Page 34 of Beachfront Pages

You're too closed off, Fiona. Too wrapped up in worlds that aren't real.

"That's a smile," Melissa announced, delighted, pointing at Clint. "Everybody saw it. I have witnesses."

Fiona heard it, but just barely, lost in her own thoughts.

She'd argued with Drake at the time. She'd stood in their kitchen in Georgetown and told him it wasn't fair, that the work mattered, that he'd loved that about her once. And maybe he had. But here was the proof, spread out across two pushed-together tables. Here were people who'd figured out the thing she'd failed at. They'd let each other in. They'd made the warm, easy, honest thing she'd never once managed in her own marriage.

She looked at all of them, and suddenly she knew the truth. Drake had found someone present. She'd never been present a day in her life.

"Fiona?" Cassidy was looking at her. "You okay? You went somewhere."

Three sets of eyes turned her way. Then four.

"Sorry." Fiona made the smile happen. She was good at the smile. "I think the heat's catching up with me. I've got a bit of a headache coming on."

"Oh, no." Cassidy was already half out of her chair. "Let me get you something. Bryan keeps the good aspirin behind the counter."

"No, please, sit. It's nothing. I just—" She reached for the word she always reached for. "I should head back before it gets worse. I'm fine. Honestly."

Honestly. The word she used most when it wasn't true.

"I'll walk you," Winnie said.

"You will not. You stay and finish your dinner." Fiona was up now, her chair scraping the floor too loud. "It's a short walk and I've done it in the dark a dozen times. Please."

Winnie studied her. Her eyes didn't miss much. Fiona had figured that out the first day. For a second she thought the older woman would push.

"All right," Winnie said. "Drink some water when you get in. The heat takes it out of you."

"I will. Thank you. Bryan, the grouper was the best thing I've had in months. I mean that."

"Come back when your head's right and I'll feed you again," Bryan said. "And drink a beer next time, for the love of Pete."

"Maybe next time."

She got herself to the door on the smile, the headache, and the long practice of leaving rooms gracefully. Emily told her to come by the gallery before the show. Melissa said she'd send the cannery photo if she wanted it. Somebody said good night. She said it back to all of them at once and pushed out into the dark.

Once outside, she took a deep breath. The night air was thick and warm off the water. Behind her, through the screen, the laughing started up again almost before the door shut.

It didn't even pause for her leaving.

That was good, she told herself. That was the whole point. They didn't need her there to keep going. Nobody had to manage her exit. She'd done a clean job of it.

So why did her eyes sting the whole walk home?

"Stop it," she said, to nobody, halfway down the path.

A lone gull calling in the distance was her only answer.

Sea Glass Cottage was dark when she let herself in, and she left it that way. No lamp by the door. No kitchen light. Not the little lamp at the writing nook, where her laptop sat closed over a detective who'd been standing in a rain-soaked alley since February.

She kicked off her sandals by the mat, walked through the dark to the couch, and sat down. She should drink water. Winnie had told her to. She didn't move.

The headache wasn't real. That was the trouble with a lie that came easy. It left her alone in the dark with the actual ache, and the actual ache didn't take aspirin.

"Pull yourself together," she said to the empty room.

Her voice sounded strange in the dark. She'd gotten in the habit of talking to this cottage the way Marty talked to his shop, she suspected. Two lonely people narrating their own quiet.