They exited the sanctuary quickly, rushing out to the parking lot. Emma felt like they were running from an enemy. Even more terrifying, they were outrunning a wall of questions that none of them would know the answer to. But she knew that she would never be able to look at her uncle the same way again.
Because their family had been fractured before and he had just smashed it to pieces.
That was when she noticed that her grandmother’s hands were shaking.
“You don’t actually believe that?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t know,” Wendy said, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t know. Why would he say it if it weren’t true?” She twisted the church program in her hands.
“Why would he say anything?” her mom asked, sounding furious. “How could he do that?”
Her grandmother was silent.
But she suddenly quickened her pace, walking to her car and leaving Emma and her mother behind.
“I don’t believe it,” Rachel said.
She couldn’t make her uncle’s words match up with what she knew of her aunt, and even if she could...
She knew Anna had a reason.
Her beautiful aunt, whose hair matched her own, and who had always seemed to have a bigger spirit than could be contained in one person.
It didn’t...matter to her.
“We need to find Aunt Anna,” Emma said.
Her mom rubbed her hand over her forehead. “Do you think she knew he was going to do that?”
Anna wasn’t here for a reason; Emma knew that much. And suddenly the ache she felt for her dad was so overwhelming she thought she might break. Her dad, who had always stood tall and firm, even when his body was weak.
She remembered the way that felt. Him holding her.
Remembered being a little girl, sitting up on his shoulders, where she could get a view of the whole world.
She could use a better view now.
“Come on, let’s... You should eat. You look pale.”
Her mom looked pale, too, but Emma knew better than to point that out.
“I wish Dad were here,” Emma whispered.
Her mom nodded, swallowing hard. “Me, too.”
4
Perhaps if the walls weren’t such a dull color I would feel more at peace. It’s white and gray everywhere. The clouds, the walls, the sea. I’m turning gray along with it.
—FROM THE DIARY OF JENNY HANSEN, FEBRUARY 1, 1900
ANNA
Anna closed her eyes. Then opened them again. Tried to catch her breath.
She was lying in bed in the Lightkeeper’s Room, a room that was currently unoccupied at the Lighthouse Inn, under the sheets. Staring through the white fabric, the sunlight penetrating the thin veil.
She’d done this when she was a kid.
Tearing through the house, breaking one of her mother’s vases.
Hide under the covers.
Collect the ladybugs that ran rampant in the house rather than exterminating them as ordered...and spill the jar in a guest’s luggage.
Hide under the covers.
She wished that she was hiding from rampant ladybugs now.
She was hiding from her mother.
From her husband.
From the world.
Service would be over by now. And everyone would know. He’d warned her he was going to do it. That he’d have to announce that their marriage was over and why and Anna had been too sick and ashamed to argue, all the guilt she’d pushed away during that bright, glaring moment of freedom tumbling in on her like a stack of bricks.
She closed her eyes again, and she went back a week. To the night of Jacob’s funeral.
She’d been lying under the covers. In this room.
She just hadn’t been alone...
Anna waited to feel guilty. Lying there in the dark, with the curtains drawn closed and Michael breathing beside her. Slow and steady, dozing the way men did after they were satisfied.
She couldn’t sleep.
But not because of guilt or regret or any of the emotions she had expected to feel, in that small space of time when she’d still been thinking clearly enough to make a decision.
The breath between him leaning in, and their lips touching.
You’ll regret it.
I don’t care.
But her conscience—or whatever had whispered to her just before the kiss—had been wrong.
When her lips touched his it was like all the pieces of herself had finally come together. That woman, that shell, who had talked to everyone at the funeral with a smile pasted on her face, had shattered into a million pieces.
Her path had been leading up to this for a couple of months now, no matter how she’d pretended it hadn’t.
She’d told herself she was only being friendly with a guest. That it was okay her heart leaped whenever she saw his name on the registry for the week.
That when he said she was pretty it was only talking.
But then he’d called her sexy.
Had said rough things to her that shocked her, things that her husband certainly wouldn’t have ever said.
He’d pursued her.
Like she mattered. Like she was the center of his life.
The intensity of it was...
It made her heart ache even now.
And there had been some point when she had realized she’d crossed some invisible line and there was no going back, but by that point she’d been so far gone she hadn’t even cared.
And standing at Jacob’s funeral, so disconnected from herself, then spending the whole drive home with Thomas in silence, she’d known.
Michael was staying at the inn. And she was ready.
She couldn’t be sorry.
She felt free. Like she was breaking shackles. Her face burned with heat, her body filled with adrenaline.
She’d never been with another man. She married her husband at eighteen, and they’d both been virgins on their wedding night.
Sex was sacred. And sharing it with someone else was...
It was the biggest betrayal she could have committed.
But no one had ever told her that you could live with someone and feel alone. That you could share a bed with them and feel cold.
That you could go into marriage shiny and young and full of hope, and fourteen years later feel worn down to nothing.
Until Michael had checked into the Lighthouse Inn.