“I’ve never met the new owner,” I tell her. “She bought the house months after I left. But we can always ask.”

The three of us climb out of the van, stretching away the kinks that have settled in during the long drive from Boston. Unlike the misty afternoon when I first beheld Brodie’s Watch, today is bright and summery, and in the garden, bees buzz and a hummingbird swoops past on its way to a mound of sweet pink phlox. Rebecca has transformed what was once a front yard of weedy shrubs into floral drifts of yellow and pink and lavender. This is not the forbidding Brodie’s Watch that I remember; this house beckons us to step inside.

A smiling brunette emerges from the house to greet us. Dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with MAINE ORGANIC FARMERS, she looks like just the sort of back-to-earth woman who’d plant exuberant gardens and happily dig in the peat and manure all by herself.

“Hello, glad you all made it!” she calls out, coming down the porch steps to greet us. “I’m Rebecca. Are you Ava?” she asks, looking at me.

“I am.” I shake her hand and introduce Nicole and Mark. “Thank you so much for letting us invade your house.”

    “I’m pretty excited about this, actually! Donna Branca told me these photos will be in your new book. I think that’s pretty cool, having my house featured.” She waves us toward the front door. “My kids are spending the day at a friend’s house, so you won’t have them underfoot. The house is all yours.”

“Before I bring in the gear, I’d like to walk through it first,” says Mark. “Take a look at the light.”

“Oh, of course. It’s always about the light for you photographers, isn’t it?”

Mark and Nicole follow the owner through the front door, but I pause for a moment on the porch, not yet ready to enter. As their voices fade away into the house, I listen to tree branches rattling in the wind and the distant whoosh of waves on the rocks, sounds that instantly bring back last summer, when I lived here. Only now do I realize how much I have missed those sounds. I miss waking up to the crash of the waves. I miss my picnics on the beach and the scent of roses on the cliff path. When I wake up in my Boston apartment, I hear traffic and I smell exhaust, and when I step outside, instead of moss, I see concrete. I look at the open front door and think: Perhaps I should never have left you.

At last I step inside and take a deep breath. Rebecca has been baking and the air smells like fresh bread and cinnamon. Following the voices, I head down the hall to the sea room, where Mark and Nicole stand at the windows, transfixed by the view.

“Why on earth did you ever leave this place, Ava?” Nicole asks. “If this were my house, I think I’d spend every day right here, looking at the sea.”

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” says Rebecca. “But wait till you see the turret. Now there’s a view.” She turns to me. “I heard it was in pretty rough shape when you moved in.”

I nod. “For the first few weeks, I had two carpenters hammering upstairs.” I smile, thinking about Ned Haskell, whose wooden carving of a sparrow wearing spectacles and a chef’s hat now adorns my desk in Boston. Of all the people I met in Tucker Cove, he is the only one who regularly writes to me, and whom I now consider a friend. People are complicated, Ava. What you see isn’t always what you get, he’d once said. Words that were never truer than about Ned himself.

    “They’d have to drag me kicking and screaming out of this house,” says Nicole, still entranced by the view. “You never thought about buying it, Ava?”

“It was out of my price range. And there were things about the house that…” My voice fades. Quietly I say, “It was just time for me to move on.”

“Can you show us the rest of the house?” Mark asks Rebecca.

As they troop up the stairs, I don’t follow them, but remain at the window, gazing out to sea. I think of the lonely nights when I’d stumble up those same stairs to my bedroom, drunk on wine and regret. The nights when the scent of the sea would herald Captain Brodie’s arrival. When I needed him most, there he was. Even now, when I close my eyes, I can feel his breath in my hair and the weight of his body on mine.

“I heard what happened to you, Ava.”

With a start, I turn to see Rebecca has returned and is standing behind me. Mark and Nicole have gone outside to unload their gear and Rebecca and I are alone in the room. I don’t know what to say. I’m uncertain what she means by I know what happened to you. She can’t possibly know about the ghost.

Unless she too has seen him.

“Donna told me about it,” Rebecca says quietly. She moves closer, as if to share a secret. “When I inquired about buying the house, she had to disclose its history. She told me about Dr. Gordon. About how he attacked you, up on the widow’s walk.”

I don’t say anything. I want to know what else she’s heard. What else she knows.

“She told me there were other victims. The tenant who lived here just before you moved in. And a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“You knew all that, yet you still bought the house?”

    “Dr. Gordon’s dead. He can’t hurt anyone now.”

“But after all the things that happened here…”

“Bad things happen everywhere, and the world moves on. The only reason I could afford a house this beautiful is because it comes with a flawed history. Other buyers were scared off, but when I walked through the front door, I instantly felt as if this place was welcoming me. As if it wanted me to be here.”

As it once wanted me.

“And then I came into this room and I smelled the sea, and I was certain this is where I belong.” She turns to the window and stares out at the water. Mark and Nicole noisily chatter in the kitchen as they set up lights and tripods and cameras, but Rebecca and I are silent, both of us mesmerized by the view. Both of us know what it’s like to be seduced by Brodie’s Watch. I think of the women who grew old and died here, who were equally seduced by this house. All of them were dark-haired and slender, like me.

Like Rebecca.

Nicole steps into the room. “Mark’s almost ready to start shooting. Time for hair and makeup, Ava.”

And then there’s no other chance to speak in private with Rebecca. First I must sit in the makeup chair to get brushed and fluffed, and then it’s time to smile for the camera in the kitchen, where I pose with heirloom tomatoes and the copper pots and pans that we’ve brought up from my Boston kitchen. We move outside, where I pose among the sunflowers, and then it’s on to the stone patio for photos overlooking the sea.

Mark gives a thumbs-up. “That’s it for the exteriors. Now we need just one more location.”

“Where do we go next?” I ask.

“The turret. The light’s gorgeous up there and I want to get at least one shot of you in that room.” He picks up the camera and tripod. “Since your book’s called The Captain’s Table, let’s have you pose looking out to sea. Just like the captain in your title.”

They all head upstairs, but I pause at the bottom of the steps, reluctant to follow them. I don’t want to see the turret again. I don’t want to revisit the place where so many ghosts still linger. Then Mark calls down: “Ava, are you coming?” and I have no choice.

    When I reach the second floor, I glance into the bedrooms of Rebecca’s children and see scattered tennis shoes and Stars Wars posters, lavender curtains and a menagerie of stuffed animals. A boy and a girl. Ahead is my old bedroom, its door closed.

I turn instead to the turret staircase. One last time, I mount the steps.

The others don’t even glance at me when I enter. They are too busy staging lights and reflectors and tripods. Silently I survey all the changes that Rebecca has made to the room. A pair of wicker chairs is tucked into the alcove, inviting visitors to an intimate chat. A white sofa sits warming in the sunshine, and on the end table is a stack of gardening magazines and a nearly empty mug with a few last sips of cold coffee. A crystal dangles at the window, casting rainbows of light on the walls. This is a different room, a different house than I remember, and I am both relieved and sorrowful about the changes. Brodie’s Watch has moved on without me, to be claimed by a woman who has made the home her own.

“Ready for you, Ava,” says Mark.

As he snaps the final photos, I assume the role everyone expects of me, the cheerful food writer in the captain’s house. For the book’s introduction, I wrote that Brodie’s Watch was where I found inspiration, and it’s true. Here is where I tested and perfected my recipes, where I learned there is no finer condiment than the scent of sea air. It’s where I learned that wine does not cure grief, and when you dine with guilt, even the most tenderly prepared meal is tasteless.