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Chapter 1
Chapter One: Salt on the Seats
The key had a brass tag stamped THE HARBOR LIGHT, worn smooth where a thumb had worried it. Carys turned it in the lock, and the door answered with a sigh that sounded like the tide breaking. Salt air rushed at her. The carpet was a faded, threadbare red, crusted with sand. On the stage, a single bulb glowed on a stand—the ghostlight—hissing faintly like it remembered lines it could never say.
“Still standing,” she said, as if to the building.
Ansel arrived with a toolbox and a face that didn’t say much. He set the box down and looked past her, toward the rows of seats and the ceiling where plaster hung in pale vines.
“Barely,” he said. “You could’ve sold it unseen.”
She tucked hair behind her ear. “The solicitor said we’d get more if we made it presentable. Maybe even reopened for a season.” She tried to make her voice steady. “There’s a heritage grant application in the files.”
He gave her a long look. Seabird-cries rode the wind through a cracked window.
“Last time we chased a plan here, we ended up—” He gestured vaguely, not saying the word fire. Neither of them did.
“It’s not the last time,” she said. “It’s this time.”
They walked the aisles. The sea kept whispering under everything. When she tested a seat, it groaned. Ansel tapped a panel with his knuckles, listening. He knew wood, always had.
“We’ll need tarps, a dehumidifier, buckets,” he said. “Roof’s a sieve. The fly lines are frayed. Best not touch them.”
“Okay,” she said, too quickly. “We’ll start small. Clean, patch, catalog, apply. If it turns ugly, we sell. Agreed?”
He shrugged, which she decided to take as yes. The ghostlight hissed. Outside, gulls argued over nothing. Inside, she tried to steady herself on the old shape of hope.
