And it was so hard to give up such a beautiful gift.
“I like these pictures,” he said. “But you should have hung up the ones I took of you.”
Her heart went tight. “The ones you took of me in my underwear? I was not going to hang those on the wall.”
His eyes were open again. “But I’d have enjoyed staring at them. I like the ocean but...it’s nothing compared to you.”
She couldn’t speak. Not around the lump in her throat.
She lay down beside him, gripping the edge of the blue-and-white quilt that had been pushed down to the foot of the bed. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder. “Are you flirting with me?”
“Yes.” His eyes fluttered closed again and she smiled.
She looked at him, and his familiar profile. And she watched as his breathing became more and more shallow. She didn’t want to close her eyes, because she didn’t want to miss one more rise-and-fall of his chest.
“I love you,” she whispered, the lump in her throat going sharp, painful.
He didn’t answer.
She started to get tired, the weight of the moment overwhelming her. She fought closing her eyes for a moment, fought sleep. But then some part of her whispered in her ear.
That falling asleep wasn’t a bad thing.
That she should enjoy the chance to go to sleep with her husband of twenty years one last time.
She did.
And when she opened her eyes an hour later, his chest was still.
EMMA
Emma stopped at the mailbox at the end of the private drive that led to the Lighthouse Inn at Cape Hope, her family home and business. Standing there wasn’t going to make a letter appear; she knew that.
She’d had a few acceptances already, but not the one. Not the one that she was waiting for. Not the one that she wanted.
The one that she needed.
It was insane, to think that the next four years of her life, where she lived, what kind of education she would get, was decided by this. And that would decide...everything else. The friends she would have, whom she would meet.
All of it would be decided by this letter.
And she didn’t know what she was going to do if she couldn’t go to Boston.
So that was fine. She was just standing there waiting for a life-ending piece of mail. Acceptance or rejection into the Boston University marine-biology program.
She jerked open the box and looked inside. There were two letters. She couldn’t see to whom either was addressed. She pulled them out and saw that the first one was junk.
And the second...
It was it.
Tension unwound inside her, all the bones in her body dissolving. She was afraid she was going to collapse in the driveway.
She couldn’t open it out here. She had to go—get inside and light a candle or do a ritual or something.
She took a couple of breaths and gathered herself. The end of the driveway was shrouded by trees, and only a weak sliver of afternoon light managed to break through. But the trees also blocked the wind coming off the sea.
In January, that wind could be bitter, slicing through jackets and gloves to chill you to the bone.
She got back into her car, a late-model Peugeot, which her father had accused of being impractical, as well as an extension of the local landfill, based on the amount of junk—what he perceived to be junk—that Emma had inside it.
She had made the case for it being necessary. A mobile extension of her bedroom, not the landfill, thank you very much.
He’d laughed at that and hadn’t ever mentioned the state of her car again.
She would miss her dad when she left for school.
And he’d still be here for that. She had to believe it.
She drove too quickly down the drive, and as she rounded the corner, the first thing she could see was the guesthouse, white with a red roof and a picket fence around the outside. The Captain’s House. And next to it was Emma’s house, the Lightkeeper’s House, they now called it. White and red, just like the first, but this one was a duplex, divided in half to accommodate the assistant lightkeepers and their families, back in the late 1800s.
She parked her car and went through the white gate, walking on the path that led around to the front of the house, to the vast porch that the duplexes shared, with one door on either end of the porch.
The sea roared like a monster, booming below, the waves all white foam today as they collided with the large, jagged rocks before frothing into the small cove of coarse, rocky sand, encircled by dark green mountains that helped to shield beachgoers from the worst of the wind.
This view had been there, unchanging, all of her life.
Nearly every morning, she’d woken up, come out to this porch and looked at the ocean.
The idea of leaving it suddenly made her more sad than excited. What if the letter did say yes, and she moved across the country?
For the past two years she’d built up fantasies of a life at that school. She’d built a relationship with the lead researcher at an aquarium there, who assured her she’d have a place to work and get hands-on experience should she be accepted to the school.
Her best friend, Catherine, had applied there, too.
The place, the program...
There wasn’t anywhere better.
Oh...what if her letter said no?
She took a breath of the briny, salt-touched air and smiled. She walked over to the wooden door and looked up at the window, the pale sunlight hitting the glass squares and lighting up the colors.
Purple and green and gold.
Then she pushed open the door and stopped.
The sight of her mother standing there immobilized her.
Her mother was waxen. Her dark red hair hung limp down past her shoulders. It was more than the typical marks of exhaustion marring her face. It was like a light had been wrenched from her.
“He’s gone,” she said.
Emma didn’t have to ask what that meant.
Her grip was like iron on the letter, even though her hand trembled. Clinging to it like she was afraid she’d lose her hold on it.
But she knew she already had.
Because whatever had seemed possible outside her front door was impossible now that she was inside.
WENDY
Wendy McDonald finished putting the very last letter into the leather-bound scrapbook and placed it gently on the side table in the lavender sitting room, just next to the table that housed the antique sewing machine.
Those letters and journal entries from Jenny Hansen, the mail-order bride of Olaf Hansen, the first lightkeeper’s wife, had been donated recently by the local museum.