eating alone.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’d like that. But only if you wash your hands.”
A slow smile crossed his face. “I think I can handle that.”
When she turned to head back to the diner, she could barely breathe, and her hands were shaking. She had no idea how she was going to make it through the rest of her shift. Or the whole day tomorrow.
And she needed to come up with some excuse to tell her mom, or anyone in her family for that matter. Luke was hers. Her crush on him was hers. And whatever might happen next was hers, too.
She needed something. Something separate and safe from all the tangled, snarled things in her real life and her family.
As soon as she got back inside, she sneaked into the back and grabbed her jacket, pulling her phone out of the pocket. And she fired off a quick text to Catherine.
More secrets. More little lies.
But if her mom thought she was having dinner with Catherine, it would only be easier for her.
Luke hadn’t looked at her like she was sad. He didn’t treat her like an alien. He wanted to have dinner.
She wasn’t going to worry about anything else. Not when something was finally going right.
13
Surprise inspection. We were warned by the keepers in Yachats they were coming. Rose and Naomi helped me push the laundry into the parlor closet. We locked it and when they went to check the closet, we claimed we’d lost the key some weeks earlier. When the Coast Guard left, we laughed so hard our sides hurt.
—FROM THE DIARY OF JENNY HANSEN, FEBRUARY 20, 1900
RACHEL
“I bet you’re so glad to be back,” Rachel said, stripping the linens off the bed. She looked around carefully to make sure there were no hidden undergarments anywhere.
“Sure,” Anna said cheerfully. “I missed vacuuming up beetles.”
It was a cleaning day, and a bread-baking day, and Rachel and Anna were busily straightening guest rooms.
Rachel had been a widow for a little more than two months. Cleaning felt like a gift next to that reality, as did planning dinners at the lighthouse.
Even ladybugs felt like a decent distraction.
Anna was standing up on a chair, her vacuum pointed at the light fixture as she did her best to deal with the influx of ladybugs.
Rachel remembered being a kid and thinking it was mean to dispatch the ladybugs in such a way, but over the years they’d become the bane of the inn, and while in small numbers they could be somewhat charming, when they got to this point, it wasn’t charming at all.
Any animal in large quantities was unsettling.
A collection of ladybugs all over a guest room wasn’t the best look.
“Well, I missed having you here. This reminds me of when we used to clean the rooms to try and make an extra couple of dollars when we were kids. We were severely underpaid.”
“That’s the point of using family,” Anna said.
“I suppose so.”
Over the past two months she and Anna had begun strengthening their relationship. Their honest conversation that had happened over pastry making weeks ago had set the tone, and things had been easier between them since.
They were sisters. Friction still existed, along with moments of perfect ease. But the balance of good and tough had started to shift.
“I wish that Emma were here,” Rachel said. “I mean, she would still be in school now, even if she was working here. But... I want to spend this time with her. Things are going to change after she graduates. And I’m not ready for any of it.”
“That’s what happens, though,” Anna said. “They grow up. And, hey, at least she’s not obsessed over some boy like the two of us were.”
“I can’t even think about that. Her birthday is coming up. By the time I was her age I was already with Jacob. Having sex with Jacob.”
“Yeah, better not think about that.”
That comment brought Rachel right back to what it had been like to be seventeen. Desperately in love, giddy with the prospect of being naked. Having his hands on her.
That was a bygone era. The kind of thing that only came with youth and innocence in a new relationship. It had faded a long time ago for the two of them. But then... Then they hadn’t been able to have physical intimacy at all. Not in that way. And she’d been fine with it.
There was no point in... There was no point in missing it now.
She had been focused when she’d been