Excerpt / Chapter 1 - Homecoming

Chapter 1 Homecoming The sea was the first thing Maeve noticed—the smell of it, raw and briny, like something torn from the past. Breakwater Bay hadn’t changed much in fifteen years. The paint still peeled from shopfronts along the harbor. The seagulls still wheeled overhead, crying like ghosts.

 

But something in the air felt different now. Thinner. Tighter.

 

Claire was gone.

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Maeve’s boots hit the gravel as she stepped out of the hired car, her coat flapping in the wind. Across the road, the old weatherboard church sat hunched beneath a grey sky, mourners trickling out with bowed heads and quick glances. People she once knew —neighbours, teachers, the odd classmate who’d stayed behind. Their expressions held the same polite surprise, the same stiff curiosity: Maeve Callahan. Back from the dead.

 

She kept her head high as she walked toward the entrance. Her heartbeat faster when she spotted the boy—young man, really—leaning against the stone fence, arms folded, mouth tight. Eli.

 

Claire’s son. Her nephew. Her godson. And now she is his guardian. Something she’s sure neither of them expected. Maeve paused in front of him. “Eli.”

 

He didn’t smile. “You came.”

 

“I told your mum I would.”

 

“She believed you.”

 

Maeve winced at the sting in his tone but didn’t rise to it. “I’m sorry.”

 

He looked away, jaw clenched. “Everyone’s sorry.”

 

Before she could answer, an older man approached—Reverend Marsh, still in his collar and coat, his eyes rimmed with fatigue.

 

“Maeve. Claire left instructions. She wanted you to have the house.”

 

Maeve blinked. “I thought… I assumed Eli—”

 

"She left it in your name," Marsh said gently. "She wanted you to sort through things. Her papers. Her research."

 

He handed her a small envelope, cream-colored, sealed in wax. Claire's handwriting on the front: For Maeve.

 

Inside was a brass key and a folded note: "Start with the attic. Trust what you find. – C."

 

Maeve felt the ground shift beneath her.

 

Eli watched her carefully. "You're staying, then."

 

"I think I have to," she said.

 

The wind picked up, carrying the scent of salt and storm. Maeve turned towards the bluff where the house sat—Claire's old weatherboard place, crouched at the sea's edge, still weathering the years.

 

Somewhere inside, the truth waited.

 

And Breakwater Bay, like always, had secrets it didn't give up easily.