Kiss River. Diane Chamberlain

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      “Have you talked to Walter Liscott or Brian Cass?”

      “Not yet,” she said. “Alec said they were very old, though, and—”

      “They’re getting up there in years, but they’re not dead,” Nola said with a laugh. “And age has its benefits. They have a lifetime’s worth of contacts.”

      Gina nodded. “I’ll talk to them,” she said without much hope. “And if you change your mind, you know where I am.”

      There was a new rattling coming from the underbelly of her car as she drove back to Kiss River. The rutted lane to the keeper’s house had probably shaken something loose. Between that and the broken air conditioner, she wondered if the car would ever be able to take her back to Washington.

      She parked in the sand-covered parking lot near the keeper’s house, then opened the car door but didn’t move from her seat, not quite sure what to do next. She had the house to herself this evening. Lacey and Clay and even Sasha were at Alec O’Neill’s tonight, celebrating Lacey’s birthday. She had not been invited, and certainly hadn’t expected to be. Frankly, the last person she felt like spending more time with was Alec O’Neill. She’d looked forward to the evening alone, yet now she found herself missing Lacey’s caring company, and that worried her. The closer she got to Lacey, the harder it would be to lie to her. She had to remember to keep some distance from her hosts. She had no room in her for the responsibilities that came with friendship. There was no one she could talk to about her plight anymore, no one she could open up to. They would think she was crazy. And maybe she was, if only just a little. Desperation could make you that way.

      At breakfast, she had given Lacey a birthday card with a note inside promising her a massage whenever she wanted one. It was the one gift she could give that would cost her nothing.

      “I’m a good masseuse,” she said after Lacey had thanked her. It was true. She had taken a few courses several years ago, because massage was the one thing that had eased her mother’s pain during the last few months of her life.

      “I’m so sorry you can’t come with us tonight,” Lacey had said. She had been standing in the middle of the kitchen after breakfast, the card and note in her hands while Clay opened the back door, ready to leave for his office. Gina could tell that Lacey felt guilty about leaving her alone.

      Gina had put her hands on the younger woman’s arms and looked her firmly in the eye. “You’ve barely known me three days, Lacey,” she said. “I’m just your boarder, not part of your family, and that’s fine. You and Clay go and have a great time tonight. You’re going to have an ulcer, worrying so much about people.”

      Lacey gave her a hug. Clay, who was halfway out the door, turned to add his usual succinct two cents. “Ulcers are caused by bacteria, not worry,” he said. He walked outside, Sasha running ahead of him, and Lacey followed the two of them, leaving Gina hugged, chastened and deserted all at once.

      She knew that Clay was a widower. Lacey had told her his interior-designer wife had died in an accident in November and that he was still not over it. They’d had a fantastic marriage, she’d said. Gina was not a believer in fantastic marriages, but she was not about to argue the point with Lacey, who obviously missed her sister-in-law. And Clay, although quiet and understandably humorless, was nevertheless treating her very kindly. He’d even let her use his computer to check her e-mail, something she had been anxious to do since leaving Bellingham, and he told her she could use the computer anytime she liked.

      Sitting in her car in the parking lot, she thought about using it now to check her e-mail again, although she had done so just before noon. She glanced toward the broken lighthouse, and noticed that the ocean sounded calmer and quieter than she’d heard it since her arrival. There were a few more hours until sunset, she thought. She would go for a walk. Maybe she could find the Coast Guard station from Bess’s diary.

      She left her sandals in the car and walked along the short path through the shrubs until she came to the lighthouse. Wading through the shallow water past the tower, she turned right onto the beach. The coastline was obviously quite different from the days of Bess’s diary and not at all easy to walk on. Now, the beach was very narrow, even disappearing in some places where the waves chewed at the green groundcover instead of sand, and Gina had to walk through water. The waves were little more than ripples slipping toward shore.

      In the pages of the diary, the Coast Guard station seemed to be no more than a half a mile from the lighthouse, but Gina walked at least a mile without seeing a trace of it. She had seen no buildings, as a matter of fact. The slender thread of beach butted up against hardy-looking trees and shrubs. She’d seen no people, either, and the solitude was eerie, the only sound the lapping of the nearly flat waves against the shore and the occasional breaking of twigs in the woods to her right. She was glad she’d learned that the horses and hogs were gone.

      Dead bodies had washed up on this beach, she thought as she walked. And a man had been murdered here.

      Her gaze was drawn to the water a distance ahead of her. Someone was swimming in the ocean. As Gina grew closer, she saw it was an older woman, who was now coming out of the water onto the beach, wringing the sea out of her long gray hair.

      The woman waved at her, reaching down to pick up a towel from the sand.

      “Hi,” Gina called as she neared her. “How’s the water?”

      “Glorious,” the woman said. “It’s so calm. I think I swam about two miles today.” The woman looked like a swimmer, with broad shoulders and powerful thighs. She tilted her head at Gina. “I come here almost every day and you’re just about the first person I’ve seen out here,” she said.

      “I was looking for the Coast Guard station.”

      “Coast Guard station?” the woman said. “You mean a life-saving station?”

      Gina recalled that the Coast Guard stations had originally been home to the life-saving crews. “Yes,” she said.

      “The nearest are up in Ocean Sands or down in Sanderling,” the woman said, toweling off her arms.

      Gina was confused. “I thought there was one right about here.”

      The woman shook her head, then a spark came to her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “I know the one you mean. I’ve read about it, and it was along here, you’re right. But it was lost in a storm in the sixties, I think. That was before I moved here, so I’m not sure exactly when. A lot of erosion along here since then.” She waved her hand to take in the beach. “It’s changed a lot even since I moved here.”

      “Ah, that figures,” Gina said, disappointed. Storms, storms, storms. She was coming to realize that weather was the source of devastation around here. “Well, thanks,” she said with a wry smile. “I guess I can stop looking now.”

      “Sorry,” the woman said. She bent over to pick up her beach bag. Straightening again, she looked at Gina.

      “You have a nice evening,” she said, then waved as she walked toward a path leading into the vegetation near the beach.

      “You, too,” Gina said.

      She watched the woman disappear into the trees, then turned and headed back toward Kiss River.

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