Page 65 of Love Again

Claire’s text came we as pulled into the parking lot behind Weaver’s.

Beach fire tonight. 6. Bring the new guy.

It seemed like a great idea.

Before we cross the street and walk the tenth of a mile down to the end of the dirt road, I set some ground rules: no touching, no lingering eye contact, no knowing looks, and absolutely no sharing of food or drink. I know there’s going to be food. With Chloe, there’s always food, and it’s always delicious.

But first, before we do anything else, I want to show Luke the two places where I grew up.

Crossing the street, we can see Cory dancing up to the waves barefoot, shrieking and running back to Laurel. Laurel and Mateus, Chloe and Bryce, and Claire and Finn are all collected around the fire. Jackson is making his way down to the scrappy group. I feel like an outsider.

This part of spring, before the leaves fully open, always seems melancholy to me, even when I was a kid.

For most, spring is equated with rebirth and renewal. I equate it with the loss of privacy. We would always shut down mid-January to mid-March and reopen in early April, and then the strangers would return.

Finn, splitting his time between The Inn and easing back into his security business, is following the same pattern. I think his goal is to open the first week of April. And then these moments on the beach where it’s only us will be lost until next November, when things ease up again.

I climb the steps to The Inn and point to the clinic next door. Salty nickers in the corral between the two buildings and tosses his head. I think Claire wants to start riding him, but he needs to be trained up. Maybe this summer, when Travis is home from school. He’s the horse guy.

After our parents were killed, Geo, Travis, Laurel, and I lived above the clinic. There’s a nice apartment up there and that’s where Claire “lives” now. I say this with air quotes because most of the time she’s over with Finn.

I can tell when we step inside The Inn at Echo Bay that Luke is impressed. Finn’s done a great job with it, completing updates that modernize systems but keep the historical integrity of the building.

“This is amazing,” he says, passing through the parlors to the library and then the kitchen. “Nicely designed.”

“I think Nic helped a lot. I saw the two of them talking paint colors one time.”

“That’s his business partner?”

I nod to the kitchen window. “You’ll meet him. He just showed up.”

Luke glances out the window. Nic Silvano cuts a dark-blue line on the beach. The guy is always in a suit, though I see his shoes on the top porch step.

I lead Luke up to the second story, which is split between non-rental rooms—guest rooms for his staff if they need one—and office space. It’s a room with secured windows and a lot of fancy alarms protecting a bank of computers. The guests would never know.

We climb the stairs at the end of the hall to the third floor. We walk down to the end of the hallway. There, to the left, behind a solid wooden door, is my old room.

I open it. As a kid, I shared this space with Chloe, and there’s a door between the rooms connecting them. We took full advantage of this feature. I showed him the closet with the secret panel in the back, with enough space for one kid to hide.

“Don’t show this to Cory,” he says, grinning. Then he looks out the window. “Man, what a view!”

It’s not too bad. To the right, Rock Island sits with a little pink behind it, and several islands dot the ever-darkening horizon. Boats, lit from the side by the sunset, bob in the bay. The beach spreads long and white, the fire a bright, tidy spot of orange. The tide is out, so the smooth, flat granite rocks along the shore sit stacked like discs among budding wild roses and seagrass.

“Tell me more about Nic. And who’s that other guy?”

Nic’s clanking bottles with Bryce and Finn while Mateus scowls. There’s probably some bet going on.

I realize I have no idea what Jackson’s first name is or even if it’s his last name. He’s always just been Jackson.

“That’s Jackson. He’s the baby of the group. I mean, they call him the Kid, which would drive me crazy. He’s in a perpetually good mood. It’s almost irritating.”

“Where did Finn and Nic meet?”

“I don’t really know their connection. I only know they were in some sort of secret military group together and then got out and started Colton Security. Finn used to be married, but his pregnant wife was killed—I’ll let him tell you what happened—but he lost them and then went into a depression and walked away from the business. He was trying to give it all to Nic.”

“He just handed it to him?”

“Yep. But Nic stood by him and kind of coaxed him back into the living, and Finn met Claire. It saved him, I think—saved them both. So now he runs this while Bryce and Mateus oversee the new Portland office. Nic still runs the Boston office.