Page 7 of Beachfront Pages

She didn't, naturally. She'd had practice not doing exactly that.

"I'm fine," Fiona said. "Just road-tired, still."

"You said that yesterday."

"It was a long road."

"Well. You came out this evening. That's more than some manage the first week." She nodded toward the laughter on the far side of the fire, where Grant and Bryan had launched into some long-running argument about a fishing trip that had clearly gone wrong years ago and never stopped being funny. "They'll fold you right in if you let them. And they won't, if you don't. Nobody here pushes."

"I'm getting that," Fiona said. "It's a little disorienting, honestly."

"You're used to people who push."

It wasn't quite a question. Fiona looked at her, this woman she'd known for the length of a single sunset, and felt thoroughly seen and didn't enjoy it one bit.

"My five minutes are up," Fiona said. "I should get back to it."

"Of course you should." Winnie didn't argue. She never seemed to. "Take a lemon bar for the road. Cassidy counts, and she'll be hurt if the plate's full."

Fiona stood. Sally pressed two lemon bars into a napkin before she'd gotten three steps. Emily called good night. Cassidy told her the door at Heron was always open. Bryan reminded her about the grouper. The whole warm circle of them sent her up the path like she was one of theirs already. Like the gathering had simply opened a space her size and would keep it whether she filled it or not.

She climbed the porch steps, napkin in hand, and looked back once.

They'd already turned back to each other, the couples and the firelight and the easy talk. Winnie hadn't, though. Winnie was still watching her from across the garden. She lifted her cold tea an inch in something like a toast, then finally turned away.

She went inside and shut the door on the lovely, terrible warmth of it. The cottage was quiet again. Her laptop waited on the little table, Hank Carson still stranded in his alley, still owed a truth Fiona couldn't seem to find for him.

She set the lemon bars down by the keyboard and stood there in the book-lined darkness. Somewhere out past the dune line the lighthouse beam swung on, brushing the garden, the fire, and the people she'd just lied to so beautifully it scared her.

Chapter 3

Marty had the first box open before the coffee finished brewing. He liked this part best. The shop to himself, the harbor going gray to gold through the front windows, nobody yet wanting anything from him. Just the box cutter, the cardboard, and the smell of new paper, which was a better smell than most people gave it credit for.

He slid the blade under the tape and folded the flaps back. Literary fiction on top, the way he'd ordered it. A new translation of a Hungarian novelist nobody on this stretch of coast had heard of. Two debut story collections with quiet covers. A slim book about grief he'd read one review of and ordered a single copy of. He'd probably end up keeping it for himself.

Underneath, the local history. A reprint of a Gulf shipwreck survey. A thin volume on Florida lighthouse architecture. He'd ordered three of those and knew, even now, sliding them out, that he'd be lucky to move one.

"Optimistic," he told the box.

The box didn't answer. Boxes rarely did, which was one of the things he liked about them. He'd gotten into the habit of talking to the shop in the mornings. To the boxes, the shelves, and the register that stuck. It wasn't a worrying sort of habit. A man who lived alone either talked to his rooms or went strange in the quiet, and Marty had decided, years ago, which of the two he could live with. He carried the lighthouse books to the local-interest shelf near the front. He slotted them in spine-out, where a person might actually see them.

Tides & Tales had good bones. High tin ceiling, tall windows facing the water, a back room full of somebody else's abandoned rare collection that he'd spent years tending and loving. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead to read a spine and left them there.

He was halfway through the story collections when the door opened and Hal Gardner walked in.

"Morning, Marty."

"Hal." Marty didn't look up from the shelf. "You're early."

"Couldn't sleep. Knees." Hal drifted toward the counter the way he always did, hands in his pockets, a retired man with a morning to spend and nowhere it needed spending. "You get the new Maxwell in?"

"The new what?"

"Maxwell. F. L. Maxwell. The mystery fella. Hank Carson books." Hal said it slowly, like Marty might be hard of hearing instead of just willfully ignorant. "I need that last one. Donna's got me hooked. Fifteen of 'em and I've read every one but the last one. It's been out a while. I'm hoping he'll put out another one soon."

"I don't carry Maxwell."

"You don't carry much, if you ask me."