Before disaster struck, she’d been a prosecutor. Now, she was a shell of that person, someone who’d once had a life in addition to being Lewis’s mom. Maybe if she hadn’t been so ambitious, she wouldn’t have been sealed off in her office when her toddler let himself out of the house that fateful afternoon.
“Looks like a pretty place,” Oliver said.
“Yes.”
That counted as conversation for them these days. It was all she was capable of—one-word answers and a nod to let him know she’d heard whatever he’d said.
She didn’t care what he said.
He’d suffered as much as she had, if not more. She’d been working when Lewis left the house. Oliver had been asleep on the sofa. He blamed himself. Dara blamed him. She hated him for taking a nap, and yes, she knew that was unfair. She didn’t care about fairness or anything else.
Her son was dead. What else mattered? Nothing mattered. That’s why she didn’t care about going to Gansett Island to live in a lighthouse. A change in geography wasn’t going to fix what was wrong with her, what was wrong with them.
Maisy nudged at her leg.
Dara scratched the Lab’s blond head absently. Sometimes she felt like Maisy was the only one who truly understood how she felt. Maisy had seen it happen and had never been the same. Her heartbreak was every bit as significant as Dara’s, and that made Maisy the one “person” Dara still truly cared about.
“Dara.”
She realized Oliver had been trying to get her attention.
“They’re calling us to the car.”
“Oh. Okay.”
As she followed him through the large cabin to the stairs, a woman chasing a toddler grabbed him right before he would’ve crashed into Dara.
“I’m so sorry,” the boy’s mother said, grimacing. “He’s a holy terror today.”
Dara had to stop herself from telling her to enjoy every second with her holy terror because you never knew when they might be ripped from your life. She’d been as guilty as the next busy mother of not fully appreciating what she’d had until he was gone. And now she’d give anything for one more chance to chase Lewis, to grab him and hug him and chastise him for trying to get away.
They’d always been so careful with him, she thought as she went down the stairs to the deck where they’d left their car. They’d never let him out of their sight, hadn’t taken any chances with his safety and had put him in swim lessons as soon as possible because several of their friends had pools. Their child wasn’t going to drown on her watch.
That was the thing she couldn’t get past. They’d done everything right, and tragedy had found them anyway. She was bitter about that part of their story. She’d seen friends’ kids run wild, unsupervised, and had never let Lewis do things that might get him hurt, or worse. And the bad thing had happened anyway.
As they waited in Oliver’s SUV for the cars in front of them to drive off the ferry, Dara wondered what the hell she was doing on this island in the middle of nowhere. “How do we know how to find the lighthouse?” Dara asked.
“Mr. McCarthy, the president of the Gansett Town Council, is meeting us at the ferry office.”
In her past life, Dara would’ve had more questions. Like, how would they recognize Mr. McCarthy, and what would it be like to live in a lighthouse, and what was there to do on Gansett Island? Now? She didn’t care. Today was just another day to get through on her way to being reunited with her precious son. That was what she cared about—being with Lewis again and ridding herself of the terrible, desperate ache she lived with every minute of every day. Until that day, she put one foot in front of the other and functioned at the most basic level possible.
They drove off the ferry into an area where people, cars, cargo and bikes converged into a much busier scene than she would’ve expected for a small island in the middle of nowhere.
Oliver put down the window and asked one of the uniformed employees where the ferry office was.
He pointed at a small shingled building on the far side of the parking lot.
“Thanks.” Oliver drove to the building, where a tall man with gray hair waited with a petite blonde woman. “That’s him.” Oliver pulled into one of the few available parking spaces and got out of the car to shake hands with both of them.
Because the window was up and the AC on, Dara couldn’t hear them getting acquainted and made no move to get out to join them. A tap on the window had her putting it down.
“Hi, Dara, I’m Linda McCarthy. I wanted to welcome you to Gansett.”
“Thank you. It’s nice to meet you.” She went through the motions, shook the woman’s outstretched hand, did what was expected. That was the easy stuff.
“We’re going to show you the way to the lighthouse.”
“Sounds good. Thank you.”
Oliver got back in the car, and they followed Mr. McCarthy’s pickup truck out of the busy downtown area to a far more rural road that wound around the island.
“It sure is pretty,” Oliver said.
She hadn’t noticed. “Uh-huh.”
A short time later, they drove through an open gate and down a long drive that led to the lighthouse at the edge of the coastline. The property was apparently open to the public, which no one had bothered to mention as far as she knew, and the lighthouse itself was a lot smaller than she’d expected it to be. Although, what did she have to compare it to?
Dara got out of the car, took a look around, hoping she might feel a spark of anything, but like always, there was just more nothing.
Linda handed her a set of keys. “The big one is for the gate, which is one of the few official duties the lighthouse keepers have. You’re also asked to report the weather conditions to the Coast Guard twice a day and interact with the visitors as you see fit.”
“That last part isn’t required, is it?”
“Of course not. You can do whatever you wish. No one will be checking. Well, except for the Coast Guard for the weather.”
“That’s fine,” Dara said.
“Come in and let me show you around. It’s the cutest place.”
Dara followed Linda into the circular building.
“This is a mudroom of sorts. You’re welcome to use the beach chairs and anything else that’s been left by the previous occupants. Some of our good friends have had this job in the past, and they absolutely loved it.”
Linda went up a spiral staircase to the first floor, which housed a galley kitchen and a living room. “The bedroom and bathroom are up there,” she said, pointing to the stairs that led to a second floor.
Trying to be polite, Dara went up the stairs to check out the accommodations and noted the king-sized bed and bathroom with a standup shower. It wasn’t fancy, but it would do. As she headed for the stairs, her eyes were drawn to the panoramic view of the island and the ocean. She went for a closer look and found herself interested in something for the first time in longer than she could recall.
The view was stunning. From this vantage point, she could see there was a beach at the bottom of the cliff and wondered if it was accessible.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Linda asked.
“Sure is,” Dara said. “The beach down there… Can we get to that?”