Page 50 of Beachfront Pages

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry.

"You're in my way," she said, not moving.

"It's my shop."

"Details."

He laughed and reached past her. His arm brushed hers. She pulled down the box of loose periodicals, then set it on the table with more force than it needed.

The earlier piece wasn't in the box. But a different one was.

A thin pamphlet, one corner water-stained, the kind of self-published local thing that turned up at historical-society bake sales. Notes Toward a History of the Gulf Keepers. No author name. Printed who knows when.

"Marty. Look."

He leaned over her shoulder. She felt him there, the bend of him toward the page.

She read aloud, low. "During the war years the Lockhart light hosted a number of visitors not connected with the Lighthouse Service. Academics, by their dress and manner. It was said that equipment was brought in by boat after dark."

"Huh," Marty said.

"Wonder what type of equipment? They already had the light."

"I have no idea." Marty shrugged.

"Why academics? Why bring in equipment after dark?" She flipped the pamphlet over, hunting for more, and found it on the last page, in a footnote so small she had to tilt it under the bulb. Her finger stopped.

"There," she said. "Among the visitors recorded in the keeper's private accounts. Copeland."

"The same Copeland?" Marty asked.

"It has to be. J. Copeland on the linguistics paper. Copeland in the keeper's accounts." She pressed the heel of her hand to the table. "But it's still not enough. It's a name in two places. Equipment brought in after dark. Academics nobody can account for. I'm building a picture and half of it's fog."

"That's research," he said. "You're describing research."

"I'm describing being one good document short of the whole picture." She straightened and looked at the shelves like they were withholding evidence on purpose. "There's a piece missing. The thing that ties the man to the equipment to the lighthouse. It's out there. Probably in a box like this in somebody's garage."

"Or," Marty said, "it never existed. People didn't write down the interesting things. They wrote down the harvest, the weather, and who got married. The good stuff lived and died in conversation."

He had a point, which annoyed her. "Then I'll find the conversation. Somebody's grandmother told them something they remember. Somebody always remembers something."

Marty sat down on the stool, which put his face level with hers where she stood, and he looked at her differently than he had ten minutes ago. Not warmer, exactly. Closer. Like a man recalibrating.

"You know what this is, don't you?" he asked.

"A pamphlet from an old box?"

"This is real scholarship." He said it plainly. "I spent eighteen years around people who called what they did important. Half of them were filing the same idea four different ways for the tenure committee. Then you walk in here with a footnote, a hunch, and you're doing the actual research. Following a real question because you can't stand not knowing the answer."

Heat climbed her neck. "It's procrastination with extra steps."

"It's not." He set down his coffee. "I'd forgotten what it looked like. Somebody caring about getting it right."

The room felt smaller. The bulb buzzed. She was very aware of the inch of table between his knee and her leg. His eyes had gone from the page to her mouth and back. Her own breath had gone shallow and quiet.

"Marty," she said, and didn't know what she meant to say after it.

He leaned in. Just slightly. Just enough that the question was on the table with everything else, plain as the pamphlet. Her whole foolish fluttering body leaned the half inch back toward him, and⁠—