Chapter 14
Clint caught himself whistling halfway through the second verse of an old Jimmy Buffett song and stopped, wrench frozen against the spigot housing.
He didn’t whistle. Hadn’t in years. The last time he remembered doing it was aboard the Neptune, tightening deck fittings before a patrol, Sean two feet away making fun of his pitch.
He finished the repair in silence, wiped his hands on his jeans, and moved to the next item on his list. Gazebo railing, south side.
One of the balusters had worked loose after the last storm, and he’d been meaning to get to it all week.
He had his routine. Every morning he’d check the cottages, walk the grounds, and fix what needed fixing.
Three years of the same circuit and the same clipboard, finding quiet satisfaction in problems solved with his hands.
But this morning the list felt less like a duty and more like a reason to be outside.
He wouldn’t call it excitement. But he’d been out of bed before the alarm, and his pace on the morning walk had picked up, and now the whistling. Something had loosened over the past week.
He knew what had changed. He just wasn’t ready to look directly at it.
From the gazebo he could see the courtyard, the stone pathways, and the fire pit with its ring of mismatched chairs.
Captain’s Watch sat at the far edge of his sightline, its shutters open for the first time in months.
Melissa had started leaving them that way.
Small thing. He noticed it every morning.
She was different now. Not a different person, but the same person with the volume turned back up.
At the Friday gatherings she talked instead of hovering at the edges.
Her camera went into town like it belonged in her hand instead of weighing her down.
She’d started a portrait series, and people actually sat for her, which meant they trusted her, which meant she’d earned it.
What he couldn’t quite explain was the part where she’d started including him.
Not in the portraits. Not yet. But when she photographed the lighthouse grounds, he’d sometimes glance up from a repair and find her lens pointed in his direction.
The first time it happened, he’d turned away fast, jaw tight.
The second time, she’d called out, “Hold still, you’re in my light,” and he’d stood there like an idiot with a paintbrush in his hand while she took three frames.
He hadn’t hated it.
That was the part that unsettled him. He should have minded. He was a private person who had chosen a private life for good reasons. But Melissa behind a camera was Melissa at her most honest, and he didn’t mind being on that side of the lens.
Don’t make it into more than it is. He tightened the baluster and tested it with his palm. Solid.
He moved on to replacing a section of lattice on the back side of Sea Glass Cottage, cutting new strips from a sheet of cedar he’d picked up in town. The saw made a clean, satisfying sound. He heard her footsteps on the shell path before he saw her.
“Cassidy wants the grounds photographed for the festival brochure,” Melissa said.
She had her camera bag over one shoulder and a water bottle in her free hand.
Her hair was pulled back, and she’d traded her usual dark clothes for a pale blue shirt that made her look less like a war correspondent and more like someone who lived in a beach town.
“I figured I’d start with the cottages and work out toward the water. ”
“Okay.” He lined up the next cut.
“You don’t have to move or anything. I’ll work around you.”
“Wasn’t planning on moving.”
“Good. Because you’d wreck my composition.”
She almost smiled. He saw it start and stop, a flicker at the corner of her mouth that disappeared before it fully arrived. Then she lifted the camera and walked toward Starfish Cottage, and he went back to the lattice.
For the next hour they worked in parallel.
She circled the courtyard, shooting the garden, the pathways, and the memorial bench with its worn inscription.
He finished the lattice, moved on to tightening the hinges on the gazebo gate, then recaulked the window frame on Compass Rose that had been weeping moisture for a week.
They didn’t talk much. They didn’t need to.
The sound of her shutter mixed with the rhythm of his work, and the afternoon took on an easy, unhurried quality that surprised him.
She came back around when he was packing up his tools.
“Can I see?” He nodded toward the camera.
She hesitated, then tilted the screen toward him.
She scrolled through a dozen images. The courtyard looked the way it felt when the light hit right.
Warm, real, a place where people actually lived.
She’d caught the fire pit chairs at an angle that made them look like they were waiting for someone to sit down, and there was a shot of the memorial bench where the afternoon sun lit up the engraving so clean he could almost read it.
“These are good,” he said.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised. Just saying it.”
She lowered the camera and looked at him directly. “How long have you been here? At the lighthouse.”
“Three years.” He bent to close his toolbox.
“Before that?”
He straightened up. The question wasn’t aggressive. She’d left plenty of room for him to change the subject, and he could tell she wouldn’t ask twice.
“Coast Guard. Twenty years.” He picked up the toolbox. “Made some bad choices near the end. Needed a reset. Winnie offered me work, and I took it.”
Melissa nodded once. She didn’t ask what the bad choices were, didn’t tilt her head with that look people got when they wanted the rest of the story. She just accepted it and let the silence stand.
“Winnie has good timing,” she said.
“She does.”
They walked back toward the courtyard together. The late afternoon light stretched across the pathway and turned the shells gold. Melissa stopped to take one more shot, the row of cottages with the lighthouse rising behind them, and Clint stood off to the side and watched her work.
She bit her lower lip when she was concentrating.
He’d seen her do it a dozen times, but today he couldn’t look away from it.
She adjusted the lens, shifted her weight to her left foot, and pressed the shutter with the careful, deliberate motion of someone who understood that every frame was a choice.
Her fingers were long and precise. She held the camera like she’d held it ten thousand times, and he realized he’d stopped walking and was just standing there.
He forced his eyes to the toolbox in his hand. Gripped the handle harder.
Get it together.
She glanced back at him. “You coming?”
“Yeah.” He walked.
At the edge of the courtyard they split, Melissa heading toward Captain’s Watch and Clint toward Driftwood.
He climbed his porch steps, set the toolbox by the door, and stood for a moment looking out across the grounds.
The air was heavy and warm, thick with salt and the faint sweetness of the jasmine Winnie had planted along the garden fence.
From where he stood, he could see the light in Captain’s Watch come on, a yellow square in the fading afternoon.
He went inside, washed his hands, and opened the fridge without knowing what he wanted.
Stood there staring at the shelves until the cold air hit his face, then closed it.
Not hungry. Restless in a way that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with the fact that he’d spent two hours with a woman who asked easy questions, accepted short answers, and never once made him feel like he owed her more. And he’d liked every minute of it.
That was the problem. He was starting to like things again.
The Friday gatherings. Property work with the windows open and a breeze coming through.
How the lighthouse looked at dusk when the beam kicked on and swept its slow circle across the water.
He’d been here three years and had never once paused to watch it.
Last Tuesday he’d stood on his porch for ten minutes doing exactly that.
He pulled his phone from his pocket to check the time and saw the notification he’d been avoiding.
Sean. Two days ago.
Wedding’s in three months. You’re still my best man, right? Casual just khakis and a white shirt. Call me when you get a chance.
Clint set the phone on the counter, leaned both hands on the edge of the sink, and stared at the backsplash tile.
He should answer. Sean deserved an answer.
Sean, who had spent ten months in physical therapy just to be able to walk with a cane.
Who had built a whole new career in marine safety consulting.
He’d fallen in love with a woman named Laura, was getting married in three months, and had asked Clint to stand next to him on the most important day of his life.
And Clint had read the text forty-eight hours ago and done nothing.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go. He wanted to go.
Sean was his closest friend, the person who knew every version of him from the wide-eyed academy kid to the man who pushed for a rescue that changed both their lives.
Sean had never blamed him. Not once, not even in the hospital with his left leg in traction and his career ended at thirty-seven.
He’d looked at Clint from the hospital bed and said, “Those kids are alive because of you,” and Clint had walked out of the room because he couldn’t handle the grace of it.
Standing up as best man meant standing in front of people, giving a toast, looking Sean in the eye and saying something worthy of the friendship.
Every time Clint tried to imagine that moment, he heard the radio from that night instead.
The static. The kids crying. His own voice, We go now, we go right now, and the sound of the wave that hit the deck and sent Sean into the railing.
He picked the phone up again. Typed I’m in. I’ll call you this weekend. Read it twice. The cursor blinked. His thumb hovered over the send button. He couldn’t press it.
He set the phone down again.
Sean would understand the delay. He always did, which was part of the problem.
If Sean had ever once told him off, called him a coward for leaving, Clint could have fought back or agreed or done something with it.
But Sean just kept showing up, kept calling, kept asking him to be best man at his wedding like Clint deserved to stand there.
He’d answer. He would. Just not tonight.
He opened the fridge again, pulled out a beer, and sat on the porch in the wicker chair that had come with the cottage.
The jasmine was stronger now, mixing with the salt air.
Across the courtyard, Captain’s Watch glowed warm and steady through its open shutters.
He could see the shadow of Melissa moving inside, pacing the way she did when she was reviewing photos on her laptop.
He watched the lighthouse beam begin its sweep. Counted three rotations. Took a long pull of the beer and let the evening settle in around him.
Tomorrow he’d answer Sean. He’d book a flight and work out what to say in a toast. And he’d probably see Melissa in the courtyard again, and she’d probably point her camera at him, and he’d probably stand there and let her.
He finished the beer. Went inside and ignored the phone on the counter.