Page 1 of Just One More Thing

CHAPTER 1

EMORY

The two-lane road has been empty for nearly an hour. Just pines, palmettos, and live oaks lining both sides. I imagine every tree whispering to the next that I’m on my way, passing the news down the line like a game of telephone.

She’s coming.

She’s really coming.

Every so often there’s a flash of water through the trees, a tease of blue gray that reminds me where I am and where I’m going. Or maybe where I’m going back to, which feels like a different thing entirely.

No matter how often I visit or how many years I’ve been away, Blue Crab Bay still knows exactly how to get to me. It’s a town that made me one of their own every summer. It’s a place that felt like home before I fully understood what home was supposed to feel like.

I turn the music up, roll the windows down, and let the salty air inside.

I round the bend and see the entrance to town ahead. Bright white rail fencing stretches between tabby-covered columns weathered by decades of salt and storms. The kind of white that only exists near water.

Live oaks arch overhead. Spanish moss sways. Resurrection ferns glow bright green against dark bark, still damp from last night’s rain.

Blue Crab Bay is trying extra hard today. Showing off.

My stomach does a full, traitorous somersault.

And there he is.

Huey.

The great big, beautiful blue crab gripping the town sign as if it might float away without him.

WELCOME TO BLUE CRAB BAY

Population 1,244

Including dogs and cats

Of course this town counts dogs and cats as citizens. Probably more beloved than some of the people. Definitely better behaved.

And hanging just beneath it, bold and impossible to ignore, is a sign I’ve never seen.

Proud hometown of NFL quarterback Jake Wheeler

I groan out loud. “Seriously?”

I’ve been in town ten seconds and Jake Wheeler is already—I shake my head like that might physically dislodge him.

It does not.

Instead I roll up the windows. Maybe that’ll keep him out.

I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and tell myself, for maybe the fiftieth time since I crossed the state line, that I’m here for Granny. That’s it. Not old memories or whatever idiotic, reckless part of me still reacts to his name.

The Point curves into view, familiar and unchanged. Docks stretch out over the water, some newer, some listing slightly like they’re tired but too proud to quit. And there, at the far end, solid and unmistakable.

The Knuckle.

The two-story cedar shake building is as much a landmark as Huey himself. I spent every summer orienting myself by it. If I could see The Knuckle, I knew where I was. Which usually meant I knew where Jake was too.

“Deep breath, Emory,” I mumble as my fingers drum nervously against the steering wheel.