She came back to Carrabelle to sell her grandmother's old oyster house and say goodbye. She did not plan on a reason to stay, or on getting back the warm, generous part of herself she thought she had quietly packed away for good.

At fifty-five, Cory Ashby has a tidy house in Tallahassee, a grown son who worries about her, thirty careful years of a good, quiet marriage that ended when her husband did, and one last errand: drive down to Carrabelle, the Old-Florida oystering village where the river runs out to the sound, clean out the Oyster House her grandmother Ada left her on the fish-house dock, and sell the failing old building to whoever will take it. Two weeks. In and out.

Then she meets Hoyt Vickery, the quiet, widowed skiff builder down the dock who mends the things nobody thanks him for and has kept Ada's Oyster House dry and its taxes paid for years without telling a soul. And she climbs the landing stairs to find the shucking hall shuttered and sagging, the lantern dark on the piling, and a smooth developer's survey stakes marching down the riverfront.

A retired librarian who learned to shuck oysters and feed a full table at her grandmother's elbow cannot quite walk away. So Cory stays past her two weeks, and she and Hoyt start bringing the old Oyster House back board by board, two people who thought their best years were behind them, learning that the surest light on the river might be the one they keep lit for each other.

A sweet, clean, slow-burn later-in-life romance with no spice and a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Welcome to Carrabelle, where every book is a new couple, a fresh start, and a happy ending.