Chapter 2
TWO
SELENE
The morning air was thick with lake humidity, a soft heat that clung to my skin and made the porch boards sweat beneath my bare feet and turned every tiny task into an annoyance.
I sat on the back step with my second cup of coffee, watching a chipmunk dart beneath the hedge.
The neighborhood cat, unimpressed, watched with matching energy from across the lawn.
For a moment it was peaceful, or as close to peaceful as life got lately.
I’d been operating under the illusion that Amanda would return from her spontaneous “mental health week” and reclaim her post as the world’s most inconsistent nanny.
Spoiler alert: That illusion had popped like a balloon in a porcupine pit.
I took another sip. The coffee had already cooled, the bitterness curling across my tongue as I scrolled through my inbox on my phone. Restoration quotes. Overdue invoices. A polite-but-firm reminder that the maritime museum’s registry was still missing twenty-seven scans.
I could do this.
I just needed a little grace. A little time. Maybe a miracle.
That was when I heard it—the low rumble of a truck engine, followed by the distinct clatter of something heavy being hauled up a porch.
I glanced over.
And then immediately wished I hadn’t.
With his back to me, he was shirtless.
Of course he was shirtless.
Standing near the back alleyway of the empty duplex unit next to mine—now apparently not so empty—was a man who looked like he’d stepped out of a fitness influencer’s thirst trap.
He had a box tucked under one arm; a backward cap holding in messy, sun-streaked hair; and the kind of tattooed forearms that made rational thought difficult.
Then he turned, and my stomach dropped. My mouth went dry. And yet my palms . . . those suddenly felt sweaty. His brown hair was a little too long as it started to curl at the ends. His jaw was sharp and precise. Even at a distance I could see his eyes were a haunting seafoam green.
Please no.
“Hey, you’ve finally got a new neighbor.” My sister Elodie’s voice floated behind me before she came into view, a coffee cup in one hand, sunglasses perched on top of her wild dark curls like she belonged in a vacation ad.
She was effortlessly pretty in a sun-warmed, farmgirl kind of way—green eyes bright, skin glowing from long afternoons spent prepping the land for the Star Harbor Family Farm project she’d come back to build.
I didn’t answer, because I couldn’t.
I was actively choking.
Elodie blinked at me. “Are you okay?”
I coughed, hard. Coffee sprayed down the front of my T-shirt, and I clutched my chest like the caffeine itself had betrayed me.
Elodie, ever helpful, handed me a paper towel from her tote bag.
“Selene,” she said, low and amused. “Do you always wheeze like that when a hot guy lifts heavy things? Who is that?” She tried peering around the bushes and fence that separated the lawn, without luck.
I cleared my throat and shook my head. “No one.”
“No one? Hmm . . .” She tilted her head, clearly not buying it. “Because ‘no one’ has the arms of a demigod and is currently lifting a box with one hand like it’s a tray of hors d’oeuvres.”
Oh god, yes, I remember those arms.
One time. One wildly out-of-character, toe-curling, tree-bark-in-my-hair mistake.
Elodie grinned, her eyes lighting with the kind of trouble I absolutely didn’t have time for. “It might be hard living next to a walking fitness model with great biceps. Should I be worried about you?”
“Please,” I deadpanned. “My libido is in a coma and plans to remain there.”
But inside, panic stirred. My entire body was trying to decide between melting into the earth and launching into orbit. The last time I saw that man, I was half drunk on blueberry wine at a jazz bar that served Brie on toast points and advertised itself as funky and intimate.
Just over a month ago I had needed a night out. Just one night of feeling wanted, feeling like someone else. I’d known he was younger than me, but I hadn’t cared. He had been leaning against the bar, all crooked grins and confidence, and I had convinced myself a little flirting would be harmless.
He’d offered to walk me to my car. I’d said yes. Then we’d ended up walking together down a path in the woods at twilight. Before I knew it, bark was digging into my spine, his wide palm pressed flat against my ribs, and we were panting in the humidity.
We never exchanged names. That had been the deal.
Until now.
Now he was moving in next door.
“Oh, shit!” Elodie raised a hand and gave him a friendly wave and huge grin. “Is that Austin?” she said, half to herself with a hearty laugh, and looked at me again. “It’s Brody’s brother. What are the odds?” The back of her hand slapped against my rigid shoulder.
He looked across the lawn and saw us. Austin grinned and waved back.
I took another sip of my tepid coffee and prayed the mug would hide the horror on my face.
By midafternoon, the panic had settled into something closer to despair.
The nanny agencies had nothing—too short notice, too few applicants, not enough incentive to lure someone into part-time, early-morning / early-evening care in a town where most college students had already moved on to fall internships.
I’d spent the last hour bribing Winnie with Goldfish crackers and an episode of her favorite ghost-hunting show while I tried to scan a fragile nineteenth-century ledger without crying on it.
Kit, of course, had breezed in and out like some kind of helpful-but-sassy hurricane, offering to manifest childcare solutions and then promptly disappearing with a half-eaten muffin in her bag.
At six thirty, I pulled on clean clothes and slipped into a pair of sandals.
Wednesday nights were technically Winnie’s time with her dad, Brian.
He taught evening classes at the university, so drop-offs were often last minute and tended to be inconsistent.
Still, she’d gone with him tonight, which meant I had a rare window of quiet.
The Star Harbor Historical Society, informally known as the Keepers, met every week, and I hadn’t missed a meeting yet—not since I’d moved back to Star Harbor. It was part civic duty, part tradition, and part much-needed distraction.
Tonight we gathered in my property manager Nancy Strickland’s hydrangea-heavy backyard. It was a garden that looked like it came with a staff. The wine was cheap but cold, the air smelled like fresh-cut grass, and conversation buzzed around me like bees to sugar.
The topic, of course, was the Lady of the Dunes.
“I’m telling you,” one of the older Keepers said, her glass waving dramatically, “Elodie may be onto something. Those letters are worth looking into.”
Over the summer my sister Elodie had uncovered a long-forgotten trunk containing old letters while renovating the Stafford Farm. She was convinced that there was more to our local legend than we knew. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on anything she’d found.
“You think the Lady left on purpose?” someone asked.
Star Harbor’s entire identity was wrapped up in the story of the Lady of the Dunes.
A ghostly woman in a flowing white dress, seen walking barefoot through the coastal dunes with a bouquet of wildflowers clutched in her hands.
Some said she was searching for the lover she lost to a stormy shipwreck in the late eighteen hundreds.
Others believed she was seeking revenge.
The legend had been passed down for generations, warping with every telling until no one really knew who she was or what she wanted—only that she haunted this place like a memory refusing to fade.
People swore they’d seen her at twilight, her dress glowing, her eyes hollow.
Whether they believed it or not, every single person in Star Harbor knew her story. Now some of us—against our better judgment—had started to wonder if it was entirely true.
“I think she had a reason to disappear.” Elodie leaned forward, bouncing her eyebrows. “Doesn’t every woman at some point or another?”
Laughter circled the group, and I offered a tight smile, my attention drifting toward the flicker of fairy lights strung along the fence line as my thoughts wandered.
Austin’s arms. His smirk. That voice, low and amused, asking whether I’d ever been kissed under Michigan starlight.
I needed to focus.
My attention snapped back as the women discussed the upcoming fall events. I took notes, offered to follow up on a boardinghouse ledger someone had mentioned. When I slipped out an hour later, I felt no closer to peace than when I’d arrived.
Monday unraveled fast.
Over the weekend, Winnie had been confirmed for before- and after-school care, and I was clinging to that precious gift like a life raft. I dropped her off with a rushed hug and a banana she refused to eat, then raced home to prepare for a client call and catch up on the maritime registry files.
By 3:19 my phone rang.
“Ms. Darling?” The voice on the other end belonged to the aftercare program coordinator. My stomach dropped. “I wanted to inform you that we had a small incident with Winnie after school today.”
My teeth clenched. “What kind of incident? Is she okay?”
A pause. “Yes, she’s fine. But she told the other children that ghosts live in the attic of the school and that if they misbehave, the Lady of the Dunes will eat their toes.”
I closed my eyes. “Oh no.”
The woman tsked. “Two of the kindergartners cried so hard they had to be picked up early.”
Of course they did.
“Our program may not be the best fit for a child with such . . .” The woman searched for words. “Spirit.”
Nerves wobbled my voice. “No, your program is perfect for her. I promise this is just a blip. I’ll talk to her.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman continued, “we can’t have other children afraid while they’re here. We’re going to have to remove her from the program, at least temporarily. You understand.”
My carefully color-coded to-do list spontaneously combusted. I offered a flurry of apologies, assured them I would speak with her, and ended the call with the brittle calm of a woman at the end of her fraying rope.
By evening I was sitting on the back steps of the carriage house with my laptop balanced on my knees and a legal pad limp in my lap.
All the ice in my lemonade had melted, leaving behind a watery, disappointing refreshment.
The only thing I’d managed to accomplish was burning a grilled cheese and snapping at the antique brush I’d dropped down a vent.
My shoulders ached. My head pulsed. Everything felt too loud. The cicadas. The deadlines. My own thoughts.
Across the fence line, I heard him.
Austin.
He was laughing and talking to someone as they unloaded a secondhand sofa from a trailer. His voice was low, steady, easy.
Of course it was.
The last thing I needed was a reminder of how easy things came to people like him.
Young. Untethered. Uncomplicated.
At thirty-six, I didn’t need charm or tattoos or one more reckless mistake. I needed someone I could trust with the most important thing in my life.
I refreshed the nanny job board.
Still nothing.