Chapter 4 #2
"A few." All fifteen. She'd written all fifteen. In hotel rooms, on red-eyes, at the kitchen table while Drake slept upstairs. And this man had just called her life's work a well-built machine. "They're good. Clean plotting. The detective's solid."
"The detective's fine. He's functional." He shrugged. "But you'll forget him in a year. You won't forget Elizabeth Bennet. You won't forget Gatsby standing on that dock."
"People remember Hank Carson," Fiona said, and heard the edge in her own voice and dialed it back. "I mean. I've heard people say that. That they remember him."
"People remember lots of things. That doesn't make them literature."
She let it go. She had to. One more sentence and she'd be defending Hank Carson with the specific fury of the woman who'd created him, and the game would be up. She turned back to the shelf and breathed.
The local history section was small but well curated. Florida shipwrecks. A pictorial history of the Gulf Coast that looked like it had been self-published by someone's uncle. And there, tucked between two oversized volumes, a slim book with a cloth cover the color of sand. Sentinels of the Shore.
She pulled it out. The spine cracked softly when she opened it. It was filled with old photographs and technical drawings. A whole chapter on the Lockhart Lighthouse, she could see from the table of contents.
"That one's good," Marty said from behind her. She hadn't heard him come closer. "Local press, out of print. The chapter on Lockhart is the most thorough account I've seen outside of Winnie's own memory."
"I'll take it."
"You haven't looked at the price."
"I don't need to." She brought it to the counter. "How much?"
"Twelve dollars. I could charge more. It's scarce." He rang it up on the mechanical register, which made a satisfying chunk when the drawer opened. "But I'd rather it get read than sit there being valuable."
"A man of principle."
"A man of poor business instincts. There's a difference, though I'll grant you it's a fine one.
" He put the book in a paper bag and slid it across.
"I also have a rare collection in the back room.
Old journals, academic papers, and maritime documents.
If you're interested in the lighthouse history, there's material you won't find anywhere else. "
"Maybe next time."
"Sure. Next time." He held the bag out and their hands didn't touch, but the space between them felt smaller than it had been five minutes ago. "For what it's worth, your professor was right. Genre does the heavy lifting. I just think it could lift heavier."
"And I think literary fiction could bother to be readable."
"Now you sound like Hal."
"Hal sounds like a smart man."
"Don't tell him that. He's insufferable enough." But the almost-smile was back. A little closer to real this time. "Enjoy the lighthouse book, Fiona."
"Enjoy your Hungarian novelist nobody's going to buy."
He laughed. Short and surprised, like he hadn't planned on it. She'd caught him off guard. It changed his whole face. The stoop in his shoulders straightened half an inch. The laugh lines deepened. For one beat he looked like a totally different man.
"Come back when you've read it," he said. "I'll argue with you about that too."
"I'm sure you will."
She walked out into the sun with the paper bag against her chest. The morning opened up around her, bright and sunny. She turned left toward the harbor road and started back.
Halfway home she realized she was replaying the argument.
Not the whole thing. Just the moments. The way he'd said promise back to her, slow, like he was weighing it.
The way he'd almost smiled. The way he'd dismissed Hank Carson.
Her Hank. Her detective. Twenty years of her life in fifteen books—which should have been sixteen by now—and he'd waved it all off with the casual confidence of a man who believed genre fiction was a lesser country.
She should have been furious. She was, a little. But under the fury was a warmth she hadn't felt in a while.
She'd enjoyed it.
Not just the argument. Him. The ink on his hands and the glasses that couldn't find a home. The way he'd looked at her when she'd pushed back. Not offended or defensive. Interested. Like she'd surprised him, and he didn't get surprised often enough.
She shifted the bag to her other arm and kept walking. The palmetto scrub rustled in the breeze. The water was flat and bright.
She was passing Sally's store when the door opened and Sally came out holding a foil-wrapped biscuit.
"Told you I'd have it ready."
"You really didn't have to do that."
"Honey, nobody has to do anything in this town. We just do." Sally pressed the biscuit into her free hand. "You look better than you did on the way in, I'll say that. Got a little color."
"Must be the sun."
"Must be." Sally's eyes flicked to the paper bag from Tides & Tales, and a small knowing look crossed her face that Fiona chose to ignore. "See you around, Fiona."
"Thanks for the biscuit." She kept walking. The biscuit was warm through the foil.
She'd been out for over an hour with the walk, the shop, the argument, and the walk back. And in all of it she hadn't thought about her manuscript. Hadn't thought about the deadline, or Rachel's voicemails, or the contract she was ignoring.
Hadn't thought about Drake. Not once. Not until just now, when she'd noticed she hadn't.
Huh.
She climbed the porch steps and let herself into Sea Glass Cottage.
She set the lighthouse book on the table next to her laptop, where Hank Carson still waited, patient as ever, in his alley in the rain.
The laptop looked at her, trying to guilt her into opening it. She should open it. She should write.
Instead she sat in the worn armchair by the window and cracked the spine of Sentinels of the Shore and turned to the chapter on the Lockhart Lighthouse. This lighthouse. The one whose beam swept through her cottage each night.
The manuscript could wait. Hank could wait. He'd been standing in that alley for weeks now. Okay, months. Another afternoon wouldn't kill him.
Not that Fiona was avoiding anything. She was doing research. For a completely different project she hadn't started yet and might never write.
That was all.