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Chapter 1

From outside, the Seasalter house looked much the same—tiny and straight, holding itself brave against sea winds and the strangers milling in the front yard. But it seemed tired, almost grey instead of the pale blue I remembered. An anemic crust crawled over the brick foundation, like the salt had stung it harshly in the two years I’d been gone. When we passed through the gate, it creaked grumpily, like it was annoyed with me for selling the place.

Sam clasped my hand like we were in line at a wake rather than queuing for the noon tour of the London Literary Archive’s newest attraction, “A Walk through Salt in the Sea.” I felt him tense when anyone entered the yard.

“Is it always this busy?” I asked Patricia as a family of four lined up behind us.

“This is tame. You should have seen the crowds when it opened last summer. And they don’t just keep to your house. They’re up and down the beach.”

“The locals probably wish the Beckett family would shut up. All we’re good for is disturbing the peace.” The gate creaked again, as if it agreed.

“Don’t you want to let the tour guide know who you are?” Patricia asked as the line slowly advanced. “I reckon you could do the tour in private or at least skip to the front of the queue.”

“No way,” I said, a resolve that deepened when someone behind me laughingly said the words “pet oyster.” Someone else mimicked the sound of a toilet flushing. I glimpsed the decades-old imprint of my parents’ hands arched above my own as we climbed the cement steps. Sam’s fingers tightened around mine.

“What do you think? Did my pretty sea glass kitchen survive the period remodel?” I asked them, knowing that the little house I loved—the beach cottage that had almost been mine for keeps—would seem very different now that it had been redone to match its description in my dad’s famous memoir.

Patricia looked doubtful. Sam refused to look up.

“No? Any bets on what hideous color the kitchen appliances are? I’m going with olive green. No, wait—deviled-egg yellow.”

Patricia grinned. Sam frowned. I laughed. The tour guide, a stern-faced woman who had introduced herself only as Mrs. Collins, pursed her lips at me. I filed away a mental snapshot of her; she’d be a perfect model for an uptight headmistress character.

“Hey, check it out,” I whispered to Sam as we filed into the foyer. “They’re using my pelican letter holder as the donation jar!”

He gave me a look that resembled the headmistress’s and pulled out his wallet.

“I’ll get it,” I told him, but he scowled.

“I’m not letting you pay to walk through your own house,” he said, stuffing thirty pounds down the pelican’s throat. He gestured toward Mrs. Collins. “If she wasn’t so frightening, I’d ask for my change. A suggested donation of eight quid each…”

“Stingy,” I told him. “This place is a museum now. It’s educational.”

The three of us rounded the corner into the living room and, despite my best intentions, I couldn’t help but gasp. The airy white walls of my pretty beach cottage had been covered with dark wood paneling. Vines trailed from macramé plant hangers grouped in the corner. The built-in bookshelves I had loved were dominated by a green vinyl recliner with a split in the seat. My deep linen sofa had been replaced by a shabby plaid couch with a bit of stuffing poking through one cushion.

My brow wrinkled. For one thing, while money hadn’t been abundant for my parents in our Seasalter years, I’m pretty sure they would have patched up the furniture. Let no one say that my mother isn’t handy with a needle and thread. During her time in the Peace Corps, she had outfitted more kids than Fräulein Maria and she had done it without a stockpile of brocade drapes.

For another thing, our mid-century curtains with the big yellow swirls completely clashed with that Christmas-plaid couch.

Patricia looked at me warily and I didn’t want to know what Sam’s face was doing. Both of them had worried that I would break down the minute I saw the remodel. And it was tempting. But since flinging myself onto that ugly couch was out of the question, I took a deep breath and pulled myself together.

“My mom would regret her decision not to provide guidance on the décor,” I whispered.

Mrs. Collins stopped mid-sentence to give me a withering look. She had been explaining something—the house tour based on my dad’s book or the family saga in general—that I hadn’t heard. I had been too busy staring sorrowfully at my mom’s crewelwork tapestry, which I had forgotten to pack after selling the house. Mrs. Collins must have misinterpreted my regret as mockery. She looked at me when she said, “Although it’s not commonly known, Isobel Beckett—or Isobel Beckett-Mwenda, as she’s called today—is a talented visual artist. While the décor of the time might not agree with our modern aesthetics, one must applaud her for weaving elements of her family’s story into even a simple needlework project.”

This particular needlework project involved two deer lapping at a spring while an owl looked on. I’m still not sure what elements of the family story were supposed to be represented. Also, my mom has a solid sense of style, but the reason she isn’t known as a visual artist is because she’s not one. As she said herself when she heard the comment, three fill-in-the-grid tapestries don’t make her Grandma Moses.

My purposes for going on the tour weren’t clear, even to me, but I wasn’t there to prove that the London Literary Archive had missed the mark when they’d converted the family homestead to a tourist attraction. And I certainly wasn’t going to set Mrs. Collins’s slightly inaccurate story straight. I gave her a chipper smile and sealed my lips tight.

We were stuck on the landing waiting for our look into the bedrooms when Sam touched my arm.

“If you’re doing all right, I’m going to wait on the beach.” He pulled his hat over his eyes as he slouched downstairs. Even so, when he passed a girl on the bottom step, she drew in a sharp breath.

“Mum, that was Simon Quinn!” I heard her say, her voice a curious cross between a hiss and a shriek. Her mom’s eyes shot up to mine.

“It’s always the teenagers,” I whispered to Patricia. “He could be wearing a Halloween mask and they’d sniff him out.”

“He does have a rather distinctive presence,” she said with a smirk.

“I know you’re talking about his butt, Patricia.” I laughed aloud, but then snapped my mouth shut. Mrs. Collins’s expression said she was ten seconds away from making me write a hundred lines of I will not disrespect important works of literature.

My stomach cramped a bit during our tour of my childhood bedroom. Clearly Richard Glenister, the director of the Archive, had raided my own memoir for inspiration. The room was filled with details I’d described in Love on Paper: the star-patterned wallpaper, my clubhouse in the crawl space, the lace handkerchief swaddling one of Whitstable’s famous oysters. The little yellow rocking chair my granddad had made for me stung the most. I’d forgotten it in the attic when we sold the house to the Archive and didn’t remember until it was too late.

The strawberry-embroidered dress laid out on the bed forced me out of the room. It was unnervingly similar to the one I had worn on what, at that point, I still considered the worst night of my life. Me, locked into the hull of a tiny sailboat, my dad lashed to the deck by a rope and his own panic. Just looking at that dress, I felt the boat pitch beneath me. It was the only provocation I needed to get out.

After glimpsing the love nest of John and Isobel Beckett (and accepting that nothing remained of my own love nest but the quote painted above the bed), Patricia and I headed downstairs. I spent a solitary moment in the little sun porch office where first my dad and then I had written some significant words. He had banged out literary greatness on his green Olivetti typewriter. Thirty years later, I had banged my head on the desk before deciding to write smut about Sam—a decision which, when I refused my editor’s demand that I publish the story, had ultimately cost me the house.

I ran my finger over the chipped white paint on the desk we had shared, three decades apart, and listened to Mrs. Collins relate the details of my parents’ split: six years after the publication of Salt in the Sea, after years of dealing with John Robert Beckett’s paranoid delusions (lucid panic attacks, I mentally corrected), Isobel Beckett took their daughter Mariana (Marin for short) and left him to deal with his illness alone. When Isobel remarried a man from Zimbabwe (at least it starts with a Z…), Mr. Beckett cut off contact from all but a few individuals. For almost twenty years, he didn’t write a word (he didn’t publish a word; he wrote plenty) until his daughter’s broken heart reunited the couple.

“They came together for the sake of their only child,” Mrs. Collins said dramatically. When I laughed aloud, she glared at me. “Fortunately, the couple has rebuilt their friendship after so many years apart. Mr. Beckett published an acclaimed book of essays last year. It’s available in our gift shop.”

“I just bought one,” said the mother of the girl who had recognized Sam. She turned toward me and held out a copy of Love on Paper. “I bought your book, too. Would you sign it for me?”

“Sure,” I said, scribbling my name on the title page. Mrs. Collins’s mouth gaped so widely, I thought her bridge might fall out. I gave her a no-hard-feelings smile. “My stepdad is from Zambia, by the way.”

Patricia was waiting for me in the foyer. I ran my hand over the pelican’s brass bill before passing through the front door. When the gate slammed shut behind me, I refused to look back. The sweet guy waiting for me felt bad enough without watching me languish in regret.

“I’ve never seen Sam so uptight,” Patricia said as we walked toward where he was staring grimly out at the water. I could see his fists clenching inside his pockets.

“Guilt is his go-to reaction when anyone mentions the Seasalter house. Instead of acknowledging that it’s my fault for writing about him, he blames himself. He won’t let go of the belief that I gave up my book contract and lost the house because he got so angry when he first found out I’d written about him.” I watched him drag the toe of his black Chuck Taylors over the shingle beach and felt some guilt myself. “I shouldn’t have brought him here, no matter how curious I was about how the exhibit turned out.”

Sam’s bleak expression didn’t lift when he saw us. Patricia gave me a knowing look and continued up the beach to her house, leaving us with a promise to meet for breakfast before we went home to Chicago the next day.

I hooked my fingers around Sam’s arm and pulled him toward me.

“How’s it going, gloomy?” I asked, pushing my bottom lip out at him. “You missed the best part. My former bedroom has wall-to-wall green shag carpet. With matching green walls. It’s like standing inside an avocado.”

I watched him muster a half-hearted smile for me. “I suppose it’s a good thing I won’t need to count the floorboards again. At least not in that room.” He wrapped both arms around my waist. “I’m sorry I left you. It couldn’t have been easy, listening to a stranger instruct you in your own family history. It irritated me, so it must drive you mad.”

I shrugged. “Salt in the Sea was required reading in my AP English class. Writing a book report on my dad’s mental health cured me of being sensitive.”

“How are you feeling after all that, honestly?” he asked.

The whole truth. That’s what we’d promised, and a deal’s a deal. I touched my hands to his chest.

“Honestly? Very tired, rather hungry, somewhat sad, slightly disgusted. But so happy to be with you.” I leaned my head against him.

He pulled me close and I felt his whole chest tighten when he swallowed. A minute later, he said, “I will make this up to you, Marin. Someday, I promise, I will make this right.”

“It’s already right. The best thing you can do for me is stop beating yourself up. Walking away—from the book deal and the house—was my decision, and I would do it again if I had to.” I pushed back to look at him. “Now smile at me or I’ll buy you a keychain from the gift shop in my garage.”

I kissed his clenched jaw until it relaxed and then slid my hand down to his. It was curled into a fist he seemed reluctant to open.

“What have you got?”

“Nothing,” he said, but he ducked his head. For the first time all day, a real smile played at the corners of his mouth.

“Come on, let me see.” I traced a finger over his fist until he unfolded his hand.

Sea glass. Frosted bits of clear and Coke-bottle green and my favorite aqua blue. The kind he had brought me when we’d first started dating. It used to line the windowsills in my Seasalter house.

“What are you doing with this?” I asked, and his little smile deepened. He slipped it into his pocket with a shrug, then slipped his hand into mine.

“Saving it for someday.”

I try to depict my characters’ conflicts in the most honest way possible. But I also appreciate that every reader has the right to choose what information they want to allow into their brain. I want you to enjoy my books, and I would never want to upset you with tough aspects of the plot.

Below, I’ve included information about sensitive plot points, should you want to know more before reading.

Please be advised, these are spoilers about things that will happen to characters or have happened in a character's past.

If you want to know more, please scroll down. If you prefer not to know, please close this tab before scrolling down to read.

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Love on Film contains mild language, sensual content, references to infidelity and substance abuse, and strong depictions of mental illness, miscarriage/stillbirth, and self-harm.