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Second Street

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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.

Chapter 2

Skye

The second I stepped onto the cracked sidewalk of the old house on Second Street, I knew something was wrong.

Clutching the straps of her backpack, Ocean hesitated beside me. “Mom, did you hear that?”

I glanced at her. She was looking at the house with an expression I’d seen before. That still, inward look she got when she was turning something over. She’d been doing it since babysitting Caleb’s kids. Something had shifted in her after that night, something she hadn’t shared yet.

“There’s a lot of houses on this street,” she said, not quite to me. Like she was reminding herself of something.

A sharp breaking sound echoed from inside. A dish. Maybe more than one.

The front door hung slightly ajar, moving with the late August breeze. The ‘For Sale’ sign in the small yard leaned crookedly. Karen’s silver Lexus LC500 sat at an odd angle at the curb, one front wheel up onto the walk. The car’s sleek body caught the afternoon light, immaculate as ever. The positioning was all wrong. After nearly three months of Karen-related interactions, I knew exactly how proud she was of that car and the image it projected. She would never leave it like that.

Strange.

We’d walked over from First Street. This stop was supposed to be quick. Bernie and his crew were coming to haul the furniture and other pieces I’d picked up at the estate sale, and Karen had agreed to meet us here to unlock the garage where everything was being stored. Beyond that, it was Karen’s show. Staging team tomorrow, open house this weekend. That’s what she’d told me when we’d arranged this. I was just here for my pieces and then out of her way.

That had been the plan, anyway.

Ocean had been quiet on the walk over. Not upset, just quieter than usual. I knew better than to push. My daughter had always been like that. Watching. Assessing. Making lists no one else would see.

She got that from me.

I glanced again at the car, then at the open door. Maybe the cleaning crew had already arrived. Karen was probably inside, rushing them, and something had gotten knocked over in the process.

I was still telling myself that when another sound came from inside. A crash, louder this time. A woman’s cry. Then a heavy thud that seemed to travel through the walls.

I turned to Ocean.

My hands were steadier than I felt. Which was either a good sign or a very bad one. “Call Arthur. Then the sheriff. And go stand across the street.”

“But Mom —”

“Do what I say.” I gave her a gentle push toward the sidewalk and waited, watching, until she made her way around the car and crossed to the other side.

Then I turned back to the house.

My hand rested on the door a second longer than it needed to. The silence inside felt…wrong. Too complete.

“Karen?” I called from the doorway. “Hello? Is everything okay in there?”

Silence.

I pushed the door open.

The house had been partly stripped of furnishings, the way homes look after the people who gave them shape have gone. The air smelled of dust and something stale. Old cardboard left too long in a damp space. Footprints tracked across the dirty scuffed hardwood in the foyer. A stack of flattened, unused boxes sagged against the wall, and a few stray packing peanuts skittered across the floor, nudged by the breath of air coming through the open door.

Each step I took down the front hallway echoed back at me, too loud.

Every nerve was telling me to turn back. I stayed anyway. This is probably the part where a sensible person notes that I have never once learned from my own good judgment.

“Karen?”

No answer. Only the sound of my own breathing and the particular silence of a house that was waiting for something.

I moved into the living room, every nerve telling me to turn back.

One corner of the braided rug was folded back. It struck me as odd, though I couldn’t have said why. Then my gaze moved beyond it.

I saw her.

Karen lay on the brick hearth in front of the fireplace, her stillness the kind that didn’t leave room for doubt.

For a second, my mind refused to make sense of what I was seeing. Then it did, and everything else disappeared—the room, the rug, every half-formed thought.

Only one terrible certainty remained.

My phone was already in my hand. I don’t remember reaching for it. I backed toward the door as I pressed the call button, keeping my eyes on Karen until the hallway blocked my view. Then I turned and hurried out of the house without looking back.

Chapter 3

Ocean

There was a dead body inside that house. Karen’s.

I didn’t see it. I didn’t need to.

I knew it from the way the officers moving in and out. From the way everything around me had shifted, like the whole street had tilted just slightly off balance.

By the time the sirens stopped, Second Street had become something else entirely. Flashing lights reflected against the old house’s windows. The ambulance was still there, parked and quiet, which somehow felt worse than if it had left. Two state police cars. The sheriff’s vehicle. All of it official and still and not going anywhere yet.

Arthur was already on my side of the street. I didn’t ask how he’d gotten there so fast. In Harbor View, I was learning, Arthur was simply already there when things mattered.

A cluster of neighbors had gathered the way people do in small towns. Not quite a crowd, but close enough. Nobody really talked. Just that low murmur of guesses passing between people who didn’t actually know anything, words drifting further than intended in the quiet.

Accident. Fall. Blood.

I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t want answers. I just kept my eyes on the front door and waited.

Arthur stood beside me with a hand around my shoulder, steady and quiet. I’d caught a glimpse of my mom when the cops first arrived. Just a flash. Enough to know she was okay. But knowing and feeling weren’t the same thing, and the worry stayed lodged under my ribs.

I caught myself counting seconds. Not on purpose—just… one, two, three…

Finally, my mom stepped out through the open door.

And yeah. Her face.

That look. The one where everything’s barely held together, but she’s not letting a single crack show.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling me in for a quick hug. “We’ll do what we planned another day. Why don’t you head home…or go to the beach. I’ll call you later.”

I nodded.

No point asking anything. She wouldn’t tell me anyway.

Then the sheriff said something, and she turned right back.

Arthur squeezed my shoulder once, then crossed the street toward the house.

I picked up my backpack and turned away from the crowd and did what I always did when things didn’t make sense.

I walked.

Past the houses. Past the turnoff for First Street. All the way down to the lighthouse and the Point, where Harbor View opened up into water and wind and something that felt bigger than whatever had just happened back there. The town did that. Let things happen, then opened a door and stepped back, like it had learned over a few hundred years that sometimes people just needed to walk until something shook loose.

I stood at the edge for a moment and just breathed.

The air was different here. Cleaner. Louder. Like the Atlantic Ocean had zero interest in what went down on Second Street and wasn’t about to start caring now. But the town itself — the harbor, the curve of the road, the way the lighthouse sat there like it had been personally asked to stay felt like it was paying attention. Not watching. More like waiting. The way Harbor View always felt, like it already knew what was going to happen and was just giving you time to catch up.

Solid con for the Atlantic: no loyalty whatsoever.

Solid pro for Harbor View: it remembered everything.

But me? I couldn’t shake it. Karen was dead. And somehow, she’d ended up mattering. She’d been on my not a fan list from basically the second we got to Harbor View after Grandma Clare died. Pushy. Nosy. Showing up before Mom had even figured out whether we were staying or selling the house. Karen was already circling, talking commissions and listings like Grandma’s death was just another business opportunity.

But then things changed.

Once Mom decided to stay and open the antique store, Karen kind of became this weird behind-the-scenes connector person. She started sending estate sales Mom’s way, introducing her to people around town, steering clients toward the shop. Karen was the biggest real estate agent in Harbor View, and since half the town was old-money families cleaning out giant houses full of antiques, she was constantly dealing with estates. Most people didn’t want the hassle. They just wanted someone to handle everything and hand them a check. Karen did all of it. Estate sales, staging, selling the houses. And Mom was suddenly first through the door at every sale Karen organized.

And somehow, without me even noticing when it happened, Karen stopped being just this annoying woman in heels and turned into someone I actually talked to sometimes.

So yeah. Her being dead felt wrong in a way I hadn’t expected.

Now I was standing here wondering if her ghost would show up if I walked into that house. Would she even know she was dead yet? Or would she just be there the way Julia had been. Totally calm, totally certain, like she already knew things I hadn’t even thought to ask about?

Because Julia was still messing with my head. What happened at Caleb’s was a whole new category of weird. Not just seeing her. Talking to her. Letting her take my hand like we’d known each other forever, like that was just a normal Monday. And then there was what she’d said. The thing I’d been turning over since I left Caleb’s. Ask about the house on Second Street. Which one? That was the part that kept snagging. There were plenty of houses on Second Street. Was she talking about the place where Karen had just been found dead?

I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know if it meant anything. Julia had said it like a someone passing on a message she’d been carrying for a long time, and I’d had maybe thirty seconds to think about it before Caleb’s voice came from the doorway and she was just... gone.

I couldn’t tell Mom. Telling her meant explaining Julia, and explaining Julia meant having a conversation I had absolutely no idea how to start.

It was not a normal Monday.

I added it to the con column. Ghosts who hold your hand: unresolved.

Seeing ghosts wasn’t like seeing regular people. It was more like a frequency — that in-between place on a radio dial where you catch a voice that’s almost clear. Jo was easy now, strong signal, barely any static. Henry took a little more effort. Julia had been the strongest of all, which I didn’t know how to think about.

When we first got to Harbor View, I had zero clue about any of it.

Jo died in our house in 1918. Spanish flu, while Henry was overseas. She stayed because she was waiting for him to come home. He came back and took up residence in the bookstore across the street. They can’t reach each other across First Street — different houses, different rules, invisible lines neither of them can cross no matter how much they want to. So somehow, without ever formally agreeing to it, I became the go-between. The message carrier. Keeping their hundred-year-old, unfinished love story alive one awkward, secondhand conversation at a time.

My mom could see Jo. Arthur could talk to Henry. But not both. Not like me.

And now there was Julia.

A third ghost.

Which made absolutely no sense, because LA had to have ghosts, right? Millions of people, all that history. No way Harbor View had some kind of exclusive ghost membership. And I’d never seen a single one there. Not once.

So why here?

Why me?

Why now?

And…why her?

There were other questions, too.

Like—was Julia tied to a place the way Jo and Henry were? I didn’t even know where she’d died. That house? Somewhere else? I’d overheard my mom and Arthur talking about Caleb leaving his law practice after his wide passed, moving back to Harbor View for good. But that didn’t explain anything, not really.

What had actually happened?

What were the rules?

Were there even rules, or was I just…making this up as I went?

And then there was the one thought I kept circling but never actually letting myself land on.

Why couldn’t I see my grandma Clare?

Because if anyone should’ve found me here, shouldn’t it have been her? This was her town. Her house. Her life I’d basically walked into like I had any right to it.

I would’ve taken anything. Five minutes. One real conversation. Not a flicker or a feeling or some vague sign people talk about—just her.

Just… her.

Instead, I got strangers.

Complicated ones.

The thought hit harder than I expected, like something dropping straight through me, and I shoved it away before it could stick.

I could never tell my mom about Julia. What if she decided this was too much. Too many ghosts, too much Harbor View and sent me back to LA? What if she thought something was wrong with me?

I hadn’t even told Jo yet. Did ghosts keep secrets? Could I trust her not to say something to my mom?

And then there was the other thing. The thing I really didn’t want to think about.

Caleb and my mom.

Anyone with eyes could see it. The way they talked and then didn’t. Like…hi, hello, totally normal, and then suddenly don’t look at me or I might combust. It was so awkward it almost circled back to cute. High school first-date energy, except they weren’t in high school anymore.

What about Julia?

Because yeah. She was still around. Not, like, alive-alive, but not gone either. Just…there in their house.

So what was that? Cheating?

Did it count if the wife was technically dead but also kind of…not?

My brain immediately went to Jo and Henry. Jo still pining like it was yesterday and not a whole century ago. Like time didn’t get a vote in any of it. So yeah, apparently love didn’t just stop because someone died. Good to know. Super convenient.

Which meant…

What did that mean for my mom?

I blew out a breath, hard, like I could just eject the thought straight out of my head.

Nope. Too much.

Boats cut across the horizon. Tourists drifted along the path with cameras and melting ice cream, laughing like nothing weird or complicated or ghost-related had ever happened to anyone, ever.

Normal life. Just…continuing.

Meanwhile my brain felt like it had thirty tabs open and no idea where the sound was coming from.

When did everything get this complicated?

I was staring at the water, when something bumped my arm.

I jerked, turning fast.

A golden retriever stood there, all sunlit fur and open-mouthed grin, like he’d just wandered out of a commercial. Yellow coat, big paws, tail going so hard his whole back end moved with it. I glanced past him automatically, looking for a leash, an owner, someone he’d gotten loose from. There was no one. Just the dog, standing in a patch of afternoon sun, watching me like he’d been waiting.

He barked loud. Not mean, just sharp enough to get my attention.

“Okay. Hi,” I said, half laughing, half startled.

He came closer and bumped me again, right under my elbow, like hey, focus.

“Yeah, yeah, I see you,” I said, turning fully toward him.

Another bark. Then a happy huff, like we’d reached an understanding.

I glanced past him toward the parking lot. An ice cream truck was at the far end, kids crowded around it, music faint on the wind. Nobody was looking for a dog. Nobody was calling out. He’d either come alone or he’d come from somewhere I couldn’t see.

“You belong to them?” I asked.

He leaned into me like we were already best friends.

I reached down, fingers brushing his collar. It was old leather, soft and worn, with no tags. No address, no phone number. Just a name, stitched right into the leather itself, neat as anything.

“Max,” I said. “Okay. Got it.”

His tail kicked into overdrive, which I took as a yes.

I sank my hand into his fur, and wow…yeah. He was warm. Not just regular-dog warm — something deeper, like sitting next to a fireplace, like the warmth was coming from the inside out. I’d expected it somehow, the way you sometimes expect things in Harbor View without knowing why.

This was it. For as long as I could remember, I’d wanted a dog. Not a tiny purse dog. Not one of those trembling little things that looked like they might break if you sneezed too hard. Or pee if someone looked at them the wrong way. A real dog. Big. Solid. The kind that leaned against you like you were part of its world.

My parents had always shut the idea down.

You can’t have a dog in an apartment in LA.

There’s nowhere for it to run.

Who’s going to walk it?

Who’s going to clean up after it?

It’s too much responsibility.

There was always another reason.

So I became… that kid.

The one who hung out at the dog park without a dog.

At first, I’d pretend I was waiting for someone. Then I stopped pretending. I’d just sit on the bench and let other people’s dogs come to me. Throw tennis balls, scratch ears, memorize names like they were mine to keep. Later, when I was older, I didn’t even try to explain it. I just showed up.

Ivy got it.

That was kind of our thing. One of the reasons we stuck. We’d meet up at the park, no dogs of our own, just borrowing everyone else’s for an hour or two. She liked the scruffy ones. I liked the big ones. The bigger the better. Dogs that took up space. Dogs that didn’t apologize for it.

Max leaned harder into my hand like he’d decided I passed inspection.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “You’re my kind of dog.”

For a second, I just stayed there, fingers buried in his fur, feeling something in my chest loosen a notch.

Then I looked up.

The lighthouse had been standing at the Point since 1847. I knew that because the historical marker at the base said so, and because Jo had mentioned it once like she was talking about a neighbor. Like she’d watched it go up. Maybe she had.

From here, I could almost picture the view from the top of the lighthouse stairs. The way everything opened up when you climbed high enough. Like the whole coastline spread out in front of you, clean and mapped, nothing overlapping, nothing hidden.

Up there, you could pretend things made sense. There was no reason to worry.

Like if you just got enough distance, everything would fall into place.

But down here, everything blurred together. Too close, too loud, too tangled to sort out. And no stairs in sight.

Max gave a softer bark and nudged my arm again, like hey, don’t drift off.

I looked down at him. He was looking at the lighthouse. Not the way dogs look at things — that distracted, nose-first interest in whatever smells interesting. He was just looking at it. Still. Like he recognized it.

“You know this place?” I said.

He turned back to me. Wagged once, slow.

I didn’t know why I’d asked. He was a dog.

But Harbor View had taught me, in the three months since we’d arrived, that sometimes the things you couldn’t explain were the ones most worth paying attention to.

He barked again.

“Yeah,” I said, exhaling. “I’m here.”

I grabbed a stick off the ground and tossed it.

He took off like a rocket. Full speed, zero hesitation, ears flying. Total commitment.

And then…he got to the stick. And just…stood over it. Barking at me.

A little girl walked past with an ice cream cone, close enough that most dogs would have considered it a life-changing opportunity. Max didn’t even look at it. His entire focus was on me. Which felt weirdly flattering.

There hadn’t been many occasions in my life when I ranked higher than food in a dog’s list of priorities.

“Good boy.”

He barked.

“Bring the stick back.”

He sat down. Not absentmindedly. Not because he hadn’t heard me. This was a deliberate decision. I stared at him. “Seriously?”

He barked again. The bark had a distinct your move quality to it.

I walked out, picked it up, and tossed it again.

Same thing. Sprint. Stop. Bark.

“You don’t actually retrieve, do you?” I said, heading out for it again. “You just… supervise.”

Another bark.

“Ohhh,” I said, pointing at him. “You’re one of those. The lazy retrievers.”

We kept at it anyway, him doing the chasing, me doing the retrieving, both of us apparently fine with the arrangement. And weirdly, it worked. The rhythm of it. The running, the throwing, the laughing. My brain…quieted.

Not completely. Not magically fixed. But lighter. Like someone had turned the volume down on everything spinning in there.

Dogs.

What a ridiculous, perfect job they do.

I pulled out my phone, thinking I should get a video. Max in full chaos mode would absolutely kill on TikTok. But the second I lifted it, he spun and bolted. Straight toward the parking lot.

The ice cream truck bell started ringing again. Kids started shouting. Parents called after them.

“Hey!” I laughed. “Traitor!”

He didn’t even look back.

One second he was there. The next he was weaving through the crowd, dodging beach chairs and coolers like he had somewhere important to be.

And just like that, he disappeared.

Back to wherever—or whoever—he actually belonged.

I stood there with my phone still in my hand, staring at the spot where he’d vanished between a minivan and a group of little kids clutching melting ice cream cones.

Of course he wasn’t mine. He never was.

The breeze off the water lifted my hair, carrying the smell of salt and sunscreen. Somewhere behind me, gulls screamed like tiny criminals.

Harbor View kept moving around me. Families. Somebody’s mom yelling that they were leaving in five minutes and absolutely meaning half an hour.

Normal life.

And weirdly… for the first time since we’d gotten here, I didn’t feel completely outside of it.

I looked toward the parking lot again.

If we were staying here…

If Harbor View was actually going to become home…

Would my mom even consider it?

A dog. A real one. Big. Loud. Took-up-space kind of dog. A dog that ran into your life like a wrecking ball and acted like you were the greatest thing it had ever seen.

The thought settled into my chest before I could stop it. Not just wanting one. Wanting something permanent. Something that stayed.

Which was honestly a little terrifying.

I shoved my hands into my sweatshirt pocket and stared out at the water.

What a job dogs have, I thought.

Show up. Interrupt everything. Make it better. Then leave before you can ask too many questions. Honestly, there was probably a lesson in there.

I reached for my phone again and opened TikTok out of habit.

The video I’d posted from across the street while the police lights flashed was still climbing. Over a hundred thousand views now. Which felt weird.

A woman had died. The internet had apparently decided that was content.

I started scrolling through. One comment caught my attention. Posted forty minutes ago by a username I didn’t recognize. It already had more than two thousand likes.

My cousin works at the station. He says there was no way out. All the doors and windows were locked from the inside. The only exit would’ve been past your mom. So how did he get away?

I read it once. Then again. And a third time.

The harbor stretched out in front of me, the lighthouse steady against the darkening sky.

I stared at the comment. Then back at the water.

I had no idea. And apparently, neither did anyone else.