The Night Mark

by Tiffany Reisz

  “I’m sure you’ll come up with something good. Feel free to ruin my reputation. I wasn’t using it anyway.”

  “Count on it.” He helped her to her feet.

  Before letting her leave, Pat pulled a small red book off his shelf and pressed it into her hands.

  “Take this,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a prayer book, a very special one,” Pat said.

  “I’m not really religious.”

  “I’m not giving it to you because I want to convert you. But I think you should have it. Please.”

  “Are you going to pray for me?”

  “For you. For Will. And for Hagen.”

  “For Hagen?”

  “Ex-husbands are people, too,” he said.

  “If you say so,” she said and smiled.

  He kissed her goodbye on the cheek and held her hand.

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Faye,” he said. “But if you don’t find it...”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Just stay out of the water,” Pat said again. “Please.”

  Faye promised him faithfully she would and then took her leave.

  By the time Faye made it back to the Church Street house, she felt almost human again. She took a long shower, ate some homemade spaghetti with Miss Lizzie and another girl staying at the house that summer. Afterward she went up to her room to upload her pictures from the Marshlands.

  As she suspected, most of the pictures were a bust. Maybe she could salvage a couple she’d taken off the dock for a stock photo site, but they wouldn’t do for the calendar. It was what it was. She’d get back to work tomorrow.

  Although it was barely seven o’clock, Faye was already sprawled in bed wearing nothing but her black silk robe. Her summer robe, a gift from Hagen. A thoughtful gift. Pretty and practical. She could say that much for Hagen; he gave good gifts. They’d skipped dating, being engaged, but at their wedding he’d given her a band and a four-carat diamond engagement ring. Both were in her makeup bag. If she ran out of money, she’d have them to pawn.

  An old Catholic prayer book, on the other hand, might be the oddest gift anyone had ever given her. She’d read it maybe. Who knew? She might find the perfect prayer for her. A prayer for a widow who had remarried too soon and had lost her late husband’s baby. Perhaps the generic “Prayer for Someone Suffering” would cover all that. Faye turned to the back where the index should be and found some handwriting in pen on a page.

  The handwriting looked as old as the book, and the book, according to the title page, was printed in 1954. The ink was faded but the script neat and sturdy.

  Lord, I give Thee thanks that Thou didst die upon the cross for my sins. Forgive me the blood on my hands. Forgive me the life I took and wash the blood from my hands and the stain of sin from my soul. Thou art infinite in mercy. Shower Thy mercy upon Thy son.

  And the prayer was signed.

  It was signed “Carrick Morgan.”

  Faye sat straight up in bed.

  This was Carrick Morgan’s prayer book? The lighthouse keeper?

  Faye’s hands shook as she gingerly laid the book open on her lap and traced his words with her fingertip. Carrick Morgan had a beautiful signature, an old-fashioned, elegant script. She should have guessed he was Catholic, being of Irish stock. The prie-dieu in her room... Had he carved that himself? And he prayed for forgiveness and for mercy because he took someone’s life. He’d killed someone. Who? Father Pat had owned this book for years. Carrick Morgan himself must have given it to him. Pat would have known about the prayer for forgiveness, and yet he’d called Morgan the best man he’d ever known. It made no sense. None of it did. Staring at Carrick Morgan’s words in the prayer book made it impossible for Faye to sit still in her room and wait for tomorrow. It felt like an alarm was blaring somewhere and she had to go to the lighthouse to find a way to turn it off. It was growing dark, too dark for pictures. But this wasn’t about the photographs anymore.

  Faye dug through her suitcase for a clean top and spied her little jewelry bag under her black tank top. When she opened it she found Will’s old college championship ring that he’d given her right after they started dating. “Does this mean we’re going steady now?” she’d said, teasing him. She’d worn the ring on a necklace until they’d gotten married and he’d slipped a wedding band on her finger—one that fit.

  Though she no longer wore it, Faye treasured the ring. She wouldn’t pawn it, not if she were starving. The ring was white gold with a blue stone in it, Will’s name and a baseball insignia emblazoned on both sides. It comforted her to look at it, to hold it. She slipped it over her thumb and felt calmer in an instant. Here was the reason her marriage to Hagen had been so hard. It wasn’t that she’d had to pretend to be in love with Hagen. It was that she’d had to pretend she wasn’t in love with Will. She didn’t have to pretend anymore.

  “I love you, Will,” she whispered, then kissed the ring for luck.

  Faye pulled on her jeans and T-shirt, grabbed her camera bag and her car keys and headed out. Earlier that day Pat had asked her what she thought she’d find at the lighthouse. She hadn’t known the answer then, but she knew it now.

  She went to the lighthouse for the same reason anyone went to a lighthouse.

  She went because she needed the light.

  7

  Faye had to Google directions to find her way to where Pat’s map began. After one wrong turn on Hunting Island, she righted herself. She crossed the one-lane bridge, which was green with old paint and red with fresh rust. On the other side of the bridge she found a gate unlocked and standing wide-open. She usually wasn’t the sort of person who believed in things like “signs,” but usually she didn’t see photographs of men who’d been dead since the sixties who looked just like her husband. The gate being open was either a sign the universe wanted her on the island tonight or, more likely, a sign someone had forgotten to close it. Either way, here she was.

  As she crossed over onto the island, Faye’s heart started a steady march through her chest with the feet of a thousand soldiers pounding the pavement. She could see it now—the cops would show up, arrest her for trespassing, and then she’d have to call Hagen to come and bail her out. She’d rather spend the night in jail than call him for help.

  She drove slowly down the tree-lined path, the branches of the oaks forming a tunnel. Low-hanging branches scratched her car roof, and she winced. There wasn’t any money for a new paint job, so she better take care of the one she had. She wished she had some idea of where this road led—south beach or north beach or straight into a swamp? Pat’s map didn’t help much. The dense tree canopy threw off her usually strong sense of direction. Behind her she saw the last rays of the setting sun through a break in the treetops. The sun set in the west, which meant she needed to take a left to go north. She found a narrow road and turned onto it. Pat hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said the island contained nothing but trees. Faye saw no houses, no ponds, no street signs, no flowers. Only a few dirt horse trails, and a gravel road here and there and the trees.

  Finally Faye spied the top of the lighthouse dead ahead. The last of the day’s sunlight gleamed off the bell-shaped black dome, and for a split second she thought she saw the light flash. But the lighthouse hadn’t been operational in decades. The keeper was gone. No one was home. The light had been extinguished, never to burn again. No streetlamps or spotlights on Bride Island, either. Once the sun set, there would be no light on the island except what the moon and the stars deigned to offer. She had to hurry if she didn’t want to be stuck on the island in the pitch dark.

  The trees opened up to a clearing, and Faye parked on a patch of trampled-down scrub grass. She hopped out of the car, leaving her camera behind. This wasn’t the time for work. She simply needed to see the lighthouse, to be in the moment, to listen to whatever the universe was trying to tell her.

  Plus she had no idea what the tide was doing right now, an
d if she got her camera wet, she would be screwed—and not in the good way that involved alcohol and sexy college boys covered in black fish tattoos.

  Faye picked her way down a rocky path toward the beach. The air was warm and smelled of salt and nothing else. An entire flock of little birds, sandpipers maybe, danced at the water’s edge on their tiny little legs, leaving V-shaped tracks in the soft wet sand.

  The sun was rapidly setting as Faye walked around the lighthouse, astonished by the sheer size of the monument. It hadn’t looked nearly so wide from the water. The lighthouse was built like a cone that grew narrower as it neared the top. Three vertical windows were cut into the side and looked out onto the ocean. Faye stepped over a long line of square rocks that must have marked the foundation of what had once been the keeper’s cottage. The lighthouse, on the other hand, composed of concrete and iron, had survived hurricanes.

  Very likely it would survive her, too.

  The door to the lighthouse looked like it belonged on a cathedral. It was tall and dark and made of thick planks of oak with iron hinges and an iron handle. She had to put her shoulder into it to force the door open enough that she could slip through the gap.

  “Hello?” Faye called out, not expecting an answer and truly not wanting one. She merely hoped to spook any birds or bats who’d made the lighthouse their home. Better to roust them out while she could run for it than when she was already halfway up that staircase to the top. She heard nothing—not wings nor coos nor her own voice echoing back at her. Inside the lighthouse it was airless and stuffy, and sounds were muted but for the relentless roar and rumble of the ocean outside. Waves rushed the shore, retreated, only to rush back seconds later like a forlorn lover longing to leave and having second thoughts before reaching the door. The sun shone through the three windows and cast arched shadows onto the interior wall and the spiral staircase. Faye had to take a deep breath just looking at it. Dizzying, truly, and Faye didn’t get dizzy when faced with heights. It looked like something from an Escher drawing. Although Escher wouldn’t have painted his spiral staircase solid green. The color was fitting as the banister, plus every single slat and step was molded into the shape of a trailing leafy tendril of ivy.

  Pat had said the only people who were nostalgic for the past had never lived there, and he did have a point. Yet she couldn’t help but long for a bygone era when craftsmen took the time to make something both functional and beautiful, even knowing how few people would ever see their work. It was foolish to tell a grieving widow not to long for the past. She’d heard the saying that the past was a foreign country. True? Yes, but it was the foreign country where Will lived.

  Faye wiped the sweat off her forehead. She should have brought a bottle of water with her. Faye started up the staircase, testing each one with her foot before trusting it with her full weight. If she fell and hurt herself, that was it for her. No one knew she was here. No one in the world. While foolish and dangerous, it was also exhilarating. Hagen had always insisted she keep her phone with her at all times, always charged no matter where she went. He insisted she tell him her schedule, when she’d leave, when she’d return. He’d been more a father to her than husband at times, and an overbearing father at that.

  Not even sleeping with Ty had made her feel this free—being somewhere no could find her, and knowing that if something bad happened, she was on her own. Pat had warned her not to come out here, warned her it wasn’t safe. She’d been playing it safe since Will had died, marrying Hagen for health insurance, getting pregnant because she’d known that was what Hagen wanted... But Hagen wouldn’t want her doing this. This was something she and Will would have done together. Sneaking onto private property, giggling and whispering, Faye threatening to disavow all knowledge of Will and this mission if they were caught in the act. She’d gone on several of his team’s road trips, and she and Will had had sex in three different minor-league ballpark locker rooms and one major-league dugout. Will had told the security guard that he’d left his contact-lens case in the dugout, which was easily the stupidest lie Will had ever come up with to get laid. And the security guard had known it, too. He’d looked at Will, then looked at Faye and then looked back at Will. He’d said, “She’s cute, so I’ll give you fifteen minutes. Make it good.”

  They’d made it good.

  As she climbed up the spiraling staircase her body trembled with nervous excitement at doing something she knew she shouldn’t. It was a delicious feeling, taking a risk again, getting out of her comfort zone and into the danger zone. It felt like her old life.

  “I only wish you were waiting for me at the top of this lighthouse, Will,” she whispered. “Not quite the mile-high club but close enough, right?”

  She made it to the top at last. Her legs screamed at her and her lungs burned, but she made it. She found the door to the lantern room. She stepped inside and walked straight into a spiderweb. Screaming, she stepped back, batting at her hair and face, before laughing at her wild overreaction to something she should have anticipated. Of course there were spiders up here. Maybe even rats. Luckily it seemed the architect of the web had abandoned her handiwork long ago. Once more into the lantern room Faye ventured. She found it free of any other creatures or cobwebs. She also found it a dirty, disappointing mess. She couldn’t even see through the muck-encrusted windows. The lens that had magnified the wick was long gone, no doubt residing in a museum somewhere or converted into a chandelier for some rich man’s ceiling. Faye found the exterior door to the widow’s walk, took a deep breath and walked outside into the open air.

  “Wow,” she breathed, unable to stay silent in the presence of such a magnificent vista. She could see all the way to Hunting Island. And the ocean... The ocean stretched out to the very edge of the horizon before dropping out of sight where the earth curved away from her. Close to the shore, the water was a greenish brown, like river water, but farther out it turned a bluish black where the continental shelf ended and the deep waters began. From this height, she could see the outline of the sandbar that had spelled disaster for so many ships before this lighthouse had been erected to guide them to safety. She wondered how ships avoided the sandbar now. In the distance, she heard the gentle tolling of a bell buoy. Ah, that’s how. Less expensive than manning a lighthouse, but hardly as romantic.

  Faye wandered the full perimeter of the widow’s walk, taking in every inch of the view. So much beauty, she could hardly stand it. The trees of Bride Island looked like a soft green carpet, and the beaches at the edges of the island looked like delicate pie crust. From above she could see the roofs of several houses closer to the south beach. That must be where Ms. Shelby lived when she stayed here. If Faye had her own island, she’d never leave it, not for anything. Closer in, Faye spied another area near the center of the island that had been cleared of trees. Had those trees been taken for Ms. Shelby’s bourbon barrels? Or was that the location of the ruins and the graves Pat had told her about? She wouldn’t want to plant trees or build houses over a cemetery, either, although she imagined if one dug deep enough anywhere on earth, one would find the remains of someone who wouldn’t want a house erected on top of them. That was one reason she’d chosen to have Will cremated. She didn’t want to give him a grave that in a few centuries would be the foundation of someone’s house or office complex. And she couldn’t imagine putting her husband into a hole in the ground. Not her Will. She’d given his ashes to the water off the pier where he’d asked her to marry him. And looking at the sun setting on the ocean, at the long slant of light that stretched like a reaching arm from the sound to the sea, she knew she’d entrusted the ashes of her husband to the only place worthy enough for them.

  Already Faye regretted not bringing her camera with her. She could have taken a whole series of sunset-on-the-water pictures.

  In reverential silence, Faye stood at the railing facing the water and watched the last of the light fading and the sky turning from gold to red to blue to black. Up here, watching the sky ch
ange color as time passed, the thought of growing older and dying wasn’t nearly so terrifying. She’d just watched an evening turn to night, and if she stood up here long enough she’d see the night turn into morning.

  One...two...three... Red...blue...black... Time turned colors as it passed. That was growing older—watching the colors of one’s life changing. And death? What was death but falling asleep? Faye fell asleep every night. What did it matter to her if one morning she simply didn’t wake up again? Had Will known? Did he have any idea that the blow to his head would be fatal? When he’d nodded off in the ambulance after muttering, “Somebody call my wife, please,” did he know he would never wake up again? No. Surely not. If he had known, his last words would have been a declaration of love to her, and she knew that in the marrow of her bones. If she could take any comfort in Will’s death, it was this—she hadn’t needed him to tell her he loved her in his last words. She’d known. He’d told her that morning. He’d told her every day. That was why she knew if there were any ghosts in this world, Will wasn’t one of them. The particular unfinished business she and Will had wasn’t the sort of unfinished business one could finish without a body. No offense to his beautiful spirit.

  “This is me, Will,” she said to the empty air around her. “I’m just like this lighthouse. Still standing, still here. But I’m falling apart. The light’s off, and I don’t know how to turn it back on again.”

  She blinked back tears and took a long, shuddering breath.

  “Your wife is turning weird. I’m talking to myself. I banged a college kid. I’m being stalked by a stork. I even talked to a priest about you—retired, but still. Oh, and did you know the lighthouse keeper of this very lighthouse looked just like you? So now I have a crush on a guy who’s been dead for fifty years in addition to a guy who’s been dead four years. I’m glad you’re not here to see what a mess I am these days. If I go to see a medium next, you have my permission to kill me from beyond the grave.”

  She could hear the memory of Will’s warm laugh in her mind, and his voice taunting her.

  Can’t hold the college kid against you. He was damn cute. You always did want me to get a tattoo.

  “Don’t laugh at me. This is all your fault.”

  How is it my fault you banged a college kid?

  “Because you died for a car. Do you really think I cared if our car got stolen? I mean, maybe if it was a Corvette or something, but a Ford Focus? A beige Ford Focus? Come on. Couldn’t you have at least died for a sports car?”

  The flowers were in the car, Bunny.

  “Oh, screw the flowers,” she said.

  That would hurt. They had thorns.

  “You know what I mean. I can grow my own flowers if I want them. I can’t grow another you. And I tried. My body is not made for having babies, apparently. Not even yours.”

  Don’t feel bad. My body’s not made for having babies, either.