The Lightkeeper

by Susan Wiggs

  * * *

  “Good to see you, Mr. Jones,” said the doorman with an obsequious smile.

  Granger nodded a curt greeting. The shiny-faced doorman knew full well that Jones was an assumed name, and the man delighted in saying it with a wink and a nudge.

  This was not a good day for winking and nudging. It was not a good day at all. He had arrived Monday morning at his San Francisco office only to learn that one of the company ships had failed to arrive in Portland. By Tuesday, company officials were preparing to call in the insurers, for it was likely the four-master had gone down. Wrecked at the Columbia bar. Wrecked like so many others.

  He wondered what had happened. The skipper was one of the best, a longtime employee. Had fog hidden the shoals, even from that old salt? Had the lightkeeper been remiss in his duties? Granger certainly knew what a calamity that could cause. He had caused it himself years ago, exacting lethal revenge from his worst enemy—Jesse Kane Morgan. His best friend, his business partner, his rival, the man who had stolen everything from him.

  Even now, all these years later, Granger still felt the sting of rejection as the woman he loved had turned him down, turned to Jesse, married Jesse. Emily and Jesse, the golden couple, the toast of Portland and San Francisco alike. The fact that Granger had destroyed it all didn’t dull the sting. Perhaps he hadn’t gone far enough. Perhaps there was still more to do.

  He brushed past the doorman and strode across the tiled foyer of the Esperson Building. It was the best residence in San Francisco, and it was costing “Mr. Jones” a fortune.

  Ah, but the rewards were sweet. As he climbed the brass-railed staircase, a bouquet of fresh flowers in his hand, he buried his nose in them and inhaled, thinking about the gentle stroke of her hand on his brow, the uncritical way she had of looking at him. She was his shelter from the storm, the place he came to when everyone else was against him. His nagging parents, his disappointing wife, his raging creditors—he left them all behind when he came here.

  He’d be giving the place up soon, though. Now that he had what he wanted from the girl, he could move her into more modest digs. When he’d first met her—destitute, close to starving, yet maddeningly attractive all the same—he had needed to woo her. To feed her appetite for feeling safe and protected. He’d set her up in a luxurious apartment at the hallowed Esperson, visiting her whenever he found the time.

  He found time often. And soon he would get his reward. A few months ago, she’d announced that she was pregnant. She’d looked at him with such hope in her eyes. “Now we must marry, so the wee babe has its papa’s name,” she’d said.

  He shouldn’t have laughed at her, but he couldn’t help it. He did want her to have his baby—that was the whole point. The child would indeed bear his name, as soon as it was born and she surrendered it to him. But it had been a grave misjudgment on his part to tell her the plan. He should have kept it a secret until the very end. He’d underestimated her maternal instinct.

  She’d been appalled, terrified, grabbing a hand mirror and preparing to hurl it at him. He’d tried to calm her down, crooning to her as he approached. “Don’t be afraid. I don’t want to have to hurt you...”

  And in the weeks that followed, she did calm down, so much so that he began to hope she was coming to accept his point of view. She’d want her child to have all the advantages he could give the heir to his fortune—the best schools, the best doctors, the best society of San Francisco and Portland.

  The flowers would please her, perhaps even coax a smile from her. He stood outside the door for a moment to catch his breath from climbing the stairs. The thought of the child seized him without warning, and he felt a yearning so powerful he nearly cried his need aloud. A son, an heir. Someone to bring along in the world, someone who’d watch him, worship him, learn at his knee. Someone to love as he himself had never, ever been loved.

  With a twist of the crystal doorknob, he let himself in. His foot always managed to find the one floorboard that creaked, and now it squawked loudly in the silent apartment. “It’s me,” he called. “I’ve brought you something.”

  Silence. Perhaps she was sleeping. He’d heard women in her condition slept a lot. But the bed was empty. Made up as neatly as always.

  A cold feeling of foreboding slithered over him, though he managed to keep control. Methodically, he went through every inch of the elegant apartment. Not a single thing was missing—not a silver fork nor a painted lamp chimney nor any of the clothes and jewels he’d given her. The only thing missing was the only thing that mattered: the woman.

  He told himself to be calm, to wait. She’d gone out shopping or for a breath of air. Yes, that was it. But later, after questioning the doorman and learning that she’d left the week before and hadn’t been seen since, he was forced to admit that she was gone.

  With some surprise, he looked down at the bouquet of flowers he’d brought her. He hadn’t even remembered he was carrying it. He’d mangled them beyond recognition, breaking and bruising every flower in the bunch.

  * * *

  Jesse stared at the rough-hewn ceiling beams, listening to the wag of the clock pendulum. Then, after a long time, he pulled his boots back on and went to tend the horses.

  On his way to the barn, he encountered Erik Magnusson. Towering at least six and a half feet in height, the youth moved with a giant’s ambling gait, unhurried and untroubled by the press of the world. The wind blew his straight, straw-colored hair across his brow.

  “Morning, Captain,” Erik called. Erik always called him by the head lightkeeper’s title. “Did the lady from the sea wake up?”

  “No.”

  “Father said we’re going to tar the bottoms of the surf runners today.” Erik’s mind always flitted from one subject to the next like a hummingbird going from blossom to blossom. Jesse liked the big lad, but he never quite knew what to say to him.

  “That’s fine, Erik,” he said. “It’s good to keep the boats in proper order.”

  “You never take the boats out,” Erik said, planting his hands on his hips. “Why do you never take the boats out?”

  Because I’m a coward, Jesse thought.

  “Why is that, Captain?” Erik persisted.

  “The boats are for rescue and should never go past the surf,” Jesse said, then started walking away. “I’m off to the barn.”

  He turned the four geldings out to the sloping pasture. Palina’s rooster crowed, the sound insulated by distance and by the light, fine mist that hung in the morning air.

  He ambled down the long, switchback trail to the beach. Twenty-four hours ago he had been on this same path, and in his arms he had held an extraordinary and unwanted burden. For years he had been successful in getting people to leave him alone, but the red-haired woman was different. He couldn’t make her go away.

  Why was he so reluctant to help her? He had come here to do just that—save victims from the sea, help boats navigate the perilous shoals at the mouth of the Columbia. It was the life he’d carved out for himself. It was his penance.

  He negotiated the twisting path and walked across the damp, densely packed sand. His gaze automatically scanned the area, seeking more wreckage from the ship that had brought him the woman. But he saw only the endless expanse of the strand, littered here and there by seaweed or a chunk of driftwood. The morning breeze rustled through the dunes, rattling the reeds like dried bones.

  A harsh barking sound came from Sand Island in the middle of the huge estuary. Sea lions. Sometimes they came to the cape, but Jesse shooed them off. Fishermen often shot the seals to keep them from preying on the salmon and steelhead.

  As he walked, Jesse filled his lungs with heavy salt air and tried to empty his mind. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her, the fairy-featured woman who had invaded his house, his life. Companionship was the last thing he wanted. No one seemed
to understand that. The people of Ilwaco regarded her presence as a great adventure. Palina termed her a gift. Fiona called her a challenge.

  He tried to tell himself she was no different from other women. He’d trained his mind well, punished himself effectively through sheer force of will. Women left no impression on him, sparked no desire, awakened no yearning.

  Yet the stranger in his house was different in a way he couldn’t explain. Though he didn’t even know her name, some deeply suspicious part of himself knew she posed a threat to the life he was now living.

  He turned his back on the sea and looked at his world, a lonely king surveying an empty realm. The lighthouse station was the quietest, most remote place on earth. Jesse had run here, thinking it was where he belonged, at the edge of the world.

  But, as it turned out, he hadn’t run far enough.

  * * *

  Jesse’s movements were slow and deliberate as he got out a low stool and placed it squarely beneath the trapdoor to the attic crawlspace. It had been ages since he had needed anything from the storehouse above the ceiling.

  But he needed something now. He hoped his equipment was in working order. Standing on the stool, he reached into the hole and groped around through cobwebs and sawdust. Eventually his questing hands found a bulky, oblong box and the three lengths of wood that went with it.

  He set the box on the scrubbed kitchen table and stared at it for a long time. He had not used the camera in years, not since...not in a very long time. He wasn’t even sure it still worked.

  He flipped up the dual latches and lifted the lid. The odd device, with its mouth of brass, its glass plates and black silk shrouds, lay where he had flung them so long ago. The vials of chemicals had corroded at the caps. Red spots mottled the albumen papers.

  Photography was a vexing business of washing the plate, coating it with gun cotton dissolved in alcohol, dipping it in silver nitrate. The exposure had to be enhanced by a flash in a pan, then the plate developed with acid and more chemicals. It was easy to make a mistake. He had found that out when—He cut off the thought, cursing the memories that kept pounding at the edges of his awareness, wanting to be let in. He had come to the bluff in order to forget, and now the presence of that woman was making him remember another time, another life. Gritting his teeth, he assembled everything he needed; the chemicals and the plates, the tripod and the black silk shroud. Moving quietly, he went into the birth-and-death room.

  She lay sleeping, her limbs loose, her breathing peaceful and even. Her hair streamed in a ruby and gold tangle across the pillow. Her body curved in on itself, protecting, always protecting the belly.

  Jesse tried not to stare. Tried not to think. He made himself concentrate on the task at hand. He wanted her out of here. The best way to do that was to find her next of kin. He needed to take a photograph and circulate it, have it published.

  Yes, that was the answer. Maybe the grateful family would come for her before she woke. Before he learned one blessed thing about her.

  He positioned the tripod at the foot of the bed. Then he placed the camera box on top of it, aiming the eye at the woman.

  And suddenly, the memories he had kept dammed up inside him broke through, and the past stormed across his mind. He felt it like a physical blow, heard the laughter of a woman long dead and saw himself, a much younger Jesse, laughing with her....

  “Hold still, darling, I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Oh, Jesse, you take forever.” A dainty hand in a lacy glove smoothed across his brow, pushing aside a persistent lock of hair from his eyes. Pink-tinged lips smiled up at him. “Just make the picture and let’s eat.” The lacy hand gestured at the lavish picnic spread out upon a fringed blanket in the middle of a flower-studded meadow. “Aren’t you starved?”

  He had abandoned the camera then, reaching her in three long strides, sweeping her into his arms. The picnic and the photograph had been forgotten until much, much later, when cool shadows slipped across the field.

  “There won’t be enough light left for a picture, Jesse.”

  He ran his hand through the tousled silk of her hair. “We have all the time in the world, sweetheart.”

  Stifling a ragged growl, he rid himself of the memory almost violently, like a wounded man yanking out the knife that had stabbed him.

  Damn. It had started already. The stranger, with her serene face and air of mystery, was making him think, making him remember, making him feel.

  The sooner he got rid of her, the better.

  With grim determination he finished setting up the equipment. Then he looked at his subject. She lay like a rag doll, her hair covering part of her face and her arms and legs slack. No one would recognize her in this state.

  He had to touch her. There was no other way. He stepped forward and took her by the shoulders, careful not to jar her injured collarbone. She made a sound, half sigh, half moan, and he froze. God, if she woke up now, he’d scare her out of her wits.

  Almost as much as she scared him.

  Her head flopped to one side, and she settled deeper into sleep. He still held her by the shoulders.

  It was then that he noticed it. Her warmth. It seeped into him like rays of direct sunlight. The living radiance passed through his fingers and burrowed deep inside him. He was achingly aware of the soft, yielding flesh and the fragile bone structure beneath. The sensation of holding another human being was so overwhelming that he didn’t quite know what to do.

  She smelled of sea and wind and womanhood, and he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get his bearings while his senses listed crazily.

  The ordeal took endless minutes. He propped her against the pillow, centering her head just so. Then, not knowing what to do with her loose arms, he crossed them atop the quilt. But as soon as he got her hands in place, her head sagged to the side. He bolstered the pillow, making a trench. Then her hands sprang free as she stretched luxuriously.

  Jesse swore quietly between his teeth. How did undertakers do this, anyway? At length he succeeded in arranging her so that her head was centered, the hair pushed away from her face, her hands demurely crossed.

  “Stay,” he whispered. “Just stay there a minute. I only need another minute.”

  He crept back to the tripod, treading lightly as if she were a house of cards that could collapse any moment. He put the silk over his head and bent to the camera. His other hand held the flash powder in a pan.

  “One,” he whispered through his teeth, “two, three...”

  All at once, he exposed the plate. A boom and a flash of magnesium powder exploded in the room.

  The woman sat forward like a ghost disturbed from eternal sleep. He expected her to scream, but instead, she grabbed the pitcher beside the bed and hurled it at him. At the same time, she spoke. “Jesus Christ on a flaming crutch!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She crouched against the headboard of the bed, the long nightgown bunched in a tangle, her hand reaching for the oil lamp on the table.

  As soon as he realized her intent, Jesse blazed back to life. The damn-fool woman. She could hurt herself. Worse than that, she’d burn the house down.

  “Don’t touch it,” he said between clenched teeth, striding across the room. His boots crunched on shards from the broken pitcher. Snatching the lamp, he placed it out of reach on a wall shelf and glared at her through the snaking yellow-gray smoke from the flash.

  Color touched her cheeks, and her warm, hazel eyes shone—not with gratitude, but with anger. He was startled to realize that her fury matched his own. “You’ve done enough damage already,” he grumbled.

  “And what would a body expect, I ask you?” she demanded. “I wake up to find myself in the middle of a pitched battle and you think I’ll simply surrender? You shoot at me, boyo, and I’ll fire back, make no mistake.”


  Boyo? Jesse was reasonably certain no one had ever called him boyo. “I wasn’t shooting at you,” he said.

  “There was an explosion. And I smell gunpowder.” She squinted through the smoke and wrinkled her nose, a perfect little nose sprinkled with freckles.

  Jesse had no idea why he would make note of freckles. “You’re Irish,” he said stupidly, because it was the first thing that sprang to mind.

  “And you’ve got some explaining to do.” She leaned sideways to look past him. “What the devil sort of gun is that?”

  “It’s not a gun. It’s a camera.”

  Her eyes widened. She pushed a hand through her tangled red hair. “A camera, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  The color leaped up in her cheeks again, making stark crimson spots on her pallor. “And what in the name of Peter and Paul are you doing shooting off a camera in here?”

  Jesse’s already strained patience snapped. “Taking your picture, woman. What do you think?”

  She made the sign of the cross and pressed back against the headboard, holding the covers to her chin. “Pervert!”

  He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists at his sides to keep from doing something they’d both regret later. This was exactly why he lived here at the lighthouse, alone. He had no patience for other people, especially for mouthy Irishwomen who showed no gratitude for being rescued.

  “Madam,” he said, “it occurs to me that your mishap has addled your brain. You’ve been unconscious. I thought it best to find your next of kin, so I took your picture. I had intended to circulate it to the newspaper and telegraph offices so your friends and family would learn of your survival.”

  He strode to the door, the camera in one hand and tripod in the other. He paused and said, “I expect someone will be grateful that you’re alive.”

  She moved quickly but clumsily, lurching from the bed. When Jesse saw her bare feet heading for the broken pieces of pottery, he had no choice. He dropped the tripod and scooped her up in his arms.