3. Back to Harbors End #2
“I'm not interested.”
“It would just be a quick interview. Five minutes, maybe ten. People love hometown success stories, and?—”
“I said I'm not interested.”
Her smile became strained. “Are you sure? It could be great publicity for your music career?—”
“My music career is fine without your help.”
The rejection clearly stung, but she tried one more approach. “What about a piece on how the town has changed since you left? Just some quotes about?—”
“No.”
This time she got the message. “Well, if you change your mind, I'm staying at the Anchor Inn.” She pressed a business card into my hand before I could refuse it. “Think about it, okay? It could really help put Harbor's End on the map.”
I watched her walk away, noting the way she immediately pulled out her phone and started typing. Probably updating her editor that the local celebrity was being difficult. By tonight, half the town would know I'd turned down an interview, and by tomorrow they'd all have opinions about why.
The encounter had drawn more attention than I wanted. A group of teenagers had gathered outside the coffee shop, whispering and pointing. An older man I didn't recognize was openly taking pictures with his phone until a woman who might have been his wife smacked his arm and made him stop.
I shouldered my guitar case and started walking toward Harbor Street, hoping to escape before anyone else decided to welcome me home.
The afternoon sun cast long shadows across the sidewalk, and the smell of the harbor—salt and seaweed and boat fuel—brought back a flood of memories I wasn't ready to deal with.
The apartment I'd rented was above a used bookstore. The owner, a man in his sixties with wild gray hair and paint-stained fingers, looked up from his newspaper as I approached.
“You must be my new tenant,” he said, extending his hand. “Fred Nakamura. Welcome to the neighborhood.”
“Rowan. Thanks for the quick turnaround on the rental.”
“No problem at all. Nice to have someone young in the space—keeps the ghosts from getting too comfortable.” He said it with a straight face, like he might actually believe it.
“You need anything, I'm usually downstairs until six.
Coffee, recommendations, someone to complain to about the weather—I'm your man.”
The staircase up to the apartment was narrow and creaked ominously under my weight, but it held. The apartment itself was exactly as advertised: small, clean, and furnished with the kind of generic furniture that suggested its primary occupants were people in transition.
One window faced the street, offering a view that included part of the harbor and most of Harbor's End's modest downtown. The walls were painted white but had faded to cream, and there was a persistent smell of old wood and the faint mustiness that came with buildings that had seen better decades.
I dropped my backpack on the floor and set my guitar case against the wall. The silence was immediate and oppressive after two years of New York's constant noise. No sirens, no traffic, no neighbors arguing through thin walls. Just the creak of old wood settling and the distant sound of seagulls.
I walked to the window and looked out at Harbor's End spreading below me like a postcard from a simpler time.
The harbor was busy with the evening fishing fleet heading out, their lights beginning to twinkle in the gathering dusk.
Houses climbed the hills in neat rows, most with lights glowing warm and yellow in their windows.
It looked peaceful. Picturesque, even. The kind of place people moved to when they wanted to escape the complications of modern life.
But I'd grown up here, and I knew what the postcard didn't show: the way everyone knew everyone else's business, the subtle hierarchies and long-held grudges, the way the town could feel like a trap if you stayed too long.
Still, for the first time since I'd gotten off the train, I felt something that might have been relief. I was here. I'd actually done it—come back to the place I'd spent half my life trying to escape. And so far, I hadn't spontaneously combusted or been run out of town by an angry mob.
Maybe that was something.
I unpacked my few belongings, hanging clothes in the tiny closet and setting my toiletries on the bathroom shelf. The acoustic guitar got propped in the corner where I could see it but wouldn't feel obligated to touch it. Not yet. Maybe not for a while.
As the sun set over Harbor's End, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold, I sat by the window and watched the town settle into evening.
Lights came on in houses where families were having dinner, where couples were watching TV, where children were being tucked into bed with stories about adventures in far-off places.
My phone buzzed with a text from Caleb, asking if I'd made it safely.
I typed back a quick “Alive and intact,” then turned the phone face-down on the table.
Tomorrow would bring more encounters, more questions, more of the careful navigation required to exist in a place where your past was public knowledge.
But for tonight, I was just another light in a window, another life unfolding in this small town by the sea. And for the first time in months, that felt like enough.