Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Grace doesn’t immediately return to the house.
Once she finally walks off the jetty—pausing for a while at the lighthouse, remembering the days when all she longed to do was climb to its top and look out as far as she could see—instead of jumping right back on her bike and pedaling hard beneath the early-afternoon sun, she decides to walk, noting that her foot, irritated from too much activity, has started to ache.
Wheeling the cruiser beside her, Grace meanders south along the boulevard’s narrow sidewalk, feeling more confused and exhausted with each new step.
She stops off at a few familiar spots, not just to reminisce but also to give herself short breaks from the heat.
First is the saltwater-taffy shop, a place Grace hasn’t visited in years.
It still smells like her childhood. Sugar.
Humidity. Artificial fruit flavoring. She gathers pieces from the bins—root beer, orange sherbet, peanut butter swirl—dropping them into a white paper bag before she pays.
Outside, she sits on a sunbaked bench, unwraps a piece of chocolate mint taffy, and takes a chewy bite.
But it’s not the same. It’s too sweet. Too sticky.
The memory of it better than the real thing.
“I like the strawberry ones, Cece,” Birdie used to say, always insisting on stuffing the bag with way too many candies. “They taste terrible—nothing like actual strawberries—but I love them anyway!”
On their last trip, the one they took a few weeks before Grace’s autumn wedding, the summer before The Tides was released, she and 164Birdie stayed up late one night, talking and laughing on the patio and eating taffy until they nearly made themselves sick.
“You know, in another few years, we may need to rent a bigger place,” Birdie said as she unwrapped another piece. “What’s that old saying? First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes . . .”
“A hefty mortgage payment out in the suburbs, probably,” Grace joked, even though she was daydreaming about her and Adam starting a family, too.
“I’m just teasing you, sweetheart.” Birdie smiled, finally pushing the paper bag aside. “You’ll cross that bridge—if that’s what you decide you want to do—whenever you feel ready.”
Grace leaned back in the Adirondack chair, looked up at the clear, star-speckled sky. “So can you believe it? The fact that I’m actually getting married soon?”
“No,” Birdie admitted. “I can’t.” Her voice caught, snagged by her emotion. “My girl,” she said, turning to look at Grace. “All grown up already.”
“Already?” Grace laughed. “I’m thirty-two.”
“I know it,” Birdie said. “But you’re still my Cece.” She reached over and squeezed her daughter’s thigh. “Speaking of which . . .”
“Mom,” Grace droned, already sensing the direction in which their conversation was heading. “Again?” Birdie, in no subtle way, had already broached the topic several times that week. “I think you’re making way too much out of this.”
“Sweetheart, you’re getting married in a few weeks, and you still haven’t told your fiancé that the book you’re preparing to publish next summer is about your first love.”
“That’s because it’s incredibly awkward!
And also, not really a big deal. Sure, there are parallels to what happened between Ray and me, but at the end of the day, it’s fiction.
I made the story up. There’s even one of those little disclaimers on the copyright page—‘This is a work of fiction’—to prove as much. ”
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Birdie’s brows arched upward. “Darling, what have I always told you is the first lesson about literature that I teach my students at the start of every school year?”
Grace slouched in her chair and closed her eyes, her version of a response.
“The best fiction,” Birdie said, “is always built on a foundation of truth.”
The next week, once she was back in the city, Grace—with her mother’s voice pestering her in her mind—finally decided to tell Adam the story. Or at least a watered-down version of it.
They were up on the High Line after dinner one night and had stopped off at an artisanal Popsicle stand for a boozy-infused treat before they trekked to their apartment.
“I need to tell you something,” Grace said between prosecco-flavored licks. They’d been walking in comfortable silence, looking at the stretches of gardens and the pink early-autumn sky, the type they hoped to have the night of their wedding. “It’s about my book.”
“Oh?” Adam looked at her in question, his Popsicle hovering near his mouth.
“Big movie deal in the works?” he joked.
It was no secret that Adam loved The Tides and was rooting for Grace’s success.
He told everyone he encountered about it.
For weeks, he’d kept his advance copy on his nightstand, skimming it in bed, then smiling at her, as if he’d been gifted with an insider’s view of her mind.
“You’re not going to run away with some hotshot producer, right? ”
“Not quite.” Grace gestured to a vacant bench, and they sat. “It’s just . . .” Her heart beat harder. “When I first started to write it—back before we ever met—the original idea for the story was, well, loosely inspired by someone I used to know.”
“Okay,” Adam said, lowering his hand.
“It was sort of based on this guy I dated,” she said and rolled her eyes, like she could convince them both that it was nothing. “Down in Sea Drift.”
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Adam’s head tilted. “So, like, a one-time-summer-hookup sort of thing?”
Grace sighed. “Not entirely.” Her shoulders dropped. “It was a bit more than that.”
For the next half hour, she told him about Ray.
About growing up with him on that strip of beach.
About their ongoing romance that stretched from one summer into the next.
She told him nearly everything, except for details about that final night Ray gave her the ring.
Part of her thought he might laugh and find the whole thing endearing—everyone had experienced young love—or that Adam, being such a mature, levelheaded person, would simply shrug it off.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think you should have told me that the first time I read it?”
“I—I—” Grace stuttered, Adam’s tone—the seriousness of it—throwing her off. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”
“Of course it is,” he said, tossing his melting Popsicle into a trash can beside him. “You wrote a story about the man you loved right before me, and in a few months it’ll be available everywhere for everyone to read, both here and in six other countries.”
“Adam,” she said, “don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
Lines formed around his eyes. “I guess that explains the Cece bit, then, no?”
“What! No. It’s just a name,” Grace said. “I could have called her anything.”
“But you didn’t.”
“It’s fiction, Adam.” Grace felt as if her throat was tightening. “The whole story’s made up.” She licked the edges of her pop to avoid it dripping all over her hand. “And the few parts that aren’t, well, what does it really matter? It’s all in the past.”
“But it’s not, Grace. It’s here. In our present.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m ready to head home. I need to be in the office early tomorrow,” he said, already taking a step away from her.
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Grace stood. When she did, the ground beneath her felt unsteady, like something had shifted, though she blamed it on the alcohol in the ice pop. “Adam?” she said to his back.
He turned, took a breath. “It’s fine, Grace,” he told her. “It’s just a book.”
That night, when Adam thought Grace was asleep, she saw him slide his early copy of the novel into his nightstand drawer. To her knowledge, he never pulled it out again.
Now, back on Sea Drift’s main boulevard, Grace keeps walking. More beachy blocks pass her by—weathered rental homes, decades-old surf shops, souvenir stores selling tchotchkes. It’s all so familiar, like a postcard preserved in time.
A little while later, the bag of taffy rolled up in the bicycle’s basket, the old bookshop with the striped awning appears on her right.
In the front window, a splashy new summer romance is on display, its cover an illustration of two happy people clinking cocktails in the sand.
Grace wonders if either of her books ever sat here—something passersby might’ve stopped to consider, the way she’s considering this one now.
But more, she wonders about the person who wrote this new novel.
If she wrestled with every word, straining to find the story.
Finally, a long while after she left this morning, Grace maneuvers the bike back onto Surf Street.
It’s midday now, the whole world a touch too bright, like it’s trying its best to shine a light on things, even though it isn’t.
She’s so distracted by her thoughts that she almost doesn’t see it at first. Once she does, her steps quicken.
She drops the bike on the curb, not even bothering with the kickstand, then stops.
There, staked into the crushed-seashell lot, it stands.
The sign.
For Sale.
Grace stares at it for at least a minute, hardly able to move.
All the air drains from her, like her body is being deflated.
When she finally springs into action again, she turns, and without even thinking, marches to the end of the block.
A melting pot of mixed-up 168emotions—anger, sadness, uncertainty—bubbles inside her.
A few feet ahead, other renters trickle down the dune, sunburned and sandy.
But Grace isn’t heading to the dune, not waltzing off to pass a casual few hours.
Instead, she stops right before it at the pink house on the right.
“Grace?” Caleb answers the door, surprised and maybe annoyed to see her standing there. “Um, hi.” He looks over his shoulder at something—or perhaps someone—inside. His breezy, at times flirtatious, demeanor is gone. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
Grace felt confident on her way over here, though now Caleb’s tone throws her off. “D-did you tell someone that I was coming here? Back to Sea Drift, I mean. This week.”
“What are you talking about?” Caleb’s brows furrow. “Is something wrong with the house or—”
“Caleb?” a voice—a female one—calls out from inside. The sound of it makes something inside Grace shift, her cells pulsing with regret. “Sweetheart,” the woman continues, “is everything okay?”
A woman—older, closer in age to Birdie than Grace—appears behind him in the entryway. Grace blinks, momentarily caught off guard. It’s not her, obviously. But for a second, something about her hair and breezy dress is enough to make Grace look away.
“Yeah, Mom.” Caleb’s brows settle. “I’ll be back inside in a minute.”
He steps out onto the porch, gently closing the door behind him.
“I-I’m sorry,” Grace says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s fine,” Caleb assures her. “Really.” A hint of his usual brightness sneaks back into his tone, though it sounds less natural this time.
“So what’s going on? Why did you ask if I told someone you’re down here?
” He strains his neck, maybe to see if something is noticeably wrong at his rental property.
“Which—to be clear—I didn’t. I mean, legally all my renters’ agreements are confidential. Not that I’m even sure who I’d tell.”
Of course, he didn’t. Because he’s right.
Who would he tell? What would he even tell them (Hey—I rented a house to someone .
. . because, you 169know, that’s what I do for a living.)?
And also, why would he divulge Grace’s whereabouts?
They don’t know each other. Not really. They’ve had a few conversations.
A casual meal. Maybe a hint of something—flirtation, perhaps, or at least she’d thought.
But now she sees it for what it’s really been.
Pity. Mortification after mortification, stacked on top of each other like blocks.
The tide pool. The seaweed. Even Caleb’s initial call, which she was still second-guessing just a moment earlier (Did he know something?
Did he tell Ray?), was one, too. The fact that Grace had been available to come back here at the last minute.
No weekend plans. No end-of-season getaways already on the calendar.
Just Grace. Alone. Stuck at home, surrounded by boxes of memories, putzing around a house that has become its own form of grief, trying her hardest to draft a story she’ll probably never have the chance to truly understand.
And now this: showing up on her landlord’s porch (because, technically, that’s what he is—all that he is—to her), looking like a sweaty mess, running on sugar and limited sleep and hoping maybe he—a near stranger—can help her make sense of anything.
“I-I’m confused. I thought the house wasn’t going up for sale until the fall,” Grace says now, subtly shifting gears and realizing how foolish she must sound.
What did it matter when it went up? Now?
A few weeks from now? Today? Never? What difference did it really make in her life?
It didn’t. Yet seeing it there made something in her ache.
“Why’d the sign go up today? Are the owners really anxious to get rid of it? ”
Caleb squeezes the back of his neck, tense with something he needs to work out. He looks behind him at the door, then back at Grace. “Give me a half hour. I need to finish up some things with my folks.” His eyes fall in line with hers. “You up for grabbing a midday drink?”
Unlike their first meeting on the beach, when Grace’s initial reaction was to turn down his offer for a beer—old habits, old hopes, still guiding her small choices—this time, the answer comes to her right away.
“Without a doubt,” Grace states, no hesitation in her voice. “I definitely am.”