Page 1 of Light of Day (Sea Smoke Island #1)

The strange little girl tugged at Heather’s hand.

She was saying something urgent and fearful, but her words couldn’t pass through the fog between them.

In the dream, somehow Heather knew that, although she didn’t know much else.

Like…why were people shouting outside the little house they were in?

And why…why was the house moving ? It jerked forward—the entire house—and she staggered, but the little girl just held her hand tighter.

She didn’t want to go outside. A howling wind was battering the walls and making the windowpanes shudder.

It was dark out there, too, the intense dark of a stormy, new-moon night.

Through the window, she saw the light of a hurricane lantern swinging in someone’s hand.

The sight struck fear in her heart. Whoever was coming, it didn’t mean anything good.

The girl yanked at her hand again. Heather focused on her, trying to make sense of what she was wearing.

Her long-sleeved blue cotton dress closed tightly at the neck and fell past her knees.

Over it she wore a pinafore, which had been mended in several places with tidy patches.

She was barefoot, but she held a pair of worn leather, lace-up boots in her other hand, as if she was delaying putting them on as long as possible.

The strange girl said something else, but still her words couldn’t penetrate the swirling fog between them.

“Who are you?” Heather called out. “What’s your name?”

But the girl turned her back to Heather and ran for the door, which tilted wildly to one side as the house jerked again. What was happening to this house?

“Telephone,” someone yelled from outside.

Telephone? What did that mean?

Heather glanced around the small house, which was furnished with simple wooden furniture, so rough it looked homemade.

There was no telephone, no cell phone, no electric appliances of any kind, not even a refrigerator.

The house itself was sturdy enough, even though its boards creaked as it moved forward.

It looked lived-in and loved, with pretty trim around the front door, which was now being pushed open by the girl.

She jumped into someone’s arms, a man wearing a conductor’s cap and suspenders. The two of them disappeared into the stormy darkness.

“Where are you going?” Heather yelled after them. “What’s happening?”

She ran to the door, which was about to swing shut.

Pushing it open, she peered outside into the chaotic darkness.

Was that…a beach? It was so hard to see in this darkness, but now more people with hurricane lanterns were appearing.

One of them dashed past her and in the brief illumination she saw a beach made of piles and piles of tiny shells.

She knew that beach. She recognized it. But she didn’t have time to think more about it because this house was heading right across the beach toward the ocean lapping at the sandy edge.

“Stop!” she yelled as she clutched at the doorjamb. “Make it stop!”

“Telephone!” someone yelled again.

Why was that the only word she could understand? “I don’t know what you mean!” She yelled back. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?”

No answer came as the house reached the ocean and a wave of icy water splashed across the threshold and onto her feet.

Heather McPhee woke up in a cold sweat, shudders traveling through her entire body. That same freaking dream. Whenever she was stressed out, that dream came back, and whenever it did, it could take her hours to shake it off.

She’d even spoken to a therapist about it.

“It’s so vivid it feels like a horror movie, but I don’t even watch those movies. I googled it and didn’t find anything with houses walking into the ocean. And I have no idea who that little girl is. I don’t recognize her.”

Her therapist had suggested the little girl was her, and the ocean was emotion, and maybe she was afraid for her childhood self being drowned in emotion, and that all made a certain amount of sense—except that Heather didn’t believe the girl was her.

She didn’t look anything like her, for one thing.

The little girl in the dream had olive skin and curly hair bound into two braids.

Heather had been a freckle-faced tomboy with a gap between her teeth.

“Do you think the dream is connected to your fear of swimming?”

“Maybe. I always wake up as soon as the water touches my feet. But what about the telephone? That’s always the only word I can understand in the dream.”

“Well, let’s talk about it,” her very patient therapist had said. “What do telephones represent to you?”

“I don’t know. Communication? Maybe stress?”

“Okay. That’s progress. What sort of stress are you experiencing at the moment?”

Heather couldn’t stop laughing at that question, and they’d had to end the session only partway through her lengthy list of things causing her stress.

Speaking of stress—and telephones—Heather reached for the cellphone charging on her nightstand.

It was always the first thing she did the instant she woke up, and yes, she realized that was stressful in and of itself.

But she didn’t have a choice. As a coordinating producer of the cable news show Boiling Point , she was the first point of contact for any kind of crisis.

She already had over twenty texts to scroll through, even though it was barely six in the morning. A guest for today’s segment on immigration had canceled. Heather was prepared for that—she located her file of backup guests and texted it to the booker.

LMK the second someone says yes

Isn’t it too early to text?

Yes, wait until 7

Her boss had texted too. Meeting at nine. Mandatory.

Crap, that couldn’t be good. More budget cuts?

Heather sighed as she swung her legs over the edge of her bed.

So much for a raise, or a real vacation.

At this rate, the only time off she could afford would be spent visiting her mother on Sea Smoke Island, and the good Lord knew that was no vacation.

No texts from Tim. Fuck. Might as well block him. At least that way she could cling to the fantasy that he wanted her back and was frantically trying to get in touch with her.

Her friend Gabby had texted too, several times. She thumbed through those texts quickly.

Still on Sea Smoke. Crazy AF. You coming?

Gabby had been on Sea Smoke Island, where Heather had grown up, for a couple of weeks now. She’d wanted Heather to come with her—some mysterious lead she was following—but Heather hadn’t been able to swing it.

Correction. She hadn’t wanted to. Going back to Sea Smoke was an emotional minefield for her. She loved the island—the wind, the foghorns, the wild roses—and yet as soon as she stepped onto the weathered planks of that dock, she was a Messy McPhee again.

As she brushed her teeth, blinking blearily at her reflection in the bathroom mirror—hazel eyes slightly bloodshot, light brown hair, a mess—her phone rang. Gabby.

Brushing teeth , she texted.

Don’t care. Pick up.

“Dude,” Heather said as she put her phone on speaker. She spat into the bathroom sink. “Boundaries?”

“Sorry, but we’re past that right now. You have got to get out here. There’s some shady shit going on.”

“I mean, it’s Sea Smoke Island. There’s always something shady happening. Why do you think I left? You even said it made your skin crawl.”

Gabby had gone with Heather on her last visit to Sea Smoke, in March. As soon as they’d stepped off the ferry, she’d looked around uncomfortably. “Where are all the Black people?” she’d whispered. “Am I seriously the only one?”

“That was different,” Gabby said now. “Or maybe not. This story…listen, I can’t talk about it over the phone. How soon can you get here?”

“Gabby!” Heather spluttered through a mouthful of toothpaste foam. “I can’t just leave, I have a job.”

“Remember when you wanted to be a journalist? This is our chance to break through with the podcast. It ought to be you on this story, it’s your island.

Everyone’s giving me those little side-eyes all the time.

Just…trust me, okay? You don’t want to miss this.

Hang on.” Something distracted her for a moment, giving Heather a chance to swish the toothpaste out of her mouth.

She and Gabby had become friends while completing the journalism program at Boston University, and had both pursued careers that couldn’t quite be called “journalism.” Gabby ran a celebrity gossip blog, while Heather worked on a show that specialized in finding the most hot-button issues of the day and booking people to yell at each other about them.

They both fantasized about doing in-depth reporting, but those jobs were in short supply.

That was why they’d recently started a podcast together, which they were calling Dirty Rotten Bastards. The idea was to expose misdeeds of all sorts—lies, misinformation, corruption. Ambitious? Yes. Doable? Maybe. So far, Gabby had been doing most of the work.

“Sorry, I’m back,” said Gabby, sounding a little out of breath. “This is big, Heather. Really big. I need you out here.”

She rinsed out her mouth and set her toothbrush back in its holder. “You mean there’s a ‘dirty rotten bastard’ on Sea Smoke? What a shocker.”

“No jokes. Just…call in sick, Heather. Whatever it takes. Text me when you’re on the ferry and I’ll meet you at the dock. See you soon.”

“But—”

Too late. The call ended.

As Heather rushed around her studio apartment getting ready for work, she considered what it would take for her to drive to Maine right now.

It was Friday, so she could theoretically go up for the weekend.

Obviously she would keep her phone on. If any crises arose during that time, she could handle them remotely.

Since she and Tim had broken up two weeks ago, her weekends loomed empty and lonely before her.

To fill the void, she planned to have Sunday brunch with a couple of friends from college, but that was easily canceled.

It was just a stopgap, a way to feel like she still had some kind of social life after the breakup.

Then she remembered that she couldn’t possibly go anywhere this weekend. The show’s budget proposal was due next week, and Mindy, her boss, had tasked her with putting the first draft together. She wanted it by Monday so she could make adjustments before the Wednesday deadline.

Sorry , Heather texted Gabby.

Oddly, she got no response. Gabby was always on her phone. Maybe she was too pissed off to answer.

Since Heather hated driving in Boston, she usually took public transportation to work—it was only four stops on the Red Line.

As always, while the train jerked and screeched along its tracks, she scanned through today’s Boston Globe —the physical version.

She loved thinking about how the page had been laid out, the decisions that had gone into the headlines and subheads.

Every time a job opened up at the newspaper, she applied—along with hundreds of other people, no doubt.

So far, she’d never even been called in for an interview.

How was she supposed to compete against all the brilliant Ivy League graduates out there?

She was just a kid from Maine, the first in her family to go to college, the first to leave Sea Smoke Island.

In the station, a man slouched against the tiled wall, a cardboard sign propped against his knees.

Homeless. Please and Thank You , it said.

Appreciating his politeness, Heather dug in her pocket for cash, which she basically carried for this purpose only.

She dropped a five into his nearly empty coffee can and smiled at him.

Sure, he’d probably use it for liquor. But the man could have been her father.

Literally.

She hadn’t seen her father in so long she probably wouldn’t recognize him.

He too would probably spend all his money on alcohol.

Her friends teased her about it, but she was incapable of ignoring anyone on the street begging for money.

Her heart always overruled her head. It could be my dad .

The one time she’d walked on by, it had haunted her so much that she’d run out of a meeting to correct her error.

By the time Heather reached the downtown high-rise where Boiling Point was produced, Gabby still hadn’t answered her last text. This was a serious cold shoulder.

Okay, I’ll think about it. Sheesh, she texted.

Gabby didn’t answer.

Her boss waved at her from the door of the conference room. Beyond its glass walls, the entire team had gathered around a platter of pastries, like gazelles at an oasis in the desert.

Pastries. Never a good sign. Mindy ordered fruit plates and brownies for celebrations, bagels for regular morning meetings, and pastries for delivering bad news. The budget situation must be even more dire than she’d feared.

She checked her phone one last time before she slipped into the conference room. Still no response from Gabby.

Maybe she’d have to go to Sea Smoke Island just to find out why Gabby wanted her there so badly.