Chapter 11
eleven
Clara made a critical mistake.
She held Jack's hand.
In public. In broad daylight. Walking down Main Street in Beacon's End where approximately four hundred people had been waiting for this exact moment like it was a sporting event they'd placed bets on.
Which, as it turned out, they had.
It wasn't intentional. They'd taken the boat to town for supplies—actual supplies this time, not the fake kind she invented when she needed an excuse to flee the lighthouse.
Jack needed more sealant for the gallery post, Clara needed ink for her pens, and they both needed groceries because Jack's appetite had doubled since they'd started sleeping together and her pantry couldn't keep up.
Normal errands. Boring, domestic, couple-who-aren't-officially-a-couple errands.
But somewhere between the dock and Main Street, Jack's hand had found hers. Casual. Natural. Like his fingers had simply decided, independent of his brain, that they belonged laced with hers. And Clara, whose brain was screaming ABORT ABORT EVERYONE CAN SEE YOU, had not pulled away.
Because it felt nice. Because his hand was warm and calloused and fit around hers like it had been designed for the job.
Because after two mornings of waking up tangled together and three days of domestic bliss so sweet it was practically criminal, pretending they were "just roommates" felt more exhausting than facing the consequences of the truth.
The consequences arrived in approximately eleven seconds.
Mrs. Conley saw them first.
Clara would later describe the woman's reaction as a full-body detonation of joy.
Mrs. Conley was exiting the general store with a bag of flour when her gaze locked onto their joined hands with the precision of a heat-seeking missile.
Her mouth fell open. The flour bag hit the sidewalk in a puff of white.
"Oh. My. GOODNESS." The words came out at a volume that carried across the entire street. "Ed! ED! Get out here! LOOK!"
Ed Conley appeared in the doorway, blinking at the sunlight. "What? What am I looking at?"
"THEM!" Mrs. Conley pointed at Clara and Jack like they were an exhibit at a museum. "They're HOLDING HANDS, Ed! HOLDING HANDS!"
"Is that flour on the sidewalk?" Ed asked.
"FORGET THE FLOUR!"
Clara's face caught fire. Jack, the bastard, squeezed her hand and kept walking.
"Should we stop?" he asked mildly.
"If we stop, she'll hug us. Keep moving."
"CLARA!" Mrs. Conley was already in pursuit, flour footprints trailing behind her. "Clara, sweetheart, this is WONDERFUL! When did this happen? Was it the festival? I told Ida something happened at the festival! She owes me ten dollars!"
"Your mother bet against us?" Jack asked, amused.
"My mother bet on a different timeline, which is somehow worse." Clara tried to walk faster but Mrs. Conley had the determined pace of a woman who'd been waiting for this moment for weeks.
"Mrs. Conley, we're just going to the hardware store—"
"Of course you are, dear. Of course." Mrs. Conley fell into step beside them, beaming like she'd personally orchestrated their relationship. "Jack, you look wonderful. Doesn't he look wonderful, Clara? There's color in his cheeks. That's the ocean air. And love. Love puts color in your cheeks."
"It's sunburn," Clara said flatly.
"You know, I told your mother the very first day—the VERY first day—I said, 'Ida, this young man is going to be important.' Didn't I say that? I have the text to prove it. Would you like to see the text?"
"I would," Jack offered.
"You would not," Clara corrected.
Mrs. Conley was already scrolling through her phone. "Here! June fourteenth. 'Ida, Clara brought a tall handsome man to town today. Mark my words.' See? MARK MY WORDS. And here we are! Marked!"
"That's very impressive, Mrs. Conley."
"Don't encourage her," Clara muttered.
"I'm just being polite."
“That’s a dangerous game.”
They'd barely made it past the general store when Don Patterson materialized from the hardware store doorway, reading glasses on his head, grin already spreading across his face.
"Well, well, well." Don crossed his arms with the satisfaction of a man who'd seen something coming from a mile away. "Joan! Joan, come look!"
Joan appeared, took one look at their hands, and gave her husband a weary but fond smile. "Don, leave them alone."
"I'm not doing anything! I'm just observing! It's a free country and I'm observing two young people who are clearly—"
"In need of marine-grade sealant," Jack said smoothly. "I called ahead about the order?"
"Right, right, the sealant." Don was transparently not interested in sealant. "Come on in. It's in the back. Joan, get the man his sealant."
"You get the man his sealant. I'm going back to the register."
Don ushered Jack inside, already launching into a tangent.
"You know, Joan and I held hands for the first time at the Founder's Festival too.
Well, not this festival, the one in 1986.
Different stage—the one before the one before yours.
Built by Dale's father, actually, wonderful craftsmanship, though the supports were—"
The door closed behind them.
Clara stood on the sidewalk, momentarily alone, and allowed herself exactly three seconds of mortification before the next wave hit.
Sarah Kwan emerged from the café across the street, iced coffee in hand, phone already raised.
"Don't you dare," Clara warned.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're taking a photo."
"I'm checking my camera settings. Completely unrelated activity." Sarah lowered the phone approximately two degrees. "So. You and Jack."
"Me and Jack."
"Finally."
"It's been three weeks, Sarah. 'Finally' implies some kind of unreasonable delay."
"Three weeks is forever in Beacon's End time. Mrs. Conley started a betting pool after the festival. Maeve has the spreadsheet."
Clara closed her eyes. "There's a spreadsheet."
"It's very detailed. Categories include 'date of first kiss,' 'who made the first move,' and—my personal favorite—'will Clara deny it for more than forty-eight hours after becoming obvious.' I had money on seventy-two hours, so I need you to not confirm anything until Thursday."
"I'm going to murder every single person in this town."
"That's the spirit." Sarah patted her arm. "I'm happy for you, Clara. Really. He's a good one."
"You've met him twice."
"And both times he looked at you like you hung the moon, so I feel confident in my assessment." Sarah's phone buzzed. She glanced at it, eyes widening. "Oh my God, Mrs. Conley just texted the group chat. All caps. Fourteen exclamation points."
"Of course she did."
"Do you want to know what she said?"
"Absolutely not."
"She called you 'lovebirds.' With a heart emoji. Multiple heart emojis."
Clara turned on her heel and walked into the hardware store, where at least the conversation would be about screws.
It didn't get better.
Over the next hour, as they worked through their errand list, Clara and Jack were stopped, congratulated, or aggressively smiled at by no fewer than twelve people.
The florist gave Clara a free sprig of wildflowers "just because.
" The woman at the grocery checkout winked so hard Clara thought she was having a stroke.
A man Clara had never seen before shook Jack's hand on the street and said, "Good for you, son. "
Jack handled it all with the easy grace of someone who found the whole thing hilarious rather than mortifying, which Clara found both endearing and infuriating.
"You're enjoying this," she accused, as they loaded bags into the boat.
"I'm enjoying watching you try not to spontaneously combust. It's very entertaining."
"My suffering amuses you."
"Your blushing amuses me. There's a difference." He stowed the last bag and offered his hand to help her into the boat. "You know they're happy for you, right? That's all this is. They're not trying to embarrass you. They're just—"
"Losing their collective minds because a woman held a man's hand? Yes. I'm aware. This town acts like no one has ever dated before."
"Not you." Jack's voice softened. "Not for a long time. That's what they're celebrating."
Clara paused, one foot in the boat, one on the dock. The irritation in her chest loosened into something more complicated.
Because he was right. The town wasn't being nosy—well, they were, but that wasn't the whole story.
They were relieved. For three years, they'd watched Clara retreat.
Watched her close herself off, refuse invitations, dodge connections, withdrawing into a tight ball behind the lighthouse walls.
They'd brought food and checked on her and given her space and waited.
And now here she was. Holding someone's hand in broad daylight. Looking like she might actually be happy.
Of course they were losing their minds.
"Fine," she conceded. "It's sweet. In an invasive, boundary-violating, small-town-surveillance kind of way."
"That's the Clara Hawkins seal of approval right there."
They made one last stop at Maeve's for lunch.
The pub was moderately busy—the post-festival crowd still lingering, nursing beers and swapping stories from the bonfire. Clara braced herself as they walked through the door, but Maeve wasn't behind the bar. Evan was.
Small mercies.
They ordered food and settled into their usual booth—and when had they gotten a "usual" booth?—when the kitchen door swung open and Maeve appeared, dish towel over her shoulder, eyes finding Clara and Jack like a guided system.
She didn't say a word. Just walked to their table, stood there for a moment, and looked at them.
At their shoulders touching. At the ease between them. At Clara, who was smiling about something Jack had said without the usual self-conscious editing.
"Well," Maeve said.
One word. Loaded.
"Don't," Clara warned.
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"Your face is saying everything."
Maeve's mouth twitched. She pulled out a chair, sat down uninvited—classic Maeve—and folded her hands on the table.