Chapter 2

TWO

S imon wakes before his alarm, but not before the seagulls begin to squabble outside his window. There's easily a dozen of them swirling in a riotous vortex of feathers and hazy clouds, each screaming their own tune bright and goddamned early.

He rolls over and grabs his phone off the nightstand. He still doesn't have signal or wifi, but it proclaims the time just the same: 6:39. Carefully printed and framed just above the side table, is a small, square infographic he couldn't see from any angle other than prone:

WELCOME TO CAERLLOYD INN!

brEAKFAST STARTS AT 6 AM

WI-FI PASSWORD: GREYINNWIFI06

ENJOY YOUR STAY ??

Simon presses his fingers to the glass protecting the paper and drags his thumb over the Wi-Fi password. Of course there's been one the whole time. He snatches back up his phone and types in the password immediately.

His email crops up with a few dozen notifications—half work, a quarter spam, a quarter actually relevant—but his messages stay silent. He wasn't expecting anything, not really, but something from Mo even after their argument, might've soothed the anxious whirring in his chest.

He kicks his feet over the edge of the bed and stands, stretching his arms out as high as he can reach, which ends up almost brushing the ceiling. They're low, he noticed that last night, but the surge of anxiety and oppressive claustrophobia in his gut is new with the lack of sleep. Simon drops his arms and gathers his clothes for the day. In Boston this time of year, he could probably get away with a jacket over a well fitted t-shirt, but the breeze creeping in through his cracked window betrays more of a chill in the air than he's seen in Massachusetts so far this fall.

So, after he takes a brief, hot shower, he tugs on a long-sleeved, waffle knit shirt, his favorite denim jacket, and a loose crocheted scarf, bought at a craft market a few years back. He doesn't put on the matching hat yet, instead he tucks it into his outer jacket pocket, and places his horn-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses solidly on his nose. Simon also collects his wallet before he can forget and tucks it into a small, leather crossbody bag. He kicks his feet—covered in thick, wool socks—into his Chelsea boots and heads downstairs for whatever kind of breakfast awaits him.

There are three others sitting around a long, wooden table when he enters the side door he peeked through last night. The red-haired employee from yesterday sits at the head of the table, her hair pulled up in a large plastic clip and her body covered in an oversized crewneck sweatshirt proclaiming across the chest, "CAERLLOYD INN". On her left is a blonde man with his head buried in his food, and on her other side is an older, brunette woman with gentle crow's feet at the corners of her eyes. Her sweater is intricately knit in shades of red, maroon, and pink, and she and the employee are talking animatedly even through mouthfuls of food.

It's fucking picture perfect. Simon swallows back bile.

"Oh," the inn employee says when she notices his entrance. Her face falls. "You're up."

"I'm up," Simon echoes. "Is there breakfast left?"

"Cricket makes the loveliest sourdough," the older woman says with a broad smile as she dunks her toast into a bit of spilt orange yolk on her plate.

Simon squints. "Cricket?"

The ginger—Cricket— at the end of the table lifts her fork, tines gleaming with butter and egg as she gestures through a door behind her. "That's me. Breakfast is in the kitchen, I just finished cooking, so it should still be hot."

What kind of a name is Cricket ?

"Thanks," Simon mutters and weaves around the table. It's warm inside, even with the window on the far wall cracked to allow the crisp breeze in. He loosens his scarf as he enters the kitchen, which is practically microscopic. The stove is an old, yellowing gas stove with rust prickling each edge of the enamel. Overhead, the top ridge of the exhaust fan is lined with more of those little wooden buildings, these with smudgier paint, looser lines, and crooked cuts. The rest of the kitchen is barely ten square feet—that is, if the tiles underfoot are a foot in each direction, which Simon would bet money they are. The tiny counters are covered in food: toast, stacked high on a green plate; two fried eggs on a similar but smaller grey dish; and sausage links still in a frying pan on the stove. A small basket covered in a tea towel offers steam when he lifts the fabric to reveal a half loaf of fresh bread.

His stomach growls at the smell of it all. One of the cabinets is conveniently labeled ‘Dishes', so he pulls it open, selects a plate, and loads it up with the remaining food. When he returns back to the dining room, the previously eager conversations have grown quiet and stunted.

"I've never quite understood the appeal of making your own bread," he says to fill the silence as he slides into the seat beside the older woman. "You can get it for cheaper than the ingredients sell on their own—unless you're selling it, that is. You can make good money off home-baked bread."

Cricket fixes him with an intense stare. Her green eyes are paler in the morning light, almost golden at certain angles. Her cheeks are splattered with uneven freckles and she flicks a strand of her choppy bangs out of her face. "Good morning–Shaun, was it?" she says.

"Simon."

"Ah, Simon," Cricket says and clicks her fingers. "That's right. The big city boy here to renovate the lighthouse."

The blonde man's head snaps to stare at Simon, the first sign that he's been listening at all the entire conversation. "You're Simon Abbott?" he says. His knife falls from his fist and clatters against his now empty coffee mug.

"Can I help you?" Simon asks and scoops a bite of egg up on his toast. He chews through the crust loudly, and he has to admit, the bread is good . "This is delicious, Cricket. Thank you for cooking for us."

The blonde surges to his feet but Cricket does too, pressing her hand to his chest. "Stop," she murmurs. "He's going to meet with Bruce." The man's expression shifts from furious to what strangely registers as barely contained glee, and Cricket leans back.

"Oh," the man hums and settles back down into his seat, a new, twitchy grin spread across his lightly bearded face. "He'll knock some goddamn sense into him."

"Do you know where I could find him? He has the keys to the place," Simon says, glancing between the two. Cricket's cheek pinches in a small dimple right at the corner of her pink lips.

"Yeah, I'll give you directions."

The house on the beach is small—in fact, Simon would hardly call it a house at all. It's a rectangular little shack made of sea-worn wood that might've been painted blue once upon a time, but now the slats are faded and chipped to a murky grey. It can't be more than one room—maybe a room and a bathroom, at most—and the numbers are so worn Simon can barely tell if he's in the right place.

The thick wooden door is grey as well and sturdy with a foggy, unpolished brass doorknob and knocker tinged with rust. The shack seems quiet, but Simon raps his knuckles on the worn wood anyways.

As expected, there's no response. The salt air stays still.

Simon purses his lips, jams his chilly hands in his pockets, and turns to glance out at the sea and the clouds just beginning to form on the horizon. The sun is barely out at all, peering through the grey-streaked sky even as it creeps closer to eight o'clock. There's a shadow far out on the ocean, a smudge of white bobbing around on the ashy waves, and Simon squints and raises a hand to block the meager rays from his eyes. It's a boat, he thinks, maybe—is it getting closer?

Something brushes against his ankle.

"What the—" Simon hisses and looks down, just in time to see a fluffy orange and white striped tail disappear around the edge of the small house. "Fucking cat." His heart is racing and he leans against the chipped siding. "Christ. Is anyone in here?" he calls and bangs on the door again, harder this time. "Am I in the right place?"

"Aye."

Simon spins around. "Oh–Bruce? Bruce Cadogan?" he manages to stammer out despite his thudding chest. "Your cat scared the shit out of me."

The man standing before him is silent. He's not very tall—easily a half foot shorter than Simon, if not more—but he makes up for it in bulk. His shoulders are broad and his arms are thick with muscle, visible even through the dense canvas jacket pulled around his body. He's wearing a beanie, but a single curl of dark hair is falling out above his left temple. His face is pockmarked with old scars and his jaw is covered in a substantial amount of thick, dark hair. He's handsome, in a rugged, fisherman kind of way; he's the kind of man Simon would glance at longer than the rest in an outdoorsy magazine, stuffed under his mattress back home at his parents' place in the South end of Boston.

Simon realizes a moment too late that Bruce is doing the same thing he is, inspecting him, and his skin grows warm despite the chill in the air.

"Simon Abbott?" Bruce says finally and flicks his gaze back up to meet Simon's. "Here for the keys?"

"I am, yes," Simon says and offers a hand out. Bruce's dark gaze flicks down to examine it, but he doesn't take the handshake or, what Simon truly wanted, drop the keys into his palm.

"Come on, then," Bruce says and turns around, heading right back– presumably– the way he came. Simon is frozen in place for a moment before rushing after the shorter man. Damn, his strides are long despite his stature.

"I just need the keys, what are you–"

"I'll show you the place," Bruce says without hesitation and keeps walking. They turn around a ridge in the cliffside barely protecting Bruce's small house and there's a truck there, a teal-blue, rusty old thing with a cover stretched over the bed. "Get in." Bruce slides into the driver's seat without even sparing Simon a glance.

He starts the truck, manually winds down the window beside him, and then fishes around in his pocket for something. Bruce pulls out a cigarette and a small Zippo lighter with something engraved on the metal beneath his thumb. There's dirt under his nail, Simon can see now, and he watches as Bruce lights his cigarette in a practiced series of motions. He presses it between his lips and yanks the car out of park, starting the journey down the gravel road Simon had walked just a few minutes before.

His profile is striking in the morning light, shadowed and rigid with scars and marks, and as he smokes and drives he tugs his knit cap off and tucks it into his jacket pocket.

"Look," Bruce says quietly after a minute, surprising Simon out of his stupor. Simon swallows and does as he's told, peering out the front windshield.

They're at the tops of the cliffs again, between the town proper and the start of the bluffs, and the stone beneath their tires stretches out far into the distance. The road ends in one thing: the lighthouse.

It stands tall, all forty feet of it, with small windows evenly spaced in vertical lines every story or so. Simon was able to find an old map of the layout online, a scratchy blueprint he barely knew how to read, so he knows there's five floors inside, excluding the bottommost levels of storage and equipment. It's made of white brick, chipped from the brutal rain and wind of the powerful Maine nor'easters come and gone over the decades it has stood proudly over the town. The light is off—Simon doesn't know much about lighthouses, but it's daytime, and the sky is clear, so it makes enough sense to him.

"Are you the one who's been keeping the thing running?" Simon asks and leans forward despite the gravel and stone making the old truck shake back and forth with a vengeance. "Since they stopped using it, I mean."

Bruce grunts and fidgets with the butt of his cigarette. "Sometimes," he says, and that's all he says until they pull up outside.