Kendra Sunderland Here To Stay ^new^ (2024)

Instead, she began to fix things. Not just the lighthouse—though she rewired the old Fresnel lens and got it spinning again for the first time in nearly two decades—but small things. She repaired the broken bench outside the hardware store. She left jars of homemade blackberry jam on neighbors’ porches. She showed up at the town council meeting and volunteered to rebuild the dock that had rotted away in the last storm.

“You’re not from here,” said Marv, the diner’s owner, sliding her a second cup. kendra sunderland here to stay

The real story came out in October, during the first real gale of the season. Kendra was down at the dock, securing a skiff that had broken loose, when she saw a figure stumbling along the jetty—a kid, maybe twelve, soaked to the bone and crying. She hauled him into the cottage, wrapped him in blankets, and learned that his name was Leo. He’d been trying to prove he wasn’t afraid of the old lighthouse. The storm had caught him on the rocks. Instead, she began to fix things

But Kendra didn’t leave. And she didn’t go mad. She left jars of homemade blackberry jam on

“Why?” asked the mayor, a skeptical woman named Eunice.

Kendra didn’t call his parents. She walked him home herself, three miles through the wind and rain, and handed him over to a frantic mother who had already called the coast guard. The mother hugged Kendra like she was family.

The town of Port Erlin was the kind of place that swallowed strangers whole. Its main street had one diner, one hardware store, and a post office that doubled as the rumor mill. When Kendra’s beat-up truck rattled down the main drag, heads turned. She was tall, with tired eyes and a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She bought coffee at the diner and paid for three months of moorage for a boat she didn’t have.