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Second Street

Chapter 1

Ocean

 The door knocker had barely tapped when something crashed inside the house. It sounded like it came from upstairs. A shriek followed, then a specific kind of silence. The kind that meant someone was deciding if tears were worth it.

They weren’t, apparently. Another shriek, louder.

I waited on the front step of the house on Franklin Street, adjusting my bag. This was only my second time babysitting Caleb’s twins, but I already knew enough about the seven-year-olds. They were fast, they were loud, and the chaos they generated felt less like an accident and more like a career choice.

I took a deep breath. The sea air coming off the harbor smelled faintly of something I couldn’t name. Something warm and faintly electric, like the town itself was paying attention. I’d noticed it my first week here. I’d stopped trying to explain it.

Almost sixteen, I transplanted with my mother from LA exactly three months ago. Back home I had my friend Ivy and a routine I knew the shape of. Here I had my grandmother’s old house, roads that curved back into the harbor like they didn’t really believe in destinations, and a FaceTime connection that was starting to feel less like a lifeline and more like a reminder of everything I’d left behind. Ivy was bouncing between her parents, neither of them in LA anymore either, so even the city I’d left wasn’t quite the city I remembered.

My parents’ divorce was still in progress, like a very slow car crash nobody wanted to officially call a disaster yet. I’d made my list, weighed my pros and cons, and chosen Harbor View anyway. Living with my mom beat living with my father, an actor, any day. He hadn’t been around much when he was a wannabe. I didn’t want to imagine how absent he’d be if I was actually counting on him. Most days, my decision felt brave. Some days, it just felt like running toward something before I could talk myself out of it.

Three months ago, if someone had told me that choosing Harbor View and moving into my grandmother’s house would also mean befriending two ghosts, I probably would have revisited my spreadsheet. Instead, Jo and Henry had become a surprisingly normal part of my life. What I’d learned was that you developed opinions about ghosts very fast. Mine opinion was that knowing two is enough. Three would feel like a trend.

But I needed money. Hence, the babysitting.

Back to the present situation. Caleb paid well. He was a widower, a restaurant owner, the First Selectman of Harbor View—which sounded important and also completely made up, considering how small the village was. And he was my mom’s high school boyfriend, a fact that sat in the room with the two of them like the proverbial pink elephant every time they were in the same space. All summer, I’d watched them be carefully, elaborately normal around each other. I hadn’t figured out what I was looking at yet. Neither, I suspected, had they.

I tapped with the knocker again.

The house itself was exactly the kind of old that felt earned. Gray-shingled, a little tired, settled into itself the way houses do when they’ve stopped trying to prove anything. Older than Grandma Clare’s place, where Mom and I were living. Only five minutes away, the one detail my mom had clung to when she agreed to let me take the babysitting job.

Heavy footsteps on the stairs, and then the door swung open. Caleb filled the doorframe, button-down and khakis, both knees soaked through. Whatever version of himself he’d planned to present tonight, the twins had already dismantled it.

“They’re out of the bathtub,” he said. “Trying to get them into pajamas. You can wait in the living room.”

I followed him inside and turned left.

The living room had the feel of a house that definitely felt lived in. Wide-planked floors worn smooth. A fireplace that looked like it had been doing its job for centuries. Built-in shelves packed with books and the weirdly random objects that accumulate when young children are involved. Comfortable, a little battered, and unapologetic about both.

“Popcorn, movie, two books, only two, then bed,” Caleb said from the doorway. “I’ll be back by nine-thirty, ten at the latest.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“I know.” Something close to a smile. “They like you better than my parents as a sitter. So, you’ll probably get their best behavior.”

“Lucky me.”

He headed upstairs. The noise followed him for about three seconds before it doubled.

Then his voice, low and strained, carried down the stairs anyway. “I swear, if you’re not in pajamas in one minute, there will be no popcorn, no movie, nothing remotely fun for the rest of your natural lives.”

A beat.

“Liam. That is not how pants work.” That was Layla.

I turned toward the shelves, smiling to myself, and stopped.

A woman stood near the entrance to the kitchen. She hadn’t been there a moment ago. I was almost certain of it, but she stood with the easy stillness of someone who belonged exactly where they were.

She was petite, with long red curls pulled loosely back from her face. Blue eyes, sharp and focused, moving over me in that way some people have, like they’re cataloguing, and filing, and already forming conclusions. She wore a white shirt tucked into fitted dress pants. Work clothes. Everything about her was put-together.

Something about her tugged at me. Not recognition, exactly. More like the feeling just before recognition. The word you can’t quite recall.

“I’m Ocean,” I said. “The sitter.”

“I know who you are.” Her voice was warm. “Clare Randall’s granddaughter.”

I blinked. “You knew my grandmother?”

“I knew the shop.” She tilted her head slightly. “How are you finding Harbor View?”

“Still figuring out the roads,” I said. “Some of them don’t really go anywhere.”

She smiled at that. A real smile, like I’d said something that genuinely connected with her. Then she nodded toward the ceiling, where Caleb’s voice had gone low and warning above us. “Bath time is always an ordeal. Getting them dressed afterward is the real test. They don’t want him to leave.” Something shifted in her expression, fond, a little sad. “Two against one. It’s their grand strategy.”

“You know them well.”

“Like the back of my hand,” she said.

An aunt, maybe. A family friend. Caleb’s parents lived on this same street, and from what she’d heard over the summer, he had a lot of family around. She struck me as a person who’d had years of dinners at Caleb’s kitchen table and knew which drawer held the good scissors and which step on the stairs creaked the worst. That was the feeling she gave off, anyway.

She came closer and took my hand in both of hers.

The cold hit me before anything else. Not cool, but genuinely cold, deep-cold, the kind that goes straight to the bone. I almost pulled back. I should have. Something about it wasn’t right. But there was something else underneath it. Something that felt less like temperature and more like recognition. Déjà vu, but not in my mind, in my body. Like some part of me already knew.

She held my hand longer than the greeting required, studying my face.

“Take good care of them,” she said quietly.

“I will.”

“I know you will.” She said it like a fact she’d already verified.  Her grip didn’t loosen.

She leaned slightly closer, her voice dropping like she didn’t want to be overheard, which was strange because there was no one else to hear. 

“The house on Second Street,” she said quietly as she let go of my hand. “Ask about the house.” 

I didn’t know what to say. “I—”

“Who are you talking to?”

Caleb’s voice came from the doorway. He’d changed into dry pants. The twins were pressed against his legs, peering around him at me.

I turned back. I was alone...sort of.

I looked around the room, really looked, and found her in the only place she still existed. In the photograph on the mantel. Caleb and the twins, smaller, squinting into summer light. And a woman beside them with long red curls and bright blue eyes. Her hand rested lightly on Caleb’s arm, and she was smiling straight at the camera like she had every reason in the world to.

She hadn’t just known them. She belonged to them.

His wife. Julia.

Gone three years now. Breast cancer.

Caleb still had a curious look on his face. I stood there while the twins tumbled past me toward the couch, arguing already about what movie. I thought for a moment about the cold hands and the way she’d specifically and hurriedly said to ask about the house.

It was like she was passing on a message before she ran out of time to deliver it.

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