Epilogue
One Year Later
Clara Hawkins was running late to her own book signing.
This was Jack's fault. Not directly — he'd been ready for twenty minutes, leaning against the truck with his arms crossed and the particular expression of a man who'd learned that saying hurry up to Clara only made her slower.
But he'd also been the one who'd installed the full-length mirror in the bedroom last month, which meant Clara now had the ability to see exactly how panicked she looked in the dress Lena had picked out, which meant she'd changed three times, which meant they were late.
"You look great!" Jack called from outside. "You looked great ten minutes ago! You looked great in the first outfit!"
"You didn't even see the first outfit!"
"I have faith in all your outfits!"
Clara stared at herself in the mirror. The dress was fine. More than fine — it was a deep green that Lena swore did something magical with her eyes, and it fit well, and she looked like a person who had her life together, which was a spectacular illusion.
She grabbed the advance copy from the kitchen counter — Tidal Lock, Volume One, real paper, real spine, real cover with her art on the front and her face on the back.
Her face. Red hair, freckles, the expression she made when the photographer told her to "look natural" and she'd looked like she was being held at gunpoint instead.
Nora had assured her it came across as "charmingly intense. " Clara had her doubts.
But there it was. C.H. Winters. Her name — the pen name, the one that stayed — and underneath it, her actual human face, visible to the world, attached to the work she'd made from her worst moments.
She still wasn't entirely used to it.
She tucked the book under her arm, locked the door behind her — the lock Jack had installed in October, after a six-week campaign that she'd caved on purely because he'd started leaving articles about horrific break-ins on her pillow — and walked down the path to the truck.
The lighthouse looked good. Better than it had in years, maybe decades.
The gallery railing was finished — all three sections, cable taut, posts sealed with the cedar treatment that would hold for a generation.
The plaster cracks inside were patched. The spare room window opened and closed without a fight.
The exterior trim had been stripped and repainted. The dock had new cleats.
Jack's truck sat in the gravel drive — same dented F-150, same crack in the dashboard, now with a Beacon's End resident parking sticker on the bumper and a toolbox bolted to the bed.
It had survived its first Maine winter, which Jack considered a personal triumph and Clara considered a minor miracle.
"Ready?" Jack asked, opening the passenger door for her.
"Define ready."
"Willing to leave the house."
"Barely."
He grinned. The real one — the full-face, crinkle-eyed smile that she'd spent a year learning to trust, the one that still did something stupid to her pulse even after twelve months of sharing a bathroom. "You're going to be great."
"I'm going to throw up."
"You can do both. I believe in you."
She shoved his shoulder and got in the truck.
The drive into town took twenty minutes.
Jack drove — he'd learned the coastal road's moods by season, though Clara still braced on the tight curve at mile two where the shoulder dropped off toward the rocks.
He was whistling. Off-key, as always. The same tuneless, infuriating sound that she'd pretended to hate for so long but it had become the background music of her life (and she loved it.)
"Nervous?" he asked.
"No."
"Liar."
"Fine. Terrified. Nauseous. Questioning every decision I've ever made."
"That's more like it." He reached over and squeezed her knee. Didn't offer a pep talk. Didn't tell her it would be fine. Just left his hand there in a silent show of support.
Clara covered his hand with hers. Looked out the window at the ocean scrolling by — the same view she'd driven a thousand times, the same pines and rocky beaches and occasional white steeple, all of it so familiar it had become invisible.
Except today it felt sharper. More real.
The way things looked when you were about to do something that couldn't be undone.
She was about to sit in a bookstore in her town, with her face on a book, and sign copies for people who would look at her and know.
Know that the lighthouse keeper was Clara.
That the sea witch's cruelty was drawn from experience.
That the lost sailor's fear of staying was — well.
That one was sitting next to her, whistling off-key, with sawdust permanently embedded in his knuckles.
"For the record," Jack said, "Josie already bought six copies. One for her, one for Mom, one for each kid, and two for people at her office. She's been texting me about it since five this morning."
"It's not even out yet."
"She pre-ordered. She's very aggressive about supporting family."
Clara's chest did something complicated. "I'm family?"
Jack glanced at her. "Clara. You've been on three video calls with my mother where she cried.
You sent Brody a birthday card with a custom drawing of his hamster.
Josie has you saved in her phone as 'Lighthouse Clara.
' You're family. And I might add, your nickname is far kinder than the one she has for me. 'Butthead brother'."
"Oh," Clara chuckled but looked out the window so he wouldn't see her face. It was an oddly wonderful thing to be considered close enough to be granted a nickname.
The Founder's Festival was in full swing by the time they arrived.
Same beach. Same strings of lights crisscrossing between poles.
Same food stalls lining the dunes — lobster rolls and corn on the cob and Tim's dad's pie table, which had expanded this year to include what Tim optimistically called "artisan cider" and everyone else called "the stuff that could pickle your insides. "
The stage Jack had built last summer stood solid in the center of it all, weathered now, the raw wood aged to a silver-gray that looked like it had been there for decades.
"Still standing," Jack noted with satisfaction.
"Were you worried?"
"I'm never worried about my work. I'm offended anyone would question it."
"Nobody questioned it."
"Thomas asked if the supports needed rechecking. In March. I'm still decided whether or not we should have words."
Clara laughed — the easy, unthinking kind that belonged to good days — and followed him down toward the beach.
Maeve found them first. Because Maeve always found them first.
"There she is! The famous author!" Maeve pulled Clara into a hug that smelled like kitchen grease and perfume. "I've told everyone. And I mean everyone. Even the tourists. Especially the tourists. I've been handing out bookmarks at the pub for a week."
"You made bookmarks?"
"Lena designed them. I printed them. Teamwork." Maeve held Clara at arm's length. "You look beautiful. Doesn't she look beautiful, Jack?"
"I've been saying that for an hour."
"Smart man." Maeve squeezed Clara's shoulders.
"Ben and Tyler have everything set up at the Pages & Salt table.
There's already a line. I'm not exaggerating — there's an actual line.
Mostly townspeople who want to support you, but also a few tourists who recognized the name from online.
You have fans, Clara. Real, living fans. "
"I might be sick."
"You're not going to be sick. You're going to sit at that table and sign books and be gracious and let people tell you your work matters, because it does." Maeve's voice softened. "I'm proud of you, love. We all are."
Clara blinked hard. "If you make me cry before the signing, I'm blaming you."
"Fair. Go. Jack, make sure she eats something before she sits down. She gets shaky when she's nervous."
"Already on it."
Mrs. Conley intercepted them at the pie table with the inevitability of a natural disaster.
"Clara! The book! I read the whole thing — well, Ed read it to me because my glasses need updating, but that's beside the point.
It's wonderful. Although I do think the font on the title could be larger.
And the sea witch looks a bit like my cousin Dorothy, which is either a coincidence or a very pointed creative choice. "
"It's a coincidence, Mrs. Conley."
"Mm-hm. Well. Dorothy had it coming either way." She turned to Jack. "And you — are you in the book? I heard there's a carpenter character."
"There's a character who builds things," Clara said carefully. "He's not based on anyone specific."
"He's absolutely based on me," Jack said.
"He's not."
"He builds things, he's charming, he's afraid of commitment. It's practically a biography."
"The character is a shipwright from the 1800s."
"With my emotional arc."
Mrs. Conley looked between them with undisguised delight. "You two are my favorite entertainment. Better than television. Ed! Ed, come listen to this!"
Ed, who had been standing six feet away pretending he couldn't hear emotional situations, raised a hand in greeting and moved to a safer distance.
The signing was overwhelming.
And wonderful. And surreal. And nothing like Clara had imagined, which was good because she'd imagined an empty table and pitying looks and the specific humiliation of sitting behind a stack of books that nobody wanted.
Instead, there was a line. Not a massive line — this was Beacon's End, not New York — but a real one.
A dozen people, then two dozen. Townspeople and summer visitors and a handful of readers who'd driven from Portland after seeing the event on Tidal Lock's social media page, which Nora's team now managed and which featured Clara's actual face instead of a cartoon lighthouse.