Page 2 of Tourist Season

But I’m determined not to. This is my safest place.

Stumbling upon Cape Carnage after trying and failing to wander away from my grief was like discovering a magical portal to a land where I could become whoever I wanted to be.

Maybe not a fresh start, but as close to one as I could ever hope to find. It’s my home now. And I’m needed here.

I lean closer to the mirror, closing in on myself until my breath fogs the glass.

I press my bangs back from the fair skin of my forehead.

There’s a thin band of lighter hair before it transitions to brown so dark it’s almost black.

Blond roots. Sometimes, it feels as though my body is fighting who I’ve decided to become.

Chewing my bottom lip, I turn my attention to my phone on the counter, logging into my sock puppet account for the Undiscovered Truths private message board, an amateur online sleuth group I keep occasional watch on.

This particular group was the most active in trying to find me after I first disappeared, and every now and then my name still comes up on their site.

I open the general thread where the primary conversations occur and scroll through recent posts.

There’s chatter about a cold case in Washington State.

Some about a serial killer who was murdered in Louisiana.

A few missing people. But I find nothing specific or concerning in the stream of messages over the recent posts.

Certainly nothing that mentions my fucked-up past. Even stories like mine simply fade away in time.

It’s easier to disappear when you don’t have any family left to keep your memory alive.

With a relieved sigh, I make a note in my phone to pick up more hair dye before I set it down and step into the shower.

It’s just after noon when I leave the cottage on the southern edge of the estate’s extensive grounds.

With Bryce’s mangled bone in my bag, I head toward Lancaster Manor, an imposing stone structure that casts a shadow of generational wealth across Cape Carnage.

Even more intimidating than the house itself is the man who resides there.

My favorite person in the town. My best friend.

I’m one of only two people who can simply walk into his home.

There’s nothing to greet me when I enter the foyer. A little spike of fear hits my veins. There’s usually a constant curtain of sound that seems to warm the austere stone: classical music, or old movies, or Arthur talking to himself in a low rumble. But there’s rarely silence.

“Arthur …?” I call out as I enter the formal living room. There’s no answer. I frown and continue toward the library, where he spends most of his time reading beside the fire, even in the warmer weather. “Arthur … I’m here to make you some lunch …”

I’m just starting past the hallway that leads to the kitchen when Arthur springs from behind a statue with a knife clutched between his teeth, which is quite a feat for an octogenarian with a walker.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Arthur—”

He steadies himself before grasping the handle of the blade to brandish the weapon at me. “Who are you?”

“It’s me. Harper.”

He rolls a step closer with the walker and twists the knife in a threat. “If you’re here to steal from me, I’ll cut you —”

“I’m not here to steal from you. I’m Harper . Your gardener. I live in the cottage.” A fleeting wisp of confusion passes across Arthur’s weathered face at my words. “I’m here to make you lunch. Just like I do every day.”

“Lunch …?”

“How about your favorite sandwich today? Pastrami on rye. Are you hungry?”

Arthur blinks, his thick white brows lifting as the fog seems to fade just enough that he lowers the blade.

A little piece of my heart seems to fall with it.

I reach my hand out and he stares at it as though trying to uncover the secrets beneath the lines that cross my skin.

“Harper,” he finally says as he lays the handle of the knife on my palm.

“Of course. I thought you were a thief.” When I raise a brow in doubt, his eyes narrow.

“Someone is coming in here and stealing from me.”

I try to keep my expression neutral as I take his arm and turn him toward the kitchen. “What makes you think so?”

“My shoes went missing.”

“Someone stole your shoes?”

“Yes.”

“Why …?”

“They’re Stefano Riccis,” he grumbles, as though I should know what that means.

“And someone would want to take them because …?”

“Because they’re Stefano Riccis ,” he says, rolling his eyes as though I’m the biggest pain in the ass to walk the earth. “They’re exquisite.”

“Okay,” I say as we enter the kitchen and I guide him to the breakfast nook.

When he’s settled, I lay my bag down on the marble island before washing my hands.

“So someone stole your exquisite, used, old-man shoes. But on the off chance someone didn’t break in to take your beautiful shoes, I can have a look for them later, just in case you misplaced them. Anything else?”

“My Swarovski Signum sugar bowl.”

I blink at him. “A sugar bowl. Someone stole your sugar bowl .”

“It’s an expensive piece.”

“Are we talking Pauly’s Pawn Shop expensive, or international black market sugar bowl expensive?”

Arthur glares at me, but I know how much he enjoys being needled. It’s the reason we became friends in the first place.

When I came to Carnage four years ago, I didn’t know I was supposed to be intimidated by his curmudgeonly attitude and considerable wealth, and he found that endlessly refreshing. “Pauly wouldn’t know a Wassily from a Modway knockoff, you uncouth wretch.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

“ Chairs , for Christ’s sake, Harper.”

“Not the Wassily chairs,” I say, pressing the back of my hand to my forehead. “I am aghast .”

“I thought you promised me pastrami.”

“Indeed.” I give him a little bow and head to the fridge, opening the stainless-steel door with the intention of finding the pastrami and provolone. But I find more than meat and cheese. I don’t turn around when I say, “That super-special sugar bowl … Is it green?”

“Yes. With a Swarovski crystal on the lid.”

I lift the lid of the bowl that sits eye level on a shelf in the fridge and sigh. “So … like … this one?” I turn to face Arthur with the sugar bowl in hand. The momentary burst of surprise in his eyes quickly dissolves into a glare, as though the bowl itself is at fault.

“I didn’t put that in there,” he declares.

And though I could argue that no one is coming into his home to steal his shoes or place his sugar bowl somewhere he won’t find it, I don’t.

It won’t accomplish anything more than upsetting him, because he simply doesn’t remember.

Just like one day soon, he won’t remember me.

He drags a newspaper close to him, fidgeting with the corner of a page as he watches me for a long moment before finally lowering his gaze.

He never used to do that. Fidget with things.

Stare at me as though he can’t work me out.

Ever since I came to Cape Carnage, he’s been the one person who truly understood me.

But now, it’s as though walls are forming between us, ones we put up to preserve the person he still wants to be.

And maybe that’s the hardest part of watching his slow decline.

I clear my throat and pull my phone from my back pocket, starting a message. “I bet Lukas put your sugar bowl in the fridge by accident. I’ll text him now to let him know.”

I’m throwing you under your grandfather’s judgy bus.

“Yes. Thank you. He mustn’t do that again,” Arthur says with a disgruntled cluck of his tongue. “It must have been Lukas. Tell him he must treat my belongings with more care next time he comes.”

My phone vibrates.

Fucksakes, Harper. One of the stills just exploded. I have literally no idea what the fuck I’m doing. I don’t need to be run over by the judgy bus.

Too late. It’ll make him happy. Under the judgy bus you go. Just lie there and accept your fate.

Fuck you.

“Lukas has been a little distracted lately, I think,” I say, then chew my dark grin into submission as the anticipation of winning a round of our game of sabotage buzzes through my veins.

“You’re right. Lukas is a bit absent-minded these days. Tell him I need him to come clean the gutters. The fresh air will do him some good.”

Judgy Bus says you’re coming to get some fresh air with the gutters.

But I hate heights.

You know, the septic alarm went off the other day. I was going to call someone out to fix it, but I could offer that instead?

Tell him I’ll be over on Wednesday.

I truly hate you.

“Done. Lukas will come by on Wednesday.” I grin as I slide my phone back into my pocket and wash my hands a second time under the weight of Arthur’s sharp, assessing gaze. His grunt of approval quickly follows. “How are things going at the distillery? Has he filled you in?”

If the revitalization of Lancaster Distillery were happening two years ago, Arthur would have given me a running list of everything going well and everything going awry.

But now, he hesitates. He drums crooked fingers on the cherrywood table.

“It’s fine,” he finally says, returning his attention to the newspaper.

And I smile, because even though I know it’s not fine, I don’t want him to stress about something that will only manifest in other ways.

Like sugar bowls in the fridge. Or a phantom shoe thief who stalks through the house as he sleeps.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

I finish making Arthur’s sandwich. He requests some light background music: Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni . Nothing like the tale of a supernatural statue besting an arrogant nobleman to set the tone for your lunch after finding your wayward embellished sugar bowl, I guess.

But who am I to complain? It makes him happy.

And despite the sharp words that often cut their way free of his tongue, he’s a good man …

I think. At the very least, a lonely man.

So, I sit with him as he eats. We talk about the town.

The tourists who are starting to appear.

He reminisces about moments from long ago, ones that are still easier to remember with his Alzheimer’s than the more recent experiences he struggles to recall.

He tells me about the Cape Carnage he used to know, when it was an isolated place.

Before food festivals, and shipwreck tours, and nighttime ghost walks with lanterns and costumes.

Before repainted trim on Victorian houses and karaoke at the Buoy and Beacon Pub.

He talks about the kind of town where grief was not just a legacy, but a presence, as real as the fog that obscures the rocks that rest among the waves, waiting to crush hulls and claim lives.

When Arthur was young, life was never easy in an isolated fishing village like Cape Carnage, which relies on the treacherous waters off northern Maine’s remote coastline for its livelihood.

Death was only a bad storm or a hidden rock or a hard winter away.

It’s not the town I know, though the echo of it still remains in the monuments to lost ships erected at the top of the promontory, facing the sea.

But when he tells me the tales of Cape Carnage, I feel as though I’m the steward of those stories.

Like he wants me to hold on to memories he knows are slipping away.

When Arthur has finished his meal, I give him his pills and wash up before settling him in the library.

Even though my stomach is growling and a caffeine headache is starting to buzz through my brain, I stay with Arthur until he falls asleep in his favorite recliner for his post-lunch nap, a book splayed across his lap.

With a final, bittersweet smile at the old man, I leave the estate and walk into Cape Carnage.

My town.