Amelia Joy

Stay ninety days, the letter said. Nora drives nine hours to a coastal Maine town she's never seen — and finds a half-wrecked cottage and the man she walked away from twelve years ago, waiting in the yard.

Josie arrives with a 9-year-old, a left arm that won't stop shaking, and a gutted waterfront cafe. She doesn't need help — least of all the lobsterman next door with coffee and bad jokes at 5:45 every morning.

She ran. He stayed. Fifteen years later, forgiveness is the only thing Claire can't earn — and Liam builds wooden boats by hand, with sawdust in his eyebrows and grey-green eyes that take their time finding you.

Leah has been Grace Harbor's librarian for years — the one who notices, never the one who gets noticed. Then a widowed writer comes to town to chronicle the old lighthouse keeper's letters, and what he keeps writing in his margins isn't about the lighthouse keeper at all.

Kelsey Doyle runs the roastery her mother built out of a net shed and has raised her son alone since his father left on an ordinary Tuesday. She hands everyone the same two words before they can offer her a thing. Then a widowed carpenter comes to bring the old lighthouse back to life, and he never unpacks the bag in his truck.