Page 58 of Beachfront Pages

"I don't know what that's supposed to prove."

"You came across the country, Drake. Three states. To a town you'd never heard of, to a cottage you had to talk an old woman into pointing you toward." She turned her mug and picked up a spoon. Set it down. "And you got here two days after my name turned into a dollar figure. After half a year of nothing. Not a call. Not a text. Not on my birthday."

Color climbed up from his collar. "You think I had your birthday circled and chose to ignore it?"

"I think you didn't think about me at all until it became profitable to." She said it the way she'd write a line she knew was true. "You came back because I'm worth something again."

There it was. Sitting on the table between them.

For a moment he just looked at her. And she watched it happen, the part she'd known was coming, the part she'd half hoped wouldn't. The denial gathered itself in his face. The wounded husband. The wronged man.

"That's a terrible thing to say." His voice dropped, hurt and soft. "After twenty years. You really think I'd do that?"

"Yes."

"I missed you, Fee. I lay awake missing you. The house was wrong without you in it. I'd reach over and the bed was cold."

"You had someone else in the house." Quiet, even voice. "Someone present. Your word, not mine. You found her present. You found me lacking. You said so to my face, then you put it all in writing and signed it."

His hands came apart on the table. "People make mistakes. That's the whole point of me being here. I'm trying to fix the worst mistake of my life and you're sitting there building a case against me like one of your little books."

There it was. The other tell. Your little books. He hadn't read a word of any of them in fifteen years. Hadn't needed to. The byline was a man's anyway, and the man wasn't real, and the woman who wrote them topped up the wineglasses while Drake held the table.

"They're not little." She didn't raise her voice. She almost smiled. "They never were. You just never bothered to look."

Jan drifted over with the pot, eyes flicking between the two of them, reading the table the way everyone in this town could read a table. "Top you off, hon? Sir, you sure I can't get you anything?"

"He's fine," Fiona said. "We're almost done."

Drake gave Jan the smile, the one for waitresses, assistants, and anyone holding a pot of something he wanted. "Thank you. We're good."

Jan filled Fiona's mug to the brim, gave Drake one more long, flat look, and went back behind the counter. She didn't go far. Fiona caught her settling in near the register with her rag, close enough to hear a raised voice if one came. It wasn't going to come. But it was kind, that hovering, watching out for her without being asked.

Drake leaned in, lowering his voice now that the audience had moved out of listening range. "Can we not do this in a coffee shop? Come back to the inn. Let me actually talk to you. Privately."

"No." The word came easy. "This is exactly where I want to do this. Out here. In the coffee shop. Where I can see your face."

"You're being unfair." The earnestness was wearing thin, the patience underneath starting to show. "You've decided I'm the villain in some story and you're not even letting me defend myself. The money's got nothing to do with this. The money is beside the point, Fee. I don't care about the money."

"Okay." She nodded slowly, like she was considering it. Like she was actually considering it. And maybe a small foolish corner of her wanted to. She let that corner sit there a second, then she let it go. "Let's say that's true. Let's say the money's beside the point."

"It is."

"Then where were you in March?"

He stopped.

"You left in February. The papers went through quickly, you wanted them to. So where were you in March, Drake? When I had nothing. No name in any headline, no fortune, no deal. Just me, in a half-empty townhouse, packing my books into boxes." She kept her hands around the mug, steady. "If the money's beside the point, you'd have come back six months ago. You'd have come back when there was nothing in it for you but me."

The silence stretched. Out past the window a pelican dropped out of the sky and hit the water and came up with nothing.

Drake didn't have a quick reply for that. She watched him search for it and come up empty, the same as the bird. There was no answer that wasn't the truth, and the truth was sitting in the chair across from him drinking black coffee and not blinking.

"You've changed," he said finally. Like an accusation. Like she'd broken a rule.

"I have." She felt the quiet pleasure of it go all the way through her. "Imagine that."

"This isn't you." He spread his hands, reasonable again, reaching for the version of her he knew how to manage. "The Fee I know doesn't sit in a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere talking to me like I'm a stranger off the street."