Chapter 3: The Room Above the Harbor
The bookstore was called Tidal Pages.
It sat at the end of Newport's main harbor street, wedged between a bait shop and a café that opened at five in the morning for the fishing crews.
The sign above the door was hand-painted.
The paint was peeling at the corners.
Amy stood outside it with one suitcase and a carry-on bag, still wearing the dress she had chosen for the gala.
The Oregon coast wind came off the water and found every gap in the fabric.
She had not slept on the plane.
She had not eaten since noon the day before.
She had not cried once.
A light was on above the store.
Claire had texted the code for the side entrance: 4471.
Amy punched it in, climbed a narrow staircase, and found a door with a handwritten note taped to it.
*Kettle's on the counter.
Blankets in the closet.
The bed is small but the view is worth it.
I'm sorry I can't be there.
— C*
Amy pushed the door open.
The room was small.
A single bed with a blue quilt.
A window seat looking directly out over the harbor.
A small kitchen with a kettle, a tin of tea, and a basket of groceries someone had left on the counter.
She set her suitcase down.
She did not unpack.
She sat on the edge of the bed and took the envelope out of her purse.
The ultrasound photograph was still inside.
The handwritten note was still folded around it.
*We're going to be parents.*
She had written those words three weeks ago, sitting at the kitchen table in the Upper East Side apartment while Daniel was in Dallas.
She had written them carefully, in her best handwriting, because she had wanted him to keep the note.
She had imagined him reading it and going quiet the way he used to go quiet when something moved him.
She folded the note back around the photograph and put it in the side pocket of her suitcase.
Her phone had forty-one missed calls.
Thirty-seven from Daniel.
Two from Margaret.
One from a number she didn't recognize with a New York area code.
One from Claire.
She listened to Claire's voicemail first.
"Amy.
I'm so sorry I'm not there.
My father had a bad night and I couldn't get a flight.
The woman who runs the bookstore is named Ruth.
She knows you're coming.
She won't ask questions.
Call me when you're settled.
I love you."
Amy set the phone face-down on the window seat.
Outside, the harbor was dark except for the lights on the moored boats.
One of them was rocking gently.
She watched it for a long time.
Her phone lit up again.
Daniel's name filled the screen.
She watched it ring.
It stopped.
Then a text appeared.
*Amy.
Please.
Just tell me you're safe.*
She picked up the phone.
Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard for a moment.
She set it back down without answering.
She was safe.
She was four months pregnant and exhausted and sitting alone in a room above a bookstore in a town no one knew she was in, and she was the safest she had felt in months.
That was the part she didn't know how to explain to him yet.
In the morning, a knock came at the door.
Soft.
Twice.
Amy opened it to find a woman in her late sixties holding a tray with a pot of tea, two slices of toast, and a small jar of honey.
She had white hair pulled back loosely and the kind of face that had seen enough of life to stop being surprised by it.
"I'm Ruth," the woman said.
"Claire told me you'd be here.
I don't need to know anything else."
Amy stepped back to let her in.
Ruth set the tray on the small table by the window and straightened up.
"The café next door does soup at noon if you want something warm.
The harbor walk is good in the morning before the tourists arrive." She paused.
"And the bookstore is open if you need somewhere to sit that isn't up here."
"Thank you," Amy said.
Ruth looked at her the way older women sometimes look at younger ones when they recognize something they once carried themselves.
"You don't have to thank me," she said.
"Just eat the toast."
She left without asking a single question.
Amy sat down at the table.
She poured the tea.
She ate both slices of toast.
Her phone buzzed on the window seat.
This time it was a text from Margaret.
*He found the apartment empty.
He's not thinking clearly.
Please, Amy — whatever you decide — just let someone know you're all right.*
Amy read it twice.
Then she typed four words and sent them before she could change her mind.
*I'm safe.
I'm sorry.*
She put the phone in the drawer of the bedside table and closed it.
Outside, the harbor light was coming up gray and clean over the water, and somewhere below her, she could hear Ruth unlocking the bookstore for the morning.
She pressed one hand flat against her stomach.
"Just us for now," she said quietly.
May you like
She hadn't planned to say it out loud.
But it felt true.
