Page 3 of Beachfront Pages

"You're being dramatic," she informed it.

The cursor, wisely, said nothing.

Her phone lit up on the table and buzzed against the wood, and her whole body went tight before she even saw the name.

Rachel.

She let out a long sigh. Her agent had the timing of a woman who'd built a career on knowing exactly when a writer was hiding. Fiona looked at the photo that came up with the call. Rachel mid-laugh at some conference dinner. The guilt and the dread braided together inside her.

She let it ring. One. Two. Three. She watched it the way she'd watch a pot she had no intention of stirring.

It went to voicemail. A moment later the little message banner slid down, and because Fiona was a coward but a curious one, she tapped it and held the phone to her ear.

"Fiona, it's me, obviously." Rachel's voice, bright and fast. "I know you're in your cave. I respect the cave. But I need ten minutes, because there is a very large and very exciting thing happening that I cannot do over text. And you do not want to hear about this one secondhand, trust me. So call me. From the cave. Bring coffee. I love you. Bye."

The message ended.

Fiona set the phone down very gently, like it might go off again if she startled it.

A very large and very exciting thing. In the old life, that sentence would have lit her up. Maybe a new deal. New money. Maybe the foreign rights they'd chased for years. Rachel didn't get breathless over small news.

But every exciting professional thing came with a price now. The price was being a person who could receive good news. Who could say yes, plan a future, pick up the phone and sound like F. L. Maxwell, bestselling author, instead of a woman in a borrowed chair in a borrowed cottage wondering how her life had gotten to this point.

She'd call tomorrow. She'd be rested tomorrow. She'd be better tomorrow.

She'd been telling herself that for months.

"Tomorrow," she said anyway, out loud. She closed the laptop on poor Hank Carson and his unsolved body.

The soup, it turned out, was very good.

Fiona ate it standing at the counter, straight from the pot, which Drake would have hated, which was reason enough to enjoy it. Then she rinsed the bowl she hadn't even used, out of some reflex of guilt, and she stood at the window and watched the light start to fade.

The Gulf was doing something showy. The whole western sky had gone the deep apricot that came only over water. The lighthouse threw a long blue shadow across the garden. Out past the dune line the sea had turned to hammered metal. It was beautiful. Fiona had described a hundred sunsets and rarely stopped to watch one.

She took her glass of wine out to the porch.

The boards were warm under her bare feet. She hadn't noticed taking her shoes off, but there they were by the door, and here she was, barefoot on a stranger's porch like she belonged. The air was thick and salt-soft, and it smelled green. Down the row a screen door banged, and voices drifted up, a man and a woman, easy with each other.

"Evening," someone called.

Fiona turned. A woman had paused at the foot of the steps, a sweater knotted over her shoulders, a glass of her own in hand. A friendly face. Open in a way Fiona had learned to be wary of.

"You're the new one. Sea Glass." The woman smiled. "I'm Emily. Starfish, down on the end. Welcome."

"Fiona. Thank you."

"We're all gathering at the fire pit if you want to come down. Nothing fancy. Wine and whatever Cassidy baked." Emily lifted her glass an inch. "First night's the hardest. Easier with people."

"That's kind of you." Fiona kept her voice warm and her feet exactly where they were. "I think I'm just going to turn in early. Long drive."

"Of course." Emily tipped her head toward the cottage. "Winnie put you in the book cottage. You a reader, or a writer?"

"A little of both," Fiona said. "Mostly tired."

"Fair enough. We've got a writer or two around here in town. Or people who say they write. You'll fit right in, if you want to." Emily smiled. "And if you don't, that's allowed too. Nobody keeps score."

"I appreciate that more than you know."