Epilogue #2
Ben had arranged the display with the quiet precision of a man who cared deeply about presentation.
Tyler was working the register with the authority of someone who'd been waiting for this moment.
Lena stood behind the table taking photos and threatening anyone who looked like they might not buy a copy.
Clara signed books. Smiled. Talked to people who told her that Tidal Lock had meant something to them — that they'd found it during hard times, that Marina felt like someone they knew, that the lighthouse keeper's story had made them feel less alone.
Every time someone said something like that, Clara had to pause and breathe and remind herself that she was in public and could not ugly cry at her own book signing.
Then her parents were at the front of the line.
They'd waited. Stood in line behind strangers like regular customers, her father in the short-sleeve button-down he wore to every event that wasn't church, her mother clutching a copy of Tidal Lock against her chest like she was afraid someone would take it from her.
Ida's eyes were already red — she'd been crying since at least halfway through the line, maybe longer.
"Mom. Dad. You didn't have to wait in line."
"Of course we did," Ida said, setting the book on the table with trembling hands. "We're here as fans. Make it out to your biggest fan — with an S, because there are two of us. Your father teared up on the plane, by the way. He'll deny it."
"Allergies," her father said. "The recycled air."
"He read it twice on the flight up. Twice, Clara."
Her father cleared his throat. Looked at the book on the table, then at Clara behind it, then at the line of people stretching behind them who'd come to have his daughter sign something she'd made.
His jaw worked the way it did when he was trying not to show emotion, which he was terrible at and always had been.
"Your grandmother would've been proud," he said. Quiet. Like he was handing her something fragile.
Clara's pen stopped moving. She looked up at her father — this man who'd never quite understood what she did for a living but had never once told her to stop — and felt the last three years collapse into a single point.
The kitchen floor. The lighthouse. The avatar and the pen name and the hiding.
All of it leading here, to a table in a bookstore in her town, with a line of people and her parents waiting in it.
"Thank you, Dad," she said.
He nodded. Patted the table once — awkward, decisive, done with feelings now — and stepped aside so Ida could lean across and pull Clara into a hug that smelled like the jasmine perfume she'd worn since Clara was six.
"I'm so proud of you," Ida whispered. "I'm so, so proud of you."
"Mom. I'm going to cry."
"Then cry. I'll block the view."
She did, briefly. Ida blocked the view. Her father stood guard with his hands in his pockets, looking at the ceiling, pretending nothing emotional was happening. Lena, who'd been watching from behind the table, silently handed Clara a tissue and gave Ida a thumbs-up.
The line kept moving. Clara kept signing.
Jack stayed nearby. Not hovering — just present.
Refilling her water glass. Bringing her a lobster roll she hadn't asked for but desperately needed.
Talking to readers when Clara needed a moment to collect herself.
Being the person he'd become over the past year — the man who stayed.
Not perfectly. Not without the occasional morning where she could see the old fear flickering behind his eyes, the ghost of a packed bag.
But he stayed anyway. Chose to be here, chose to be hers, every single morning.
The bonfire lit at dusk.
Same spot on the beach. Same crowd gathered in the firelight. Same Thomas, standing with the torch, voice carrying across the sand.
"Two hundred and thirteen years ago, a group of sailors shipwrecked on these shores..."
Clara leaned into Jack. His arm came around her — automatic now, the easy weight of a gesture that had become routine.
Last year, this moment had been electric with newness.
This year it was something better: familiar.
The warmth of a body she knew as well as her own, the smell of sawdust and salt air, the steady rise and fall of his breathing.
"...they built a fire. And that fire brought them together..."
Jack's phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it, grinned, and tilted the screen toward Clara.
A photo from Josie. Brody and his little sister on a couch, holding a copy of Tidal Lock between them, the book open to a spread of Marina at the prow.
Brody was pointing at the sea witch with an expression of delighted horror.
The caption read: Brody wants to know if the sea witch is real.
Sophie tried to eat the book. We're very proud of our aunt.
Aunt.
Clara pressed her face into Jack's shoulder so he wouldn't see her eyes.
"...to Beacon's End!" Thomas shouted, torch touching kindling, the fire roaring to life. "And to all the shipwrecked sailors who found their way home!"
"To Beacon's End!" the crowd echoed.
Jack pressed his mouth to Clara's hair. "To Beacon's End," he murmured, just for her.
She lifted her head. Looked at him in the firelight — this man who'd washed up on her shore like a founding myth, who'd almost left and almost stayed and almost broken both their hearts before choosing, finally, to stop running.
"To Beacon's End," she said.
They drove home late.
The lighthouse was dark against the stars, the gallery railing a clean line against the sky.
Jack parked the truck — their truck, really, at this point — and they walked up the path together, the sound of the ocean steady and constant in the way it had been for two hundred years and would be for two hundred more.
The lighthouse settled around them.
Jack went to bed. Clara poured herself a glass of water and sat down at her drafting table.
Volume Two was due in four months. She was behind, as usual.
The panel in progress showed the lighthouse keeper on the gallery, looking out at the horizon.
In the background, half-hidden in the doorway, the shipwright was watching her with a look that said everything he'd never been good at saying out loud.
Clara picked up her pen. The same pen, the same table, the same light. The same woman who'd sat here three years ago, drawing her way out of the dark on a kitchen floor.
Everything was different. Everything was the same. She was still drawing. Still telling the story. Still sitting in a lighthouse on a rocky point in Maine, turning her life into lines on paper.
But the lighthouse had a lock on the door now, and a truck in the drive, and a man in the bed who'd chosen to stay. And the woman at the drafting table wasn't hiding anymore.
On the fridge behind her, held up by a magnet shaped like a lobster that Mrs. Conley had given them as a "housewarming gift" (uninvited), a small collection of evidence that two lives had quietly merged: a photo strip of Clara and Jack from a carnival photo booth, both of them mid-laugh; Josie's Thanksgiving itinerary; a sticky note in Jack's handwriting — Workshop lease signed.
Keys Thursday. Don't let me forget to call the electrician. A workshop. In town. Permanent.
"Clara." Jack's voice drifted from the bedroom, rough with sleep. "Come to bed."
"In a minute."
"You said that an hour ago."
"And I'll say it again in another hour. Go to sleep."
A pause. Then, softer: "Leave the light on for me."
Clara smiled. Set down her pen for a moment and looked toward the bedroom door — cracked open, the way he always left it, like he wanted to stay connected even in sleep.
This man who'd spent seven years sleeping in rooms with closed doors and packed bags.
Who now slept with the door open in a lighthouse that wasn't his but had become home because she was in it.
She picked up her pen again.
Clara drew. The lighthouse held steady. The light swept out across the water, the way it had for two hundred years — not saving ships, not guiding anyone to safety, just shining because that's what lighthouses do.
They shine. Even when no one's watching.
Especially then.
And for the first time in forever, everything felt exactly right.