels facing out. Winnie's hands ached a little in the cool of the store. They knew the work anyway. Tomato. Chicken and rice. The split pea nobody ever bought. She lined them up while Sally moved on to the crackers.

"So," Sally said, not turning around. "Sam."