Page 36 of First Street (Harbor View Cozy Fantasy #1)

Chapter Thirty

Ocean

Meeting Jo, becoming her friend, and then meeting Henry yesterday gave Ocean something she hadn’t realized she even wanted. A sense of purpose.

In Harbor View, she wasn’t just the kid stuck in the middle of her parents’ unraveling marriage, powerless to stop the shouting or the silence. With Jo and Henry, even though they were dead, she felt like she could make a difference.

Her parents’ relationship had always left her feeling helpless, like she was watching a slow-motion train wreck she couldn’t stop.

But here, helping her ghost friends communicate, helping them find each other again across a century, gave her a goal that mattered. A real goal. And that made her happy.

Walking through the neighborhood, Ocean was secretly glad her grandmother’s house was where it was. First Street had a kind of comfortable vibe. Old houses, sure, but the people she passed mostly smiled and said hi, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

It was cool wandering someplace where you didn’t hear constant traffic, where the sea kept flashing between the houses, blue-green and shimmery as glass.

When she slipped out earlier, her mom had still been across the street with Arthur. Most likely, she’d seen Ocean’s door shut and assumed she was still asleep. Shows what she knew. Ocean had been wide awake, hunched over that desk, penning a letter for Jo.

As she walked farther from their house, the homes grew bigger, some of them updated with sleek touches that looked out of place on First Street.

She sporadically passed old men and women being dragged around by tiny dogs that barked like crazy, standing on their hind legs with teeth bared.

Like they thought they were Dobermans instead of the ankle-biters they really were.

The owners weren’t much better. Most just gave Ocean the side-eye, like she was about to mug them before breaking into their houses.

That wasn’t everyone, though. There were some friendly faces, and Ocean stopped to smell roses and tiny white flowers on bushes she never saw in California.

When she reached Fourth Street and the house her mom said had been Jo’s family’s summer place, a couple of workers were climbing into pickup trucks and driving off. They didn’t even glance at her. Lunch break, probably.

A dumpster and a temporary fence blocked the front door.

That hadn’t been there yesterday. So Ocean veered across the yard toward the seawall behind the house.

The grass looked like it hadn’t seen a mower in years, and the whole place felt like a graveyard for construction junk.

Old sinks and bathtubs sat in clusters, surrounded by stacks of wood, snarled wires, bent pipes, even chunks of wall that looked like they’d been ripped out by hand. Total disaster zone.

She was surprised to see that the back of the house was wide open. And the place was huge—two stories, an attic, stretched out so long it felt like a mile. The kind of house where somebody could get murdered at one end and nobody at the other end would ever hear a thing.

It sat right on the water, but even with the view, the place didn’t feel welcoming.

The air coming off the walls was damp and cold, the shadows too deep, too still.

She could see why Jo had preferred the coziness of the First Street house and her best friend Esme, instead of rattling around in this mausoleum.

Crossing a wide stone patio, Ocean stepped through a gaping hole in the wall. The inside wasn’t any better. Silent, hollow, the kind of silence that made her skin prickle. In the center of the house, a staircase rose to the second floor, and she started to climb.

A lot of the walls had been busted open and the doors yanked out, and the place was nothing but a maze of rooms. Jo had said her bedroom faced the water and had a fireplace. Trouble was, seven or eight of them fit that description.

Ocean stepped into the first. “Okay…loose brick on the right side of the fireplace,” she murmured, running her fingers across the cold surface. None of them budged.

She moved to the next room. The fireplaces were back to back, but again, every brick held tight.

By the time she reached the fifth bedroom, she was ready to give up. Then finally one of the bricks shifted under her touch.

“Yes!”

She eased it free, heart thudding. The dark gap beyond looked like it could hide anything. Ocean slid her hand into the opening. “There better not be spiders in there, Jo.”

Her fingers brushed against something soft. A strip of velvet. She tugged gently and pulled out a ribbon tied to a small metal key.

Just like Jo said.