No Avery calling out Mack’s name.
Or sewing a mask.
Or setting out a board game with a bottle of wine on the dining room table.
Or reading aloud a line from a book.
Mack stops in the kitchen. Just stops. He takes off his sweatshirt and hangs it on a chairback. His every move echoes in the silent rooms—the sweatshirt zipper clicking on the chair. His keys jangling when he drops them on the counter. He stops again, and only looks around: to the backyard behind him; to the bedrooms down the hall.
But he doesn’t go to either place.
No. He goes instead to the cottage living room. In the dark, the furniture becomes mere shadows he walks around. Maybe it’s better like this. The white sofa, the white-painted fireplace, the white walls? They might mock him with their memories, with echoes of laughter and talking, if the twilight hour didn’t drop some darkness on them.
Mack sits in an armchair near the window. The last light of day is visible through the sheer curtains. The horizon over the distant sea is lined with only a smudge of red. So the sky isn’t completely dark with night yet. It holds onto the slightest bit of the day’s light.
Sitting there, Mack drops his face in his hands.
Minutes pass when he does nothing more than sit there like that.
Until suddenly, he doesn’t.
With a quick breath, he stands. Beside him is a tall lamp on the window table. Mack touches the lampshade. In the dark room, he reaches down and turns on that one light. It’s the only light on in the entire cottage. The lamp’s illumination casts a glow on the walls, the sofa—just a dim hue.
But more so, that lamp casts its light on the paned window behind those sheer curtains. That one window is golden in the evening now. Mack moves closer and nudges aside the curtain. Outside, wild beach roses from the trellis are caught in the lamplight. Their pink blossoms frame the window edge.
While he stands there looking out, night falls over Long Island Sound. Smudges of stars emerge in the sky. He steps closer to the window for a moment, then lets the curtain drop. When he silently sits, it looks like it’s to keep vigil—on the cottage, on the distant beach.
A sound then—just one—breaks the stillness.
It’s Mack’s voice, as he sits alone in the shadows. “Avery, please,” he whispers. Leaning forward in the chair beside the window, he rests his arms on his knees and drops his head. “Please come home to me.”
There’s a pause, a long one, as though he’s listening. And waiting. As he sits there, you’d think the world is waiting, too. The night outside is still. Not a breeze stirs the damp salt air.
Mack lifts his head then, and watches that lamplit cottage window. When he whispers once more, this time his words seem to be his only hope. “Please. Come home.”
The Seaside Saga
Reading Order
1) Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans
2) The Denim Blue Sea
3) Beach Blues
4) Beach Breeze
5) The Beach Inn
6) Beach Bliss
7) Castaway Cottage
8) Night Beach
9) Little Beach Bungalow
10) Every Summer
11) Salt Air Secrets
12) Stony Point Summer
–And More Seaside Saga Books–
For a complete list of books by New York Times
bestselling author Joanne DeMaio, visit:
Joannedemaio.com
About the Author
JOANNE DEMAIO is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary fiction. The novels of her ongoing and groundbreaking Seaside Saga journey with a group of beach friends, much the way a TV series does, continuing with the same cast of characters from book-to-book. In addition, she writes winter novels set in a quaint New England town. Joanne lives with her family in Connecticut.
For a complete list of books and for news on upcoming releases, visit Joanne’s website. She also enjoys hearing from readers on Facebook.
Author Website:
Joannedemaio.com
Facebook:
Facebook.com/JoanneDeMaioAuthor