Two rusted anchors were laid together on the rocks that separated land from sea. The horizon was lined with boats, and overhead a plane was leaving a line of white as it headed north. Climbing across the rocks, she sat, took off her shoes, and stared out at nothing at all.

Why am I here? she asked all over again as she tried to figure out what it was her grandmother wanted her to see, to understand, about that specific part of her life. Why had she sent her pages from a diary that Emily had no idea even existed, instead of simply telling her everything in person, before she died?

She imagined the ghost of a life once lived, somewhere within this place. A young woman with a bruised heart, seeking shelter with a man who loved her in the safest possible way.

It was about him. The thought came to her, pure and simple. The first book her grandmother ever published was about the love between a man and a woman that never quite was.

“Everyone deserves to be loved at least once in each lifetime,” she whispered the first line of the novel, then skimmed through the story in her mind. It was centered around the broken promises of a man who needed to hide his real identity from a society not yet ready to hear the truth. Promises he made to a woman so in need of love, who deserved more than what he offered her. A woman who finally learnt how to let go of the things she could not control.

“Antoine was your muse.” She shook her head at the idea, smiled as she imagined her grandmother living in this place, writing down a story so closely tied to her reality.

It’s what her grandmother had always done: linking real life to the stories, showing Emily that there was always a way to imagine something more.

“There you are.” Tyler stood, holding onto one of the anchors, a little out of breath. “I’d forgotten you have a habit of disappearing.”

“No, I don’t,” Emily replied as she got to her feet, slipped back on her shoes, and hopped across the rocks.

“Oh, really?” Tyler dropped one arm around her shoulder, bumped his hip against her own. “What about that time in the Natural History Museum?”

She shrugged herself free from him, went over to peruse the menu from one of the indistinguishable restaurants lining the harbor. Emily barely registered the letters and words on the page as she tried to swallow away the disappointment she could not be rid of.

“How about a drink?” Tyler nodded in the direction of a bar, above which hung a bright green shamrock.

The covered space outside was simple, with a stone floor, a handful of tables, and a beer keg in one corner, around which two men stood, nursing their pints of stout. Inside was more cave than room, with low ceilings covered in shingle, from which hung a line of plastic flags. A wooden bar ran the full length of one wall, on top of which was a machine made from copper pipes fashioned together into some sort of pump.