Lonely. If feelings may be used in that way, that is how the room appears. A deep-seated loneliness that has forgotten any other state.
Jude lights an oil lamp left on the bedside table. After, he runs a quick finger over the table’s surface, nervously wiping the dust off on his trousers as he straightens up. “I do hope it’s all right,” he says, glancing in my direction. Though no sooner have I met his gaze than his brown eyes cut away from mine, looking black as midnight in the low light.
“It’s fine,” I say, voice curt. There was a time when softening my words didn’t present such a challenge. “Thank you.”
Jude smiles, close-lipped. He still looks as tired and nervous as before, but he stops destroying the cuff of his sweater, so that’s something. “Right,” he says. “Well, good night, then.”
“Good night, Jude.”
I close the door in his wake, listening as he continues farther down the hall to his own room. Not long after, there’s the soft click of a door opening, then silence. Shutting my eyes, I take a breath, my insides coiled tight in a way that cannot be undone by music.
I wander over to sit on the bed. The sheets are tucked into the mattress in hospital corners, white and neatly pressed. The tidiness is made disconcerting by the storm’s darkness, by the thought of blood staining the shoreline below.
In past times, the lighthouse had been a home. Old books were left open on the counter, children’s toys on the steps. These walls had echoed with my father’s laugh; the floorboards knew his footsteps. He and Llyr Osric, Jude’s father, would sit for hours in the kitchen, studying charts and old bound books I could not yet read.
Rowan sticks were hung above the kitchen window, sea-pink flowers in a vase on the sill. Now it appears Jude Osric is not at all concerned about keeping good luck. The herbs he has are common ones, the rooms smelling only of salt air and wood smoke and floor polish.
Hospital corners—I tug the sheets back and they come free. I set down my coat at the foot of the bed, my violin case on the floor just below. Often, when a storm like this batters the cliffs, I’ll wake during the night to play something low and soft at the window. Not tonight, I think. However much he likes my playing, I don’t believe Jude Osric, with his quiet disposition, would look favorably on violin music conducted at this hour.
I’m staring up at the cracked white ceiling when my eyes begin to slip closed. The events of this afternoon swirl around me like a fog: Jude walking along the cliff, shoulders hunched against the rain; dread like a weight in my stomach, boots slipping on mud as I hurried down to the beach; Connor lying still and cold, buried in wet sand and blood. A shiver creeps over my spine.
Sleep does not come easy. Each crack of thunder booms like a drum. I hear the wind whistling through the night and imagine it sweeping through the moors as a living creature—a wolf howling at the moon.
I’ve no idea of the time; perhaps it’s near morning already. Perhaps my mother is worried sick over my whereabouts, but that’s a slim possibility. She may well pretend, but that’s all it would be: a feigned sort of affection, attempting to play the part of concerned mother. I’m careful to tuck that thought into memory as I turn over on the bed; could be good fodder for a row.
And as I fall farther into sleep, there are footsteps, Jude’s familiar tread on the stairs, and I’m almost certain I hear him talking.
Murmured whispers coming from the room below.
CHAPTER FOUR
SUNLIGHT PAINTS RED ACROSS my closed eyelids. I open them—blinking at white sheets, dust motes drifting above the floorboards—feeling lost and bewildered until my mind snaps to waking as well. I remember the storm and Jude Osric, a bloodstained beach and Connor left to the mercy of the elements.
My heart feels heavy with a grief I’ve no real claim to.
I turn over the affairs of last night once more before getting up out of bed. The sheets are a twisted mess, and I try to put them in some semblance of order. I don’t have Jude’s talent for folding something within an inch of its life, but I feel it’s a good attempt. Outside, pink tints the early-morning sky. The window’s angle makes it difficult to gauge signs of the storm’s passing, but I know the marks it will have yielded—grass flattened by wind, uneven shifts of sand on the beach, clumps of seaweed strewn about, cliff sides gritty with salt.
There will be no sirens, not so soon after such a tempest. I imagine them sheltering in the rocky crevices, in the darkest places of the sea. Turning back to the bed, I fetch my things and consider the possibility of Jude being awake at this hour. Quite likely, as I find a note written in his hand slipped beneath the door’s edge.
Morning, Moira.
You’ll find me in the lantern room or up on the gallery deck.
—J
I fold the note with care, tucking it into the safety of my coat pocket.
At the washstand on the first floor, I splash my face with cold water, pin my brown hair into a tidy chignon, and wrinkle my nose at the mud-spattered hem of my dress. My long coat fares even worse, but I shrug it on nonetheless.
Making my way toward the tower, I pause near the end of the hall. I stare at the closed door of the last room, beyond which I heard voices in the night. It’s a storeroom, I think, or it used to be, before the death of Jude’s parents. I’m unsure of what he could be keeping in here now. I try the knob and find it locked. When I put my ear to the wood, I’m met with only silence.
Perhaps it’s nothing. The cottage is an old structure, after all, afflicted by frequent creaks and groans, as Jude said. I turn away, open the oak door, and head up the iron stairwell that spirals up, up, up, along the sides of the lighthouse. When I reach the gallery deck, a rush of cold air cuts through my coat.
Yet the view is well worth the chill. A panorama of sea and sky and sunlight greets me, the cliff below a sharp black drop, bestowing a scattering of rocks to the sea. The sight is wondrous in a way that makes me want to play something entirely new just for this moment and never again. I grip the rusted railing and feel like shouting for the sake of it, but I swallow the feeling when my eyes find Jude Osric.
He leans back fast asleep in his chair. Without his cap, his curls tangle in the wind, ash and oil staining his hands. He must’ve already visited the lantern room. I take a step toward him and he starts awake, his eyes glassy and unseeing. Half a second later, recognition sets in. Jude blinks, rubs a hand over his face, and gets soot in one eyebrow. He says, “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Reaching into his coat, he pulls out a pocket watch. The glass over the clock face is scratched and clouded with age, but the hands still keep time. It’s just gone seven o’clock. Jude brushes his thumb over the face, and I turn my gaze on him.
“You look filthy.”
He yawns and says, “Thank you,” so he might still be half-asleep. It’s not hard to guess he’s been up all night, seeing how bloodshot his eyes are. Though whether it was because of his duties as keeper or by choice alone is another matter.
I want to ask after his night terrors. Seeing Connor down on the beach, it would be of little surprise if Jude’s nightmares return full force. What actually comes out of my mouth, however, is quite another thing. “I just wanted to say goodbye,” I tell him. “Thank you again for letting me spend the night. It was more than generous of you.”