Page 63 of Beachfront Pages
"I know that, dear." A faint smile. "I've known for weeks. Saw the ring mark on your hand. Saw the pain in your eyes you tried so hard to hide." She turned back to the flowers. "I was wondering when you'd get tired of carrying the lie."
And that was all. No absolution, no lecture. Just a woman who'd seen the bare ring-line on Fiona's hand and never once made her explain it.
"Winnie?" The woman looked up. "Thank you."
Winnie just smiled and nodded. "Sometimes, we all need a little time to process what life throws at us."
Chapter 22
The hardest part wasn't deciding to do it. It was finding Winnie. Fiona crossed the courtyard in the thick gold light of late afternoon, past the fire pit, and past the gazebo. The heat sat on her shoulders the way it had since she'd arrived. There was a promise of fall, but Fiona wasn't seeing it.
Winnie knelt by the bed near the memorial bench, a trowel in one gloved hand.
"Winnie."
Winnie looked up. She didn't ask what was wrong. She just sat back on her heels and waited, the way she always waited, like she had all the time a person could need.
"I want to talk to everyone," Fiona said. "All of them. Tonight, if they'll come. I want to say it out loud, the whole thing, instead of letting it reach people in pieces."
For a moment Winnie didn't answer. She pulled off one glove, finger by finger, and set it on the grass.
"You're sure?" Winnie said it, but it wasn't quite a question.
"No." Fiona almost smiled. "But I'm going to do it anyway."
"Good answer." Winnie reached up. Fiona took her hand and helped her to her feet. "I'll put the word out. Sundown, the courtyard. People will come."
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"I know enough." Winnie brushed the dirt from her knees. "The ones who love you don't need the rest before they show up."
The ones who loved her. Fiona turned the phrase over as she walked back to Sea Glass Cottage.
They all gathered in the courtyard as the sun was starting to set. Fiona watched them gather from her porch, her hands cold even in the heat. Emily and Grant arrived first. Then Cassidy, carrying a plate of something, because of course she was. Then Bryan, Melissa, Clint. Then Sally Morris in her store apron, like she'd come straight from the register. Jan, even. Winnie stood in the middle of all of it, lighting the fire pit that nobody needed for warmth.
No Marty. Fiona had told herself not to look for him. She looked anyway.
She made herself walk down.
"You didn't have to feed everyone," she said to Cassidy, because it was easier than starting.
"I always feed everyone. It's a sickness." Cassidy set the plate on the low wall. "Chocolate chip cookies. With pecans. Don't make it weird."
A little laughter went around the circle. Then it faded. Then they were all just looking at her, kind and curious, waiting. All those faces in the firelight. Fiona had stood in front of crowds exactly never. F. L. Maxwell didn't do that.
But she did. At least she did now.
"Most of you already know some of this," she said. "I'd rather you heard the real version from me than the magazine version from a checkout line."
"We're not here for a confession, honey," Sally said. "You don't owe us one."
"I think I do." Fiona looked at her hands, then made herself look back up. Looking at her hands was a coward's move, and she was done with those. "I'm F. L. Maxwell. I write the Hank Carson mysteries. Fifteen of them. I've been doing it for twenty years. And I've let the whole world believe the author was a man, because that's what sold, and once it took, I never corrected it. No photo. No name. Just the books."
"I'm a little impressed, honestly," Cassidy said.
Fiona hadn't expected that. She pushed on before it could undo her.
"The other thing." She breathed in the salt air. "I told some of you my husband was traveling. He's not traveling. We're divorced. It went through months ago, back in the winter. Drake left, I signed the papers, and I told nobody. Not my agent. Not a single friend. Then I came here and told all of you he was just away for a while."
