Free In the Waning Light by Loreth Anne White

stilled. Poor kid. She’d been a mere shadow of herself. Skin so pale and translucent her freckles had stood out like floating stars. In the following months she’d begun to cover her freckles with chalky makeup, and she’d cut her hair brutally short, dyed it punk black. As if somehow needing to wear her own aura of death. Or stamp it out, or something.
    Peggy had ached to say something to Meg in the school hallway—her locker had been just near Meg’s—but she’d never known what to say. And as the months wore on, Meg had begun to project a keep-the-shit-away-from-me hostility. So Peggy had just looked away. Like all the other kids had. Leaving Meg Brogan to walk and sit and eat in the cafeteria alongside them all like a silent specter, a shadow somehow removed from their own real, comfortable world, untouched by what had touched her.
    Blake Sutton was the only person who’d persevered long enough to ever get through to her. Just about every girl in her class had at one time or another crushed on Blake. He’d wasted it all on Meg.
    And then she’d gone and broken the boy’s heart clean in two when she left. He’d never have married Allison if he could’ve had his Meg. And now look at him, a single father with a son he never wanted.
    Peggy inhaled, glanced at the kitchen clock. This stuff was drawing her back. She needed to get ready, go help in the store.

    With the base of his fist, Blake banged louder on the camper door. “Hello? Anyone home?”
    No answer. He noted the Washington plates. Either the occupant was dead asleep, or out on a morning walk or . . . fishing? He frowned, turned slowly around, taking in the bay, and then he caught sight of a lone figure in the distance, on the Crabby Jack deck.
    A woman.
    She stood at the railing cradling a travel mug, looking out over the bay. Hair long and wild in the breeze. Chestnut-red, the color catching the gold in the dawn sun. Something snared like a bramble in his chest. With it came a hot rush of adrenaline. He shook it off. Disarmed by the coincidence, he crossed the vacant camper sites and made his way through the covered area in front of his office, and around the building to the front deck of the cafe. As he turned the corner, Lucy bounded ahead and nudged the woman’s jeans in search of a greeting. The woman stiffened in surprise at the dog’s touch, then she laughed when she saw it was a black Lab. She set her mug on the railing and crouched down to pet Lucy, revealing her profile. Blake’s heart stilled. His breath, his whole body stopped dead in his tracks.
    “Oh, hello, girl, who are you?” she said to his wiggly Lab as she examined the tag on her collar. “Lucy? Aren’t you a pretty thing.” She glanced up and froze. Paled. Her mouth opened, but words seemed to elude her. Slowly, she rose to her feet, reached for the railing, as if to steady herself.
    Blake felt as though he was seeing a ghost. His world spun and tilted in a dizzying distortion of time. She’d matured—the lines of her features had refined. She was slender under that bulky brown coat. Almost a little too thin. Wan complexion. Same soft brush of freckles. Wide mouth. Light honey-brown eyes, almost amber in this light. Big eyes, dark lashes. Those eyes that had always sucked him in with their mystery, into the depths where Meggie’s imagination lurked, the place he knew she hid the real girl, the vulnerable teen, the maturing woman. The place he knew hurt. And how he’d tried to help her out, but never could fully lure her into his light. Yes, for selfish reasons of his own, he’d tried. Meg had been his first love. Real love. The kind of feeling that went beyond sexual lust and attempts at gratification. The kind of feeling that delved deep into the realm of friendship, kinship. Soul mate, as trite as that might seem to some.
    The woman who’d left this town, and him, because he reminded her of bad shit.
    He knew what she’d become. He’d read her books. In tabloid