Page 52 of In the Shadows
“Only for reading. Don’t make it a thing.”
“I’m not making it a thing.”
“You’re looking at me like you’re making it a thing.” She still hadn’t looked up. She turned a page in the oversized book. “Sit down. I want to show you something.”
He sat on the floor beside her. His knees protested. The carpet smelled like dust and old paper—the universal scent of libraries, as familiar in Blossom Springs as it had been in every embassy and safe house he’d ever used. Libraries were good places to meet. Quiet. Anonymous. Full of people who minded their own business.
Lila turned the book so he could see the page. A black-and-white photograph, slightly blurred, of a group of men standing in front of a building he recognized as the town hall.
“1952. The town council that year.” She pointed to a man in the front row. Tall, narrow-faced, with the kind of stern expression that suggested he’d never laughed in his life. “That’s Warren’s grandfather. Edgar Caldwell. He was the one who drafted the original coastal access laws. The ones that were supposed to protect the public shoreline forever.”
“The same laws his grandson has spent fifteen years dismantling.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” She turned another page. More photographs. In the 1960s, the harbor was crowded with fishing boats three deep at the docks. The town square during what looked like a Fourth of July celebration, bunting strung between lampposts, and children waving flags. A woman with dark hair standing at a podium, her expression fierce and focused.
“Who’s that?”
“My grandmother. Marjorie Bennett.”
He looked at her. “Marjorie. As in the Marjorie Bennett who started the historical society?”
“She started it in 1961. Ran it for thirty years.” Lila traced the outline of her grandmother’s face in the photograph. “She was president of the historical society, the women’s club, and the school board. Simultaneously. My grandfather used to say she ran the town.”
Lila closed the book and set it on the stack. “The point is—this town isn’t just a town to me. It’s my family. Four generations of Bennetts, all tangled up in these streets and buildings and stories. When I say Warren stole from Blossom Springs, I don’t mean property. I mean?—”
She stopped. Pushed her glasses up on her head.
“History,” Ronan said.
“Yes.” She looked at him, and for a second, the careful composure slipped. Underneath was something raw and unfinished. “This is going to sound dramatic. But when I found my father’s files, when I started to understand what Warren had done—it felt like someone had taken a knife to a painting. Not destroyed it. Just cut pieces out, so carefully that you’d have to look closely to see the damage. Bits of coastline. Bits of access. Bits of the public trust that my grandmother spent her whole life building.”
He wanted to touch her. The impulse was so strong it surprised him—not the practiced gestures of reassurance he’d been trained to use, but something real. His hand on her shoulder. His thumb against the back of her neck. The small, meaningless contacts that meant everything.
Instead, he reached for one of the books on the stack. Opened it to a random page. A photograph of the harbor at sunset, taken from the same angle he could see from the cottage on Beach Road.
“This is what we’re protecting,” he said. “Not just evidence. Not just a case. This.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she leaned sideways, just enough that her shoulder touched his. A small weight. A deliberate choice.
“You’re good at that,” she said.
“At what?”
“Saying the exact right thing at the exact right moment. It’s very annoying.”
“Years of practice.”
“Is that what they teach you at spy school? Emotional precision?”
“They teach you to read people. To figure out what they need to hear.” He looked at her. “But that’s not what I’m doing.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Telling you what I actually think. Which is new territory for me.”
She smiled. Not the professional smile or the brave smile or the I’m-fine-don’t-worry smile. A real one. Small and a little crooked and absolutely devastating.
“New territory,” she repeated. “For both of us.”
