Page 4 of Beachfront Pages

"Mm. I had a first night here once." Emily said it lightly, but she held Fiona's eyes a second too long, the way people did when they recognized something. "It does get easier. That's all."

"That's what everyone keeps telling me."

"Then maybe it's true." Emily didn't push, bless her, bless all of them and their not-pushing. "We're not going anywhere. Whenever you're ready."

"Maybe tomorrow," Fiona said, which was the lie she was telling everyone these days.

Emily lifted a hand and headed down the path. Her voice folded back into the others. Fiona was alone again with the rail, the wine, and the darkening sky.

She leaned on the rail and watched the sun lower itself toward the water with the slow ceremony of something that had done this a billion times and still meant it. A pelican coasted by, prehistoric and unbothered. The light kept changing. Apricot to rose to a bruised violet at the far edge.

Quiet. That was all she'd come for. Quiet, and a deadline she might still meet if she could stop feeling things at the keyboard. She didn't need the gatherings and didn't need the soup. Didn't need a warm-eyed landlady who saw too much, or a neighbor with an easy smile and an open chair waiting.

She was good at being alone. She'd had practice. She'd been alone inside a marriage for years before she'd been alone outside of one, and at least this way the arithmetic was honest.

The last sliver of sun touched the water and slipped under, and the whole sky exhaled into dusk. Behind her the lighthouse beam swung on, brushing across the garden and out over the Gulf, slow and steady.

She just needed quiet. She just needed to write. She'd be fine.

She would.

Wouldn't she?

Chapter 2

The knock came just as Fiona had talked herself into a productive evening. She'd been staring at Hank Carson in his rain-soaked alley for the better part of an hour. It counted as working if she didn't look too closely at the word count. The cursor hadn't moved. Neither had Hank. Then someone rapped twice on the cottage door, brisk and cheerful, and she nearly knocked the laptop off the table getting up.

Winnie stood on the porch with the evening behind her, all gold and going pink.

"It's Friday," Winnie said, like that explained everything.

"It is," Fiona agreed. "Reliably."

"Friday's the big one. Everybody turns out. Cassidy's been baking since noon, and Sally brought enough food for a small army because she always does." Winnie tipped her head toward the courtyard, where Fiona could hear voices already, easy and overlapping. "Come down. Just for a bit."

"Oh. That's kind." Always give a nice refusal. "I've got a scene I'm in the middle of, though."

"It'll keep. Scenes do." Winnie didn't move and the way she was standing made leaving the conversation feel like the rude option. "Five minutes. You can hate us and go straight back to your cottage."

Five minutes. She could do five minutes. She'd survived cocktail hours with publishers, panels with strangers, her own book launches, all on a smile and a tidy little supply of nothing-answers. Five minutes in a garden was hardly the major leagues.

"Five minutes," she said. "Then I really do have to work."

"Of course you do." Winnie was already turning. "No need to bring anything. Just come."

She followed Winnie out the door and down the pathway.

The fire pit was lit, though the evening was too warm to need it. It threw a soft orange wash over the chairs ringed around it. The people in them turned as Fiona came down the path. For one long beat she was the new girl at a party where everyone else had known each other for years. Which was exactly what she was. She put on the face. Pleasant and composed.

"You came." The woman from the porch got up from her chair. Emily, wasn't it? "Everybody, this is Fiona. Sea Glass."

"Hi," Fiona said, to all of them at once.

A round-faced woman with a silver braid was the first one up, and she crossed the garden with both hands out like Fiona was a long-lost niece. "Well, aren't you tall. I'm Sally. I've got the general store in town, so you come see me when you run out of anything, and you will run out of something, everybody does." She caught Fiona's free hand in both of hers and squeezed. "Oh, your hands are like ice. Sit by the fire."

"It's eighty degrees," Fiona said.

"And you're cold. Sit." Sally steered her toward a chair without seeming to push at all. "Winnie, did you not feed her?"