Page 26 of The Glass Dolphin

She normally wasn’t a very jealous person. She didn’t need to be in the spotlight—and in fact, she’d spent a large portion of her life trying to keep people from looking at her.

She groaned and pressed one hand to the side of her belly. The baby had shifted and she’d forgotten how uncomfortable it was to grow another person inside her body. She’d do anything for the baby inside her, so she moved over onto her hip and sighed.

“You okay?” Jean asked, and Kelli looked over to her. She’d been feeding Heidi when Kelli and Parker had arrived, but she’d since laid the little girl down for her nap.

“Yes,” Kelli said with a smile. She wasn’t going to complain about her pregnancy. Not to Jean, who’d longed to carry life inside her and had never had the chance to do so. “Are you sure it’s okay if I leave Parker here? He was completely disinterested in the ultrasound.”

“Of course,” Jean said. “Reuben is showing him the new weather system, and then I told him I’d take him down to Seal Beach.”

“Is it safe down there?” Kelli worried about almost everything, though she’d found some relief from that after her divorce and through yoga and meditation. “This winter has been a bit strange.”

It had been cold and windy for a couple of months now, with lashing rain one day and then a gloriously blue sky the next. Kelli wasn’t cold at all these days, not with an extra bun in the oven to keep her warm.

Parker had brought a jacket, and Kelli reminded herself that her son wasn’t a little boy anymore. He’d be thirteen—a teenager—in only a few months. Not only that, but she trusted Jean. If she said Seal Beach was safe, it was safe.

“I’ll check the waves,” Jean said, lifting her phone up. “We’ve got a camera that points that way on the lighthouse.” She flashed a smile that didn’t stay long, and Kelli wondered how this mystery surrounding Kristen and the time capsule display had affected her.

She wasn’t sure how to ask. The words didn’t just order themselves in her head the way they might’ve for AJ or Eloise. Alice and Robin spoke their mind, even if the sentences were a bit harsh or jumbled.

Kelli generally waited and watched until she could lay out all the pieces and make sense of them. The problem was, no one was offering any pieces. Kristen had disappeared with an officer, and no one had seen her since. She’d texted exactly one time to say,I’m okay. I have some things to figure out, and I’ll let you all know everything as soon as I can.

They’d gone through the display together. Kelli could still hear Kristen say, plain as day, “These are my grandparents.”

She hadn’t been able to figure out why Kristen’s grandparents would have their picture in the time capsule. She’d spent so much time at the lighthouse with Kristen and Joel after her father had lost everything. Without Kristen, without the safety she’d felt at the lighthouse, Kelli would not be here.

She wouldn’t be in Five Island Cove right now, expecting a baby with her second husband. She wouldn’t be on the friends’ text at all. She wouldn’t even be on the earth. Kristen and the lighthouse had saved her during a crucial time of her life, and unrest filled Kelli as she thought about it all being a façade.

It wasn’t fake, she told herself. Her past wouldn’t change because of whatever she learned in the present or the future. She reminded herself of that, but the hope only went so far. When new light got shed on something—as had happened a few times over the past several years since she’d returned to the cove—feelings changed. Experiences didn’t seem the same. They didn’tfeelthe same. Kelli desperately didn’t want her fond memories of Kristen and the lighthouse to diminish or dull, wane or warp.

But she’d seen the pictures in the display. She’d heard Kristen claim them as her ancestors. Kelli had heard the stories of how Kristen’s grandparents had bought the lighthouse before World War Two, but then her granddad had gone to war.

She knew he hadn’t come home. She knew her grandmother had then dug in and run the lighthouse by herself—seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. She’d built the cottage up on the rocks to house and hire extra help, and she’d lived in this underground apartment alone.

Kristen’s father had then taken over the lighthouse duties with his family, and eventually, the task had fallen to Kristen and Joel, and now Reuben and Jean. History couldn’t be changed, but the truth of it emulated a kaleidoscope, ever-shifting with the tilt of perspective, casting the same events in a myriad of colors and patterns, each equally vivid and real.

She didn’t want her past truths to tilt. To change. To be shown through a different lens.

“The waves look a bit big,” Jean said. “But there’s plenty of beach, and he’ll just toss bread to the birds.” She looked up from her phone, her smile a tad bigger and definitely brighter. “Okay?”

“Yes, of course.” Kelli got to her feet, and because she only had ten more weeks of her pregnancy, she couldn’t actually see her shoes. “Jean.”

The other woman looked at her again, her expression open, unassuming.

“Have you heard anything more from Kristen? Do you and Reuben, perhaps, know something? It’s eating me alive.”

Jean’s face clouded, and she started shaking her head before Kelli had finished speaking. “I wish we did,” she said. “Reuben’s so perplexed by it all. He’s gone to the display three times now.”

“Those are her grandparents in the picture,” Kelli said. “She used to keep them on the wall in the cottage. We all came to help her clean out the house, and I know she took them.”

Jean nodded, her eyes focused on something far away now. “They’re her grandparents. Rose Worthington. That headline that says Rose sold the lighthouse…” She seemed defeated, and Kelli hadn’t meant to dampen the mood.

“I just want to know what’s going on,” Kelli said. “Shad won’t say much, because Aaron’s really trying to control how much information gets out there.”

“Eloise mentioned that,” Jean said.

Kelli nodded, though she didn’t like it. “We just live in this world where we expect answers in less than two seconds,” she said. “And it’s frustrating that there’s literally been nothing for days.”

“Well, that Ophelia Francis seems to have plenty to say.” Jean rolled her eyes and stood up. “Take a cookie with you. I wish I could tell you more. Kristen left no photo albums here. The library is in lock-down mode—Clara tried to get over there to look at their microfiche, maybe to find more newspaper articles.”

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