Chapter 2
The Friday sunset gatherings had a rhythm Melissa could predict down to the minute.
Winnie would appear on the keeper’s quarters porch at six-fifteen with a pitcher of sweet tea in one hand and a platter of something homemade in the other.
Tonight it was crab dip and crackers, and the smell of Old Bay carried across the courtyard on the warm Gulf breeze.
By six-twenty, Emily and Grant would drift in from Starfish Cottage, usually mid-conversation, usually touching in some small unconscious way. Hands brushing. Shoulders close.
By six-thirty, the fire pit would be lit even though it was far too hot for a fire in Florida in summer. Winnie insisted. She said the flames gave people something to look at when the conversation got too real.
Melissa arrived at six-twenty-eight, camera bag over her shoulder. She always brought the camera. It gave her hands something to do, and her eyes somewhere to land that wasn’t on other people’s happiness.
The courtyard garden looked soft in the golden light.
Stone pathways curved between beds of native sea oats and coontie palms and clusters of blanket flowers that blazed orange and red near the memorial bench dedicated to William, Henry, and Robert Lockhart, the previous lightkeepers.
The gazebo at the far edge caught the last direct sun, its white lattice glowing.
She’d photographed it all dozens of times.
She could frame every angle from memory.
She chose the Adirondack chair farthest from the fire pit and settled in, angling herself toward the lighthouse rather than the growing circle of people.
The tower was losing its daytime sharpness as the sky mellowed, and she mentally composed a shot she wouldn’t take because she’d already taken it a hundred and twelve times.
“Melissa.” Emily waved from across the courtyard, her smile wide and genuine. Paint stains dotted the hem of her shirt. A bright yellow and a dark blue. She looked like a different person from the hollow-eyed woman who had arrived at Starfish Cottage months ago.
Melissa waved back. “Hey.”
“You should come by the studio tomorrow. I want to show you something.”
“Sure.” She wouldn’t go. Emily probably knew that, but she offered anyway.
Grant appeared behind Emily and set a bowl of fruit on the table near Winnie’s crab dip.
He caught Melissa’s eye and gave her a nod.
Grant was easier to be around than most people.
He didn’t push. He’d spent enough years behind his own walls to recognize them in someone else and leave them standing.
“We’re planning the next exhibition,” Emily said as she settled into a chair beside Grant. Her voice carried that new energy she’d found since she’d stopped running and started painting again. “Grant wants to feature local artists exclusively this time. A whole series on coastal life.”
“Beth Ramsey’s been working on a collection of harbor scenes,” Grant said. “Jim’s got some new pieces. We’re thinking late summer, maybe tie it to the end of tourist season.”
Melissa listened from her safe distance and nodded at what she hoped were the right moments.
Emily’s hands moved while she talked, sketching invisible compositions in the air.
Grant watched her the way he always did, like she was the most interesting thing in any room.
Their ease with each other was solid and settled.
Cassidy arrived next, with Bryan a half step behind her.
They were arguing. Of course, they were arguing.
They’d been arguing since the day Cassidy Wren set foot in Starlight Shores, though the arguments had changed flavor since the Harbor Festival.
Less hostility, more heat. It was aimless bickering that had nowhere to go but toward each other.
“I’m just saying the vendor layout needs to account for foot traffic patterns.” Cassidy dropped into the chair beside Emily and crossed her legs.
“And I’m just saying we’ve been doing the Founders’ Day setup the same way for fifteen years and nobody’s complained about foot traffic.” Bryan sat on the arm of her chair like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Nobody complained because nobody thought to measure it.”
“Not everything needs to be measured, Cass.”
“That is literally the least true thing you’ve ever said.”
Bryan looked at Grant. Grant raised both hands and shook his head. “Not getting in the middle of this one.”
Melissa almost smiled. Almost. She focused on the way the firelight was starting to compete with the fading sun and the shadows stretching long across the stone pathways.
Beautiful light. It made skin glow warm, and eyes look luminous.
The light she used to chase across continents with a press badge and an instinct for timing.
She kept her camera in the bag.
Winnie moved through the gathering like a current, filling glasses, adjusting chairs, and touching shoulders as she passed.
She wore a pale blue cotton blouse, and her silver hair was swept back in its usual braid.
The sea glass pendant at her throat caught the firelight and threw a tiny green reflection across her collarbone.
She paused beside an empty chair and straightened the cushion before moving on.
Clint emerged from the direction of the maintenance shed, changed out of his work clothes into a clean shirt that still managed to look like it had been folded by someone who resented the concept of laundry.
He carried a stack of paper plates and a roll of paper towels, which he set on the table with the air of a man completing a task rather than joining a party.
He took his usual spot near the fire pit. Close enough to participate. Far enough to leave without making it obvious.
She understood the positioning. She’d chosen her own chair with the same calculation.
The screen door of the keeper’s quarters swung open again, and Sally Morris came through with a covered dish balanced on one arm and her purse swinging from the other.
“I brought my mama’s banana pudding, and nobody better tell me they’re watching their sugar because I will not hear it.” Sally set the dish down with authority and surveyed the group. “Goodness, this is a beautiful evening. Winnie, your garden looks like something out of a magazine.”
“Clint cleared the beds last week.” Winnie tilted her head toward her nephew. “Wouldn’t let me help.”
“Because last time you did way too much and threw your back out pulling weeds. I figured I’d get it all cleaned up, so maybe you’d just do small sections at a time now,” Clint said without looking up.
Sally laughed and swatted his arm as she passed. “Always protecting everybody, whether they want it or not. Clint Lockhart, you are your aunt’s mirror image and don’t even know it.”
And then something happened that made Melissa blink.
Clint smiled. An actual smile. It made him look younger.
“Don’t tell her that,” he said. “She’ll get ideas.”
Sally squeezed his shoulder. “Honey, Winnie’s had ideas since the day she was born. The rest of us are just trying to keep up.”
Clint ducked his head, but the smile lingered. He looked almost boyish for a moment. Almost approachable.
He never smiled at her like that. She turned the observation over, examining it the way she’d examine an unexpected element in a frame. Clint gave her frowns, blunt assessments, and silence that felt like a door closing. He gave Sally warmth.
Not that it mattered. She wasn’t here for warmth.
The gathering settled into its usual pattern.
Conversations overlapped, a hum of low voices and occasional laughter.
Bryan told a story about a pelican that landed on a tourist’s kayak.
Emily described a new painting technique she was experimenting with.
Grant mentioned that the gallery had gotten a write-up in a regional arts magazine.
Cassidy pulled out her phone to show everyone the festival committee’s new social media page, which already had more followers than the town’s official account.
Everyone was moving forward, building things, and making plans.
She sat in her chair and watched the lighthouse darken against the purpling sky. She thought about the photographs she’d taken that morning that were clean and precise. She thought about the calendar date on her laptop and the folder she shouldn’t have opened.
The fire popped, sending a small shower of sparks upward, and Winnie appeared beside her chair so quietly that Melissa startled.
“Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” Winnie lowered herself into the adjacent Adirondack. She settled back and looked out toward the lighthouse instead of at Melissa. “How are you doing, dear?”
“Good. Fine.” She wrapped her hands around her glass of sweet tea. “Just taking time to figure things out.”
“Mmm.” Winnie sipped her own tea. The fire crackled between them, and the distant rhythm of waves filled the gaps. “How long does the figuring usually take?”
“Depends on what you’re figuring.”
“I suppose it does.” Winnie was quiet for a moment.
The lighthouse beam had begun its slow rotation, sweeping out across the water in a steady arc.
“You know, my father used to say the lighthouse didn’t need a keeper to make the light work.
The mechanism ran itself. But somebody had to be there to notice when it stopped. ”
Melissa waited. Winnie’s stories always had a second layer, and she’d learned that interrupting only delayed the point.
“I think sometimes we hide for so long we forget what we were hiding from.”
She took a sip of her tea and let the sweetness coat her throat while she searched for a deflection. “I’m not hiding, Winnie. I’m just working through a transition. Lots of photographers shift specialties mid-career.”
Winnie patted her arm. “Of course, dear.”
That was worse than an argument. Winnie’s gentle agreement had a way of reflecting your own words back at you so you could hear how thin they sounded.