Page 47 of Beachfront Pages

Winnie laughed, a small worn-out laugh. She picked up her coffee and took a sip.

"Some things survive burial," Sally said. "Maybe that's their whole point. Maybe that's how a person knows which things were real." She leaned a hip against the shelving and crossed her arms over her apron. "You ever think of it that way?"

"I try not to think of it any way at all."

"How's that working?"

"Poorly."

The bell over the door cut in before Sally could answer. A man in a sun-faded ball cap came in for a bag of ice and a roll of fishing line. Sally rang him up and asked after his wife's hip. The doctor was pleased, he said. Out he went, the bell singing behind him.

The quiet came back. Sally turned to Winnie like there'd been no interruption at all.

"You handle half this town's business in that aisle," Winnie said. "Hips, weddings, and whose boy's run off where."

"Somebody has to. People don't come in here for the milk." Sally wiped her hands on her apron. "Pour yourself another cup of coffee. And tell me the rest of it. I know there's more."

Winnie sighed. "There's always more, with you waiting on it."

"That's my job. Now pour."

Winnie poured. She wrapped both hands around the warm cup and looked at the row of cans she'd squared. All those labels lined up like soldiers. So much of her life had gone into making small things look orderly.

"My new tenant," she said. "The writer. Fiona."

"Sea Glass Cottage. The one you keep feeding."

"You remember she asked me about the Copelands at the Friday night gathering at the fire pit?"

"I remember."

"She got that look writers get, like they're on to a good story."

"You don't owe a stranger your history."

"No. But it stirred everything up." She looked past the faded specials taped to the front glass, out to where the road bent toward the water. "All of it. Things I've spent decades not thinking about. And the worst of it, the part I can't set down, is that I don't even know what I'm protecting."

"I know, you've said that." Sally nodded.

"I never knew. My father told me the Copelands couldn't be trusted. That we had to protect what my grandfather built. That promises mattered more than happiness." She drew a slow breath. "He looked frightened when he said it. My father. The man who wasn't afraid of a hurricane coming up the Gulf looked frightened of a family we'd had supper with."

"And he never explained."

"He died before he could. I have to believe he was going to explain." She shook her head. "But then he was gone. And I was left holding a secret I've never once been able to see the full truth of."

The store was very quiet. Even the fan seemed to have given up.

She looked at Sally. "I knew it cost me Sam. That much I'm sure of. The rest is a locked room. I've stood guard outside it for fifty years, and I couldn't tell you what's inside if my life depended on the telling."

"You were always good at standing guard."

"It was the family trade. Right alongside the lamp." Winnie almost smiled. "My grandfather guarded it. My father guarded it. They handed it down to me like the keeper's keys, and not one of them thought to write down what it was I'd be guarding. Just that I should."

"That is a strange inheritance."

"It's the only kind I got." She frowned. "I used to tell myself the not-knowing was a mercy. That a person can't let slip what she never learned. There was a comfort in it, almost. I could keep the promise without ever worrying about telling something I shouldn't."

"And now?"