Page 33 of First Street (Harbor View Cozy Fantasy #1)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Skye

My phone sat face-down on the bedside table, ringer off. I still couldn’t bring myself to tuck it away in a drawer the way normal people did.

Years of habit, I guess. Years of being the one on the far side of the country from Clare, of being the mother of a teenager who might need me at midnight, of living with Rhys’s life on ever-changing audition schedules and late-night ‘networking’.

I’d trained myself to always be reachable, as if the world might collapse if I didn’t.

It was ridiculous, maybe, but silence never lasted long in my life, and the phone had become proof that I could be summoned at any time.

Proof that I hadn’t stopped being useful.

When the text lit up the screen early Saturday morning, for once it wasn’t from anyone I owed an immediate response. Still, the name jolted me fully awake. The strange woman I’d caught prowling through the barn as if she had a right to be in there.

Elara Vance here...

She was an early riser.

I should’ve flipped the phone face down again, buried my head in the pillow, pretended I never saw it. That would have been the sensible thing. But the message stretched on, and it occurred to me that she must have written it out in advance before pasting it into the text.

Words and lines strung together like bait on a hook. Too long to ignore, too pointed not to wonder about. Against my better judgment, curiosity slipped in and made itself at home.

The message tumbled out like a confession. Apology stacked on apology, sorry piled on sorry until the words blurred together. She’d gotten my number from the real estate agent, she explained, just so she could say it all directly. No hidden agenda, at least not on the surface.

The editor in me couldn’t help counting. How many times had she apologized in this one text? I read to the end, braced for the inevitable ask, the favor that usually came wrapped in contrition. But it never arrived. Just a single, almost disarming request—forgiveness for her intrusion.

I stared at the screen and read it again. Her words prodded me for my shortness with her, and my thoughts wandered to the barn. All that furniture still sitting there. I hadn’t had the time to deal with any of it.

“What could it hurt?” I whispered to the empty room. My fingers moved almost on their own as I typed out a reply.

If you want to come by this afternoon, we can walk through the barn together. You can tell me which piece you’d like to buy.

The reply pinged back almost immediately.

That’s wonderful! What time? I’m so, so appreciative of your understanding. Thank you so very much!!

I let the phone rest in my hand, the corners of my mouth turning up in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

She made it sound bigger than it was. Understanding .

As if I’d offered her some great kindness instead of just surrendering to the inevitable.

The truth was, I was going to sell most of that furniture anyway.

It didn’t matter who bought it. I didn’t care who carried it off, so long as it was gone.

Noon?

Perfect. Again, my apologies for the other day. And thank you so much.

I set the phone back on the nightstand and eased myself up against the pillows, pulling the laptop onto my lap.

The glow of the screen washed over me. Last night, when sleep wouldn’t come, I’d poured the hours into writing Clare’s obituary.

The words still sat there, waiting, like a draft of grief I wasn’t ready to publish.

Reading it again now, I realized what I’d written was too serious.

Too polite. It didn’t sound like Clare. There was no mention of the way she’d lived here forever.

Or at least long enough to convince everyone else they were just renting space in her town.

No hint of how she could start trouble in a room without even raising her voice, or how her unvarnished barbs had a way of landing exactly where they hurt.

Clare didn’t collect friends so much as she collected grudges, and she seemed perfectly fine with the exchange.

Without that caustic edge, the obituary felt like it belonged to someone else.

I owed it to my mother to show her spirit, her sass, the woman she was proud to be.

Not some sanctified version of her. By the time I made the changes and read it over, I caught myself smiling.

This felt right. This was Clare. Brassiness, cutting snark, sharp edges, warts, and all. She’d be proud of this version.

I emailed the obituary to the funeral home.

Then, before I could talk myself out of it, I typed a quick search: Julia Reed . The words of her obituary caused my eyes to blur a bit. Important dates, personal details, polite accolades, a life summed up in six hundred words.

Caleb’s wife had succumbed to breast cancer. And instead of flowers, donations were asked to be sent to a patient advocacy organization, METAvivor. Julia was beautiful. Young. A lawyer.

Rechecking dates, it was clear that she and Caleb must have married right after law school, waiting a few years before the twins came along. By then, I was already married to Rhys, neck deep in my California life. I was busy convincing myself that distance was freedom, not exile.

Arthur’s rundown from last night filled in some of the empty spaces. Caleb Reed wasn’t just the boy I used to know. He was currently Harbor View’s First Selectman. Pictures of him online showed him everywhere in local politics, shaking hands, championing causes, being…well, useful.

I tried to square those images with the obit photo of Julia, smiling at a world that hadn’t kept its promises. A wife lost, a town gained. Harbor View did love its bargains.

And apparently, the restaurant and bar where Ocean and I spotted him was his too, co-owned with a woman named Lena Morales.

The award-winning chef had collected a trail of rave reviews from Boston to New York before deciding Harbor View was worth her time.

Arthur raved about the place, claimed it was a regular haunt of his.

I tried to picture Caleb behind a bar, or shaking hands at ribbon cuttings, making speeches at the town hall, and I couldn’t quite reconcile all that with the shy and quiet teenager I remembered.

Shutting the laptop, I pushed it aside. I had no right to even make the comparison. The life we’d lived eons ago was a world apart from the people we’d become.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, my thoughts drifted to Ocean.

My daughter had seen Jo, spoken to her, and she’d managed to do the same with Henry.

That was a feat Clare and her ancestors hadn’t pulled off in a hundred years.

Of course, Ocean had been furious with me.

The moment I showed up at the bookstore, Henry had vanished.

I don’t know why. He had no problem talking to Arthur while I was present. Ghosts could be a mystery.

Anyway, she’d seen him. Spoken to him. That meant she could again. I was sure of it. She even told me she’d carried a letter from Jo to Henry, and in return, he’d asked her to deliver one back.

It was heartbreakingly romantic. For all the years I lived in this house, knowing Henry was across the street, it had never occurred to me to try to connect them. I simply accepted what Clare and Arthur told me as a fact of life. Or rather, a fact of after life.

In any event, I never questioned it. But not Ocean. She was her own person. She had her own way of doing things. And she always questioned so-called rules.

My phone buzzed. The bedside clock glowed 8:30. Turning my phone over, I read Arthur’s text.

Are you up?

Of course.

Can you come over?

Shower first?

Hurry. She’s here.