Epilogue
SEVEN MONTHS LATER
Sunsets came much earlier in January.
At five on the dot, Cassie logged out of her laptop, firmly closing it for the day. For the weekend. It was Friday night in Boneyard Key, and she had someplace to be. After filling a plastic tumbler with white wine and getting a bottle of water out of the fridge, she headed down to the beach. Nick was already there, straddling the seawall.
“There you are.” He took the bottle of water from her hand, twisting off the cap and setting it on the seawall next to an open bottle of beer. Cassie scooted onto the wall, swinging her legs over to sit next to him.
“Just in time.” She gestured with her wine toward the horizon, where the sun hung low in the sky.
Nick nodded, dropping a kiss on her temple as she leaned against his shoulder. “Show’s just about to start.”
This was their favorite time of day, and they always tried to spend it together. Some days were easier than others; with Florida currently full of snowbirds, Nick’s two o’clock closing time often stretched to three or four. But he was always home before sunset, waiting for her on the seawall with an open beer for the Beach Bum.
Home. Not just her home, or Sarah’s home. But Nick’s home too. They’d spent that dead season in August—when it was too hot even for tourists—moving his things into her house, and the space over the café was back to being storage for the first time in years. After a good cleaning, Elmer’s leather recliner was a cozy addition to her front window—the perfect place to read in the evening tucked under Cassie’s crocheted afghan.
Combining their lives had been just as easy. Especially at the holidays: half the time with Cassie’s parents in Orlando, then up the Turnpike an hour and a half to The Villages where Nick’s family gathered. Sure, Cassie’s mom’s eyebrows had crawled up her forehead when Cassie announced at the Thanksgiving dinner table that she and Nick lived together, but she’d sent them home with extra pie, which was the surest sign that he was now a member of the family. Likewise, Nick’s family had welcomed Cassie at Christmas with open arms; his sister Courtney had even drafted Cassie to her team for the annual (strictly unauthorized) neighborhood golf cart relay race. They’d won.
During those first few months they kept checking in with each other—is this too soon? Are we rushing things? But Nick fit into Cassie’s life as easily as she fit into his, and by the time the new year ticked over, it was as though they’d always been together. Like two puzzle pieces that had found each other, just in time.
A breeze kicked up as the world darkened around them, and Cassie gave a shiver and pulled the sleeves of her hoodie down to cover her hands.
“Cold?” Nick wrapped an arm around Cassie, tugging her close, sharing his heat.
“Mmmm, a little.” But she wasn’t going to complain. She loved being cold enough to snuggle into Nick. Hoodie weather only lasted so long in Florida, and she was going to cherish every moment of it.
“Come on, let’s get inside. I’ll finish making dinner.” He swung around and hopped off the seawall, holding a hand to help her down.
“Oh, no.” She jumped down without his help. “I’ve got it.”
“Oh, come on,” he said as they headed back toward the house. “It’s just grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s not like I can screw up grilled cheese sandwiches.”
He screwed up the grilled cheese sandwiches.
“It’s only on one side this time.” Nick set the plate in the middle of the kitchen table with an apologetic grimace. All the sandwiches looked perfect: golden brown and cut on the diagonal, oozing with melty cheese. Then Cassie picked one up and turned it over; the other side looked like a charcoal briquette.
“I don’t understand.” She dropped her half sandwich to her plate. “You run a café. How are you so bad at this?”
“See, I don’t think of it as being bad at cooking.” Nick put a couple sandwich triangles onto his plate before starting the surgical process of peeling off the burned half of the sandwich. “I think of it as job security for Ramon.”
“And I’m sure he’s grateful.” Cassie dipped her spoon into her bowl of tomato soup—thank God she’d been in charge of that—and gave it a taste. At least that had turned out well. Then she followed his lead, picking off the burned pieces of bread from her sandwich. “Who knows, maybe you can make open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches a thing.”
Nick snorted. “Not if I’m trying to do it on purpose. I’d probably set the kitchen on fire.” His eyes, bright with amusement, met hers across the table, and Cassie had to laugh.
“Yeah. Maybe you should stick to coffee.”
“True. Elmer always said that was what I did best.”
Cassie studied him from across the table. His voice had softened, the way it always did when he talked about Elmer. “You miss him, huh?”
He nodded around a bite of mutilated cheese on bread. “I’d never admit it to his face, but I do. My phone’s so much quieter these days.”
Cassie’s soup spoon vibrated next to her bowl, striking it with a faint clink. Automatically her gaze went to her fridge.
window
“Oh!” Cassie stood up, dropping her napkin next to her plate before hurrying to open the kitchen window. “It’s time already.” They’d meant to finish dinner beforehand, but time had gotten away from them. It took a while to ruin a perfectly good plate of grilled cheese sandwiches.
Nick looked at the fridge, then at the clock on the microwave. “Damn. I’m late.” He stood up too, following Cassie to the living room, where they opened the windows wide. Then he bent to give Cassie a kiss. “See you after.”
It was meant to be a quick peck—an I’ll be right back kiss. But Cassie couldn’t help it; she reached up and slid her hand around the back of his neck, holding him there so she could linger. She still wasn’t used to this: his mouth on hers, the way his touch warmed her to the core. She lived for these little moments, for his slow, lazy smile against her lips as he took his time kissing her. He was thorough, his arms sliding around her waist and pulling her hips into his, making a promise he would keep later that night.
“Damn,” he said again as he finally, reluctantly pulled away. “Now I’m really late.”
“Oh no. I’m sorry.” Cassie wasn’t sorry. Not in the least. She leaned against the doorjamb, watching with a hazy smile as he trotted down the front steps and through the garden gate, hurrying down the street toward Hallowed Grounds. Then she poured a second glass of wine and made her way to the upstairs balcony off of their bedroom. It was her favorite spot to watch the ghost tour come by. She left the door to the balcony open in case it was Sarah’s too. With all the downstairs windows open to the night air, Sarah was guaranteed a good vantage point no matter where she was in the house.
It was mid-January, so the Christmas lights that were strung around the downtown area would be coming down soon. She’d loved the way they’d lit the town in a bright glow, with her house just on the edge of it all. She and Nick had taken their lights down from the house last weekend, so tonight she sat in relative darkness. The night was cool by Florida standards—just cool enough for a tomato soup and grilled cheese dinner and leaving the windows open in the evenings. The salt air teased locks of Cassie’s hair free to dance in the breeze, and she pushed them behind one ear.
Cassie settled into her bistro chair just in time. Low murmurs of conversation came from the sidewalk below, broken up by a cheerful, authoritative voice as they approached her house.
“And here we have the Sarah Hawkins House.” Sophie’s voice rang out loud and clear. She always spoke a little louder when she gave this part of the tour, since she knew who was listening. “It was built in 1899 by William Donnelly, shortly after Boneyard Key was established here after the Great Storm of 1897. Not long after that, Donnelly left for points north, deciding he’d had enough of Florida. And after that storm, who could blame him?” She paused as a couple of the tourists chuckled, the way they always did at that little joke.
“He planned to leave the house in the care of his niece, Sarah Blankenship. We think her intention was to rent out rooms to the visitors who had started to congregate here in Boneyard Key. There hadn’t been a hotel established here yet, and the income would help when women didn’t have a lot of opportunity to earn a living.
“Sarah had helped Mr. Donnelly design the house, especially the gardens, and she loved this house tremendously. She was looking forward to living here—just her and her cabbage roses—but then William Donnelly met C.S. Hawkins. Mean Mr. Hawkins , we like to call him.” Sophie pitched her voice low, in the spooky storytelling voice she was so good at.
Cassie nodded along as Sophie continued to tell the story. It had taken months, and several sets of custom magnetic poetry, for Cassie and Sophie to get the entire story out of Sarah. She didn’t seem to harbor any ill will toward her uncle who had married her off. She understood, in a way that Cassie and Sophie didn’t, that William Donnelly thought he was doing right by his niece—seeing her married to a wealthy pillar of the community. And while the wealthy part certainly came in handy for Sarah once she was a widow, there was no way any of them could have known that Mr. Hawkins would linger for so many years after his death, trying to control Sarah from the great beyond.
“Sarah lived in this house alone, taking the brunt of her jerk of a husband’s behavior, not letting anyone else come inside the house for fear that he might harm them too.”
“Now, wait a second,” one of the tourists piped up from the back of the crowd. “I bought a copy of Boneyard Key: A Haunted History yesterday, and it doesn’t have any of that in there. It says that Mrs. Hawkins was the mean one. So what’s the truth?”
Some confused mutterings punctuated this statement, but Sophie didn’t sound fazed. “That’s an excellent question. The Haunted History book has been the authoritative text on the history of the town for decades now. But when the Sarah Hawkins House was purchased by its current owner last year, new information came to light. I’m actually working on a more accurate history of Boneyard Key and its inhabitants—living or otherwise—with the help of a local historian. We’re hoping to publish it sometime next year. I have business cards back at Hallowed Grounds with our website information, if you want to stay updated.”
Sophie tossed a look up toward Cassie’s balcony, and Cassie waved, even though it was too dark to be seen. “Okay! Now, as we go back toward downtown, I want to remind you that Hallowed Grounds will be open when we get back to where we started. Feel free to grab a coffee or snack for the road. The lemon pound cake is really to die for. No pun intended, of course.”
Cassie grinned at the joke as the tour group filed away, then took her empty glass inside, closing the door to the balcony behind her. “Okay, Sarah,” she said as she headed down the stairs. “Story time’s over. Hope you enjoyed it.”
It was getting a little chilly downstairs, and as a Floridian, Cassie was far too stubborn to turn on the heat if she didn’t have to. She closed the living room windows, looking out into the yard. The cabbage roses practically glowed under the front porch light. It was the wrong time of year for them to be blooming, of course, but that wasn’t a surprise.
The roses had taken very little effort on Cassie and Nick’s part—a couple trips to the local garden center, and a weekend of digging and planting. After that, they grew perfectly and bloomed lush and full, filling the front yard with color and a sweet scent. Cassie barely even had to water them. Sarah apparently took care of the rest.
Cassie glanced at the clock on her way to the kitchen to do the dishes. Nick should be home in about an hour or so, once the tour group came through and filed out. He was almost out of copies of A Haunted History ; Sophie and Theo’s book couldn’t get finished quickly enough. Cassie couldn’t wait to get a signed copy of her own.
Her mind drifted as she did the dishes, the way it often did. Sudden memories of her old life in Orlando. Happy hours that had become less and less happy, feeling more and more lonely and unfulfilled. Leaving the group chat had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but sometimes it was good to leave behind things that no longer fit. It left room for new friendships to grow, and for the ones that really mattered to bubble up to the surface. Two work friends had already come to visit her, declaring her home a delightfully child-free haven when they needed a break.
Things were so different now. Tomorrow she would kayak to Cemetery Island with Theo and Sophie while Nick worked at the café. Once Nick was off work they’d grab a beer together at The Cold Spot, and then probably wander down to The Haunt to see Vince debut a new acoustic set he’d been working on. Then they’d come home, where Sarah Hawkins kept a careful, ethereal eye on them. She was a perfect roommate, and since Nick could roll with having a ghost for a roommate, he was the perfect boyfriend.
Okay, he was the perfect boyfriend for other reasons too. Many, many other reasons.
Dishes done, Cassie hung her kitchen towel on its hook by the fridge. The last thing she saw as she turned off the light was a new message on the fridge.
thank you
“No,” she said to Sarah. “Thank you .”