The house was cold. The pilot light on the heater always took a little coaxing after a long winter, so I knelt on the braided rug in the living room, a long wooden match in my hand, listening to the rhythmic roar of the surf outside.
Just as the blue flame caught and the metal casing began to ping with heat, a sharp, insistent pounding echoed from the front porch.
It wasn’t a visitor’s knock. It was the frantic, aggressive rapping of someone accustomed to doors opening immediately.
I stood up slowly, brushing the dust from my jeans, and walked down the short hallway.
Through the frosted glass panel of the front door, I could see the silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered man standing under the small wooden overhang.
It wasn’t Ethan.
I unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.
Standing on the porch was a man in his late sixties wearing a faded canvas jacket, a gray beard trimmed close to his jaw, and wind-whipped silver hair that caught the gray light of the afternoon. He was holding a yellow plastic toolbox in one hand and a roll of heavy-duty weather stripping in the other.
For a second, my heart stopped, because for a terrifying, impossible heartbeat, the slope of his shoulders looked so much like David from behind that the room tilted.
Then he turned his head, and the illusion shattered.
These eyes were a startling, clear green, not David’s warm brown.
“Clara?” the man asked, his voice gravelly and deep, carrying the distinct cadence of someone who had lived by the water his entire life. “Good Lord, it is you. I saw your car pull into the drive and I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
I stared at him, trying to anchor my wandering thoughts. “I’m sorry… do I know you?”
A slow, wry smile touched the corners of his mouth, crinkling the skin around his eyes.
“I guess time really does fly when you’re busy growing old,” he said, shifting the toolbox to his other hand. “It’s Samuel. Samuel Vance. Down the road past the marina? My dad and David used to borrow each other’s post hole diggers back when we were putting up the bulkhead in ninety-eight.”
Memory flickered, sharp and bright through the fog of my afternoon.
“Samuel,” I breathed, the name unlocking a long-dormant compartment of my brain. “Goodness gracious. The last time I saw you, you were heading off to college in Wilmington with an old Ford truck that sounded like a washing machine full of gravel.”
“That truck finally gave up the ghost outside of Southport,” Samuel laughed, a rich, genuine sound that seemed to chase away some of the damp chill lingering in the hallway. “And I spent the next twenty-five years fixing other people’s problems instead of my own. I heard about David, Clara. Down at the hardware store when it happened. I was… I was truly sorry. He was one of the good ones. Built half the foundations on this island with his own two hands and never charged an elderly widow a dime over cost.”
“Thank you, Samuel,” I whispered, feeling a sudden, unexpected prickle of heat behind my eyelids. “He was a good man.”
Samuel’s eyes dropped past my shoulder, taking in the empty living room, the packed bags near the stairs, and the faint smell of gas from the newly lit heater.
“You’re down here alone?” he asked, his tone shifting from casual neighborly chat to something more observant. “Weather’s supposed to turn nasty tonight. Gale warnings coming off the cape.”
“I needed some quiet,” I said honestly. “And… well, there were some family complications. I decided I wanted to be here rather than sitting in my kitchen in Raleigh listening to the phone ring.”
Samuel didn’t pry. That was the wonderful thing about people who grew up on the coast—they understood the sacred right of silence.
Instead, he held up the roll of weather stripping and the yellow box.
“Well, seeing as I was heading over to check on the old Miller place down the lane, I noticed your front door was rattling like an old tin can in this wind. Thought I’d drop by and see if the widow Whitaker needed a hand before the storm hits. Unless you’re expecting company?”
“No,” I said, a slight, wicked little smile touching my lips for the first time in days. “No company is coming. And the door could definitely use some help. The salt air has warped the frame.”
Samuel nodded, stepping up onto the porch without waiting for an invitation, just like the old neighbors used to do.
“Get your jacket, Clara,” he said over his shoulder as he set his toolbox down on the porch bench. “I’m going to fix that latch, and then you’re going to tell me if that kettle of yours still works, because I smell rain coming in over the dunes, and I haven’t had a decent cup of coffee since breakfast.”
As I turned back toward the kitchen to fetch two mugs, the wind rattled the weathered gray walls of the cottage, but for the first time since David died, the house didn’t feel empty.
It felt like mine.
