Since she was in the driveway already, Lucy took the time to walk out to the end and grab Helen’s mail. She’d put the junk mail in recycling and the important stuff in a basket on the bookshelf where Nick had been putting it.
He was on his way out when she passed him. “Have a good rest of your day. And thank you.”
He stopped with his hand on his truck’s door handle. “For what?”
She smiled. “For getting me out from under the blankets.”
The smile he gave her in return was like the sun breaking through a dense morning fog. A real smile, with white teeth and crinkling eyes that made it hard for her to breathe. “Anytime.”
And when she walked inside, the first thing she saw was a sheet of paper stuck to the front of the fridge with one of Gran’s magnets.House Listit said across the top. And under that, in neat block letters:Find Lucy some gloves.
Chapter Six
I’m looking for a local diver willing to search for a diamond ring. My fiancé proposed to me at the end of the town pier, and he dropped the ring. Please be nice in the comments. He feels really bad. We might be able to scrape up a little payment, but he spent the rent on the ring, so we’re hoping for an act of kindness here.
First comment: Your fiancé? You mean you said yes after all that?
—Wayward Harbor Online Community Group
Lucy was curled up in a porch rocker, thankful the furniture was large enough to accommodate herandher nest of blankets. It had been two days since she’d gone into town with Nick, and she was bored.
Sitting around the cottage alone while he was working all day wasn’t cutting it anymore. She’d cleaned everything that could be cleaned. She’d even puttered around outside. Though she didn’t know enough about plants to pull anything that might be a weed or might be a perennial waiting for warmer weather, she’d cleaned up the obvious stuff. Dead leaves. Sticks blown in by winter storms.
She’d even cleaned and reorganized the gardening shed while hunting for a pair of gloves so she could cross it off the list. Unfortunately, Gran’s hands were smaller than Lucy’s, so that task remained pending.
Lucy wanted to find a job. Though money wouldn’t be an issue for a while yet, she needed something to occupy her time. And even though her anxiety spiked at the thought, she needed to meet people and socialize. She wasn’t wired to spend so much time with her own thoughts.
And besides going door-to-door, the best way to find out if anybody was hiring locally was with Facebook.
Now the passwords for her social media apps were in one hand and her phone was in the other, but she hadn’t done anything with them yet. She knew she couldn’t keep her head in the sand forever—she needed to know if the scandal was dying down or if the Fairee fandom still wanted to destroy her.
But the idea of letting the world back in had her stomach tied in so many knots, she wasn’t even sipping the coffee sitting on the side table next to her—in an insulated mug with a lid, of course, to keep it hot.
She could call her mom. Iris hadn’t followed up at all, checking to see if she was still in Maine. Or if she was doing well. But she knew if she called Iris—just seeking the comfort of a familiar voice, if nothing else—she’d just end up fending off questions about Gran’s property.
Gran had sent her photos that morning from the entrance of some kind of theme park centered around alligators, so Lucy didn’t want to interrupt her fun, possibly dangerous adventure.
It was time to rip the bandage off, she told herself.
The internet wasn’t the fastest she’d ever used, though she was grateful to have it, so it took her almost an hour to re-download and sign in to the apps she wanted back on her phone. For several of them, she’d deleted her accounts entirely, and she didn’t bother with those. Maybe once she was in Miami and wanted to build up her new brand, she’d make fresh accounts.
If Miami was still on the table.
She still hadn’t sent a message to her friend Sydney, down in Miami. Lucy had been squirreling away money for a solid two years or more, planning to join her and make the dream of designing signature cocktails for a living come true.
When her coffee date lit up the tabloid world, Sydney had reached out, asking if she was okay. Already burned by so-called friends and in a dark emotional place, Lucy had told her she was okay, but needed space and didn’t want to talk. That had been a mistake.
But as the weeks passed, Lucy had put off reaching out to Sydney, afraid her friend would want no part of the Fairee circus. Lucy would have been crushed, and she hadn’t felt ready for that kind of risk. She still needed hope on her horizon.
Now she sent Sydney a long overdue text message, apologizing for disappearing and promising to call within the next few days to explain everything.
Facebook was the hard one. She’d kept on top of her privacy settings, so there wasn’t a lot of negativity. But there were alotof people who’d taught her there was a difference between being a friend and being somebody you knew socially and who’d hit the Like button on the photo of the cute shoes you scored on sale.
By the time she’d deleted all of the insincere messages fishing for details poorly disguised as concern, and unfriended everybody who wouldn’t be a part of her life going forward, she was left with five people.
Gran. Iris, who she would unfriend if not for the drama that would ensue. Sydney. And Sydney’s husband and sister.
That was depressing, she thought as she carried the blankets back into the cottage. It was tempting to turn on the television and lose herself in blankets and mindless entertainment for a while, but she actually wanted tomove.