Chapter 11
ELEVEN
EMMA
Lottie’s new house smells like fresh paint and possibility, which is a nice way of saying the previous tenant left in a hurry and Mrs. Harding’s nephew did a rush job on the walls.
“Is that primer or paint?” I ask, running my finger along the living room wall. It comes away slightly tacky.
“It’s both. Mrs. Harding said her nephew is efficient.” Lottie sets a box labeled Studio—Fragile—Touch and Die on the kitchen counter. “I choose to interpret that as charming.”
“It’s still wet.”
“It’s almost dry.”
The house is small and white and sits on Osprey Lane like it’s been waiting for someone to fill it with noise.
Three bedrooms down a narrow hallway, a kitchen that opens to the living room, a fenced backyard with a magnolia tree and enough grass for two boys to destroy by the end of the week.
And off the hallway, the room that made Lottie’s eyes light up when she saw it—small, windowless except for one narrow pane with blackout curtains already installed.
Her studio. The place where she’s going to build something.
“The boys have already claimed rooms,” Lottie says, pulling open a box of kitchen supplies. “Olson wants the one closest to the backyard because, and I quote, he needs ‘quick escape access.’ I didn’t ask what he’s escaping from. I don’t want to know.”
“Smart parenting.”
The doorbell rings. Lottie frowns. “I didn’t tell anyone we were moving today.”
“You told Hazel.”
“Right. So I told everyone.”
The thing about Twin Waves is that nobody waits to be asked.
You mention you’re doing something—moving, painting, fixing a roof, having a crisis—and the town just shows up.
Not with a plan. Not with an invitation.
Just with trucks and casseroles and the unshakeable belief that whatever you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it alone.
Hazel arrives first with Jack, who is already carrying a toolbox because Jack carries a toolbox the way other men carry wallets—everywhere, always, just in case. He’s through the front door and checking the hinges before anyone says hello.
“The back door sticks,” he announces. “I’ll plane it.”
“Jack, you don’t have to —”
“Already doing it.” He disappears down the hallway. Hazel watches him go with fond exasperation.
“I brought muffins,” Hazel says, setting a basket on the counter. “Blueberry. And before you say you didn’t need help, I’ve already texted everyone. Amber’s bringing lunch. Michelle is closing the shop early. Jo said Dean has the truck.”
“Lottie didn’t ask for —”
“Honey.” Hazel puts her hand on my arm. “Nobody asked. That’s the point.”
Mads walks in behind her mother, enormous and radiant and holding a gift bag.
“Housewarming present,” she says, setting it on the counter. “Don’t open it until everyone’s gone. It’s from the book club.”
“Should I be worried?”
“You should be thrilled. Also —” She lowers her voice. “Grandma wanted to come but she’s got a thing at the retirement community. She said to tell Lottie that she expects a full report at book club and that the studio better have good lighting for when she sends over clients.”
“Grandma Hensley is sending me clients?”
“Grandma Hensley knows every pregnant woman and new mother in a thirty-mile radius. She’s basically a one-woman referral network.
” Mads eases herself into a kitchen chair with the careful precision of a very pregnant woman navigating furniture.
“Also, I’m not allowed to lift anything, carry anything, or stand for more than ten minutes.
Asher’s orders. He texted Mom, Jo, Michelle—the man has a group chat dedicated to making sure his pregnant wife doesn’t exert herself. ”
“He’s being sweet,” Hazel says.
“He’s being a helicopter husband with a group text. It’s called ‘Operation Mads Sits Down.’ I wish I were kidding.”
The front door opens again and the volume doubles.
Dawson and Finch come through carrying a mattress between them—Lottie’s, from the houseboat, the one that’s been living in the storage locker since she arrived.
They navigate the hallway with the easy coordination of two sixteen-year-olds who’ve spent their whole lives hauling things on and off boats.
“Where does this go?” Dawson asks.
“Main bedroom, end of the hall,” Lottie says.
“Got it.” They disappear. Finch’s bicep flexes under the weight of the mattress, and through the kitchen window I can see Jenna on the front porch, suddenly very interested in her phone and very not-interested in looking at anyone carrying furniture. She’s been braiding her hair again.
Then a truck pulls into the driveway. Justin’s truck. Big, practical, the bed loaded with boxes and a bookshelf and what looks like the disassembled parts of the boys’ bunk beds.
Justin gets out. Lottie freezes with a muffin halfway to her mouth.
“I didn’t invite him,” she says.
“Harold probably did,” I say.
“Why would Harold —”
“Harold invites everyone to everything. It’s his hobby.”
Justin walks through the front door carrying one end of the bunk bed frame. Paul has the other end.
Paul.
Paul is in Lottie’s new house. Paul is carrying furniture. Paul, who I almost kissed on the beach, who said it wasn’t just a safety issue and walked away and then came back, whose hand was on my neck with my pulse hammering against his palm before a jellyfish ruined everything.
Paul is here. With his sleeves rolled up. Carrying a bunk bed. Looking at me.
“Where do these go?” Justin asks.
“Second bedroom,” Lottie manages, still holding the muffin. “On the right.”
They carry the frame down the hall. Paul passes within two feet of me in the narrow kitchen and our eyes meet for exactly one second—one second of I know what almost happened and you know what almost happened and we are going to pretend it didn’t almost happen while standing in a kitchen full of people who probably already know.
He smells like cedar and coffee. I hate that I notice. I hate that I catalog it. I hate that my neck remembers exactly where his hand was and sends a full-body reminder at the worst possible moment.
“You okay?” Lottie whispers.
“Fine.”
“You’re holding a muffin like it insulted your mother.”
I look down. I’ve crushed the blueberry muffin in my fist. Purple juice is running between my fingers.
“I’m fine,” I repeat, and grab a paper towel.
The house fills. That’s the only way to describe it—it fills with people and noise and the particular chaos of a small town deciding that someone belongs to them now.
Jo and Dean arrive with Dean’s truck loaded with the furniture Lottie ordered online—a couch, a kitchen table, two nightstands still in their boxes.
Dean carries the couch in by himself because Dean is built like someone carved a fire chief out of a mountain and gave him a German Shepherd.
The German Shepherd—Rex—is in the truck bed, watching the proceedings with the calm authority of a dog who has seen everything and judges most of it.
Michelle shows up with iced coffee for everyone, carried in a cardboard tray with names written on each cup. She knows everyone’s order. She always knows everyone’s order.
“Lottie, I guessed on yours,” she says, handing over a cup. “Vanilla latte, oat milk, light ice. Let me know if I need to adjust.”
“That’s perfect. How did you —”
“You ordered it twice at the shop this week. I pay attention.” Michelle shrugs like memorizing a stranger’s coffee preferences in two visits is a normal thing to do. In Twin Waves, it probably is.
Harold is here, of course, because Harold is everywhere.
He’s stationed himself in the backyard with the boys—all five of them, because Aidan and Millie came with me and the twins materialized the second the truck pulled up.
Harold is teaching them something involving rope and the magnolia tree that I probably shouldn’t investigate.
“He’s teaching them bowline knots,” Paul says from behind me.
I turn. He’s standing in the kitchen doorway, iced coffee in one hand, the other hand shoved in his pocket.
The sleeves-rolled-up situation is ongoing and I am choosing not to look at his forearms. I am a grown woman who does not notice forearms. I have a photography business and three children and a mortgage-free houseboat and I do not notice the way the tendons in his wrist shift when he lifts his coffee cup.
“Bowline knots,” I repeat, because apparently I’ve lost the ability to generate original sentences in his presence.
“Useful knot. Can’t slip or jam. Good for tying off to a fixed point.” He takes a sip. “He taught me and Justin when we were six. Used the same tree.”
“Harold grew up in this neighborhood?”
“Three streets over. The house is still there. He rented it out after Mom died and moved onto the boat.” Paul leans against the doorframe.
Casual. Like we’re just two neighbors having a conversation about knots and trees and not two people who were an inch away from kissing on a beach before a jellyfish intervened.
“Your mom,” I say carefully. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned her before.”
“She died when I was nineteen. Cancer. Long before Holly.” He says it matter-of-fact, the way people do when they’ve carried something so long it’s worn smooth. “Dad was a wreck. Justin was sixteen. I ran the marina for a year until Dad put himself back together.”
“At nineteen?”
“Spencer men process grief by working. It’s not healthy. But the boats got maintained.”
There’s so much in that sentence. A nineteen-year-old boy running a marina while his father fell apart. A pattern of bottling things up and fixing what he could instead of feeling what he couldn’t. A lifetime of the boats got maintained as a stand-in for I survived but I don’t know how.
“Paul —”
A crash from the hallway. Then Olson’s voice: “It wasn’t me.”
Immediately followed by Mitch: “It wasn’t me either.”
Then Aidan, helpful as always: “It was both of them. I have a full report.”