Chapter Twenty-Four
MY SANDALS SCUFF AGAINST THE SHELL-LINED PATH AS MY MIND runs over what I’m going to say. The photograph is still imprinted in my mind. My grandmother, laughing, glowing, her bare shoulders caught in the light. The kind of photograph that’s captured a stolen moment.
I knock. For a minute, I think he won’t answer. Then the door swings open and Graham stands in the middle of the doorframe.
“Lucy,” he says, surprised. “Did you forget something?”
I hold his gaze. “I saw the photo of my grandmother.”
Silence hangs between us. He steps back, a quiet invitation. “Why don’t you come in.”
I follow Graham into the room where my art hung. He gestures for me to have a seat on the sofa and disappears. Time suspends as I wait. When he reappears, he has a stack of photos in his hand.
“She was younger than you must picture her,” he begins, passing me the first photograph. “Not anyone’s grandmother. Not anyone’s wife. Just Margaret. Restless, radiant, impossible to ignore.”
I turn the photo in my hands. She’s caught mid-laugh, holding a giant pineapple on top of her head at a Bahamian fruit stand. My throat tightens.
“I met her the summer before she met your grandfather,” Graham continues. “She was on the island helping a cousin with their children. I was shooting by day, running wild by night. We collided…and the world tipped over.”
The next photo is more candid. She’s sitting in a beach chair reading Pride and Prejudice, knotted hair damp from the sea, Graham’s shadow stretched long across the sand.
Another is more daring: a bathing suit strap sliding down her shoulder, her smile aimed straight at the camera.
Not posed. Intimate in a way that makes me blush to see her like this, not as my grandmother, but as a beautiful young woman.
“But we were young,” Graham says softly. “And when she left that summer, she never came back to me. By the time I saw her again, she was wearing your grandfather’s ring.”
Another photo, her head tipped back in sunlight, eyes closed, ocean spray frozen in the air. She looks so alive I almost expect to hear her laugh.
His gaze drifts to the stack of photos. “These weren’t meant for the world. They were hers and mine. Proof of who we were before life asked us to be anything else.”
He places the last photo in my hands. She’s midair, jumping off a dock into the turquoise water, laughing over her shoulder toward the camera.
“But didn’t you see each other again?” I ask. “This island, it’s so small. You must have crossed paths.”
“Oh sure, plenty. We were friendly, your grandmother, your grandfather, and me. I had great respect for him, your grandfather. And she was obviously madly in love with him.”
Graham studies me for a long moment, then he gestures toward the photographs. “With me, she burned. We were saltwater and fire, but fire can’t sustain itself forever. With your grandfather, she found steadiness.”
I swallow hard, because I know what he’s saying isn’t only about the past. The words cut deep, an inheritance as clear as the photographs. For the first time, I see Margaret not only as my grandmother, but as a woman with her own loves, her own choices.
I leave Graham’s with more than answers. I leave with artifacts, and a clearer lens on my own heart.
The sun casts long shadows that stretch across the pink sand as Noah and I walk. We’re both quiet, the kind of silence that once felt electric. Now it feels like waiting.
I clear my throat. “I’ve been trying to find the right words.”
Noah doesn’t press, just patiently watches the tide.
“I care about you,” I say finally. “And I’m grateful for this summer, for you. You made it lighter than I thought it could be, when I wasn’t sure how to face this island without my grandmother. But,” I exhale, “I can’t keep pretending I don’t know who my heart belongs to.”
His nod is slow and steady.
I swallow. “I didn’t think it was true. I wanted to see if this could be something real.”
“It was,” he says, keeping his eyes trained on the shoreline. “But sometimes we’re not the whole song. Sometimes we’re just the bridge.”
I nudge him with my elbow, a smile tugging despite the ache. “You weren’t just the in-between, Noah.”
“I know,” he says. “You were good for me, too, Lucy.”
The tide inches higher, foam wetting our toes.
“I want you to find everything you’re looking for,” I tell him. “Not just with the album. With your life.”
A smile pulls at his mouth. “We’ll see about everything. As for the album…” He hesitates, then finally looks at me. “You, this island, pulled something out of me this summer. The kind of thing I didn’t even realize I was holding back.”
I feel the ripple of his words, the flattery, the ache. To have been good for him. To have been part of his music. But I know what I need isn’t just to be someone’s spark. I want to be the place someone stays. The place they return to.
I step closer, wrapping my arms around him. He exhales, folding me in. His arms tighten once then loosen just as quickly. When we step back, the sky has gone the pale, iridescent color of the inside of a shell.
By the time I get home, Dawn, Dinah, and Sloane are waiting for me on the back porch, claiming chairs and cushions like it’s their living room.
Dawn pops open a fan she found somewhere in my house. “Well? What have you gathered us for? You look like you have big news.”
I laugh, tucking my legs beneath me. “Depends on your definition of big. I broke things off with Noah.”
Dinah’s eyes widen, dramatic as always. “Just like that. You don’t bury the lede, Luce.”
Sloane leans back, unsurprised. “How’d he take it?”
“Pretty well. I knew I couldn’t give him more than this summer, and it didn’t feel fair to drag it out.”
Sloane nods. “Better to end it before it turned messy.”
“Definitely trying to avoid messy,” I murmur.
Dawn crosses her legs, gaze narrowing just enough to make me squirm. “So…does Jack know?”
The question hangs there as I shake my head, pulling my hair into my elastic. “Not yet. And even when he does know… what will it mean? If Jack and I try again…and it falls apart again, I don’t know if I’ll be able to put myself back together.”
The porch goes quiet for a breath, cicadas buzzing in the dark.
Dawn leans forward. “Lucy, we all know you are it for Jack. And he’s spent all summer showing you that he’s changed. That he’s ready.”
Dinah sits up, eyes glittering. “I think it’s time you find out if this is it. And you never have to worry about putting yourself back together. You have us for that.”
It hits me all at once, how rare it is to have people who pull you forward instead of holding you back.
How lucky I am that mine see me clearer than I sometimes see myself.
It steadies me in a way nothing else can.
My heart stops skittering long enough for the truth to land.
I want this. I want him. And I’m finally brave enough to say it, at least to myself.
I know what I need to do.