The Lightkeeper

by Susan Wiggs

  And she saw there, cradled delicately in the palms of her hands, the secret Jesse had kept hidden from her.

  * * *

  Jesse entered the house, something close to a smile on his face and a perfectly formed sand dollar nestled in the palm of his hand. He had thought of Mary when he’d found it on the beach below the great bluff. This find wasn’t as impressive as the glass globe, but the sand dollar had no flaw.

  Well, it was dead, but that didn’t count. It was still perfect in shape and symmetry.

  The house smelled different. Cleaner. The light seemed altered, too. Although the day had grown overcast, the keeping room looked brighter. He ran a hand over the back of the settle. The wood frame had been scrubbed, along with the floors and windows and everything else he could see. Mary had been hard at work today.

  The knowledge meant only one thing to Jesse. She was well enough to leave him. She would be gone as soon as the road was cleared.

  This was exactly what he had expected right from the start. He should be grateful. The whole ordeal would soon be over. He’d have his life back. Just the way he wanted it.

  Except he wasn’t sure he wanted it anymore.

  The sense of impending loss struck him like a blow. Swearing under his breath, he yanked off his hat and shoved his fingers through his hair.

  Mary was not supposed to happen to a man like him.

  And yet she had. Though he had come here to hide from the world, she had washed up on his beach, practically into his arms, this stranger who had the power to move him. To make him forget his vow to turn away from the world. To challenge him to start dreaming again.

  There are things that come to us from beyond eternity, things we have no right to question, Palina had said that first day. Twelve years ago, the sea took from you everything you held dear. Now, perhaps, it has given something back.

  Jesse Morgan had lost the desire to believe in anything, and yet, since Mary had come, some part of him that hadn’t died was slowly awakening. He told himself he didn’t want that. He couldn’t take that risk. He was here to grieve and to atone, not to heal. Not to learn joy again.

  Mary seemed to have other ideas. She was a woman alone who had lost everything except the babe she carried. Who was he to cast her out into the cold?

  “Mary!” he called. “Are you there?”

  A chill crept through him.

  “Mary?”

  The wall clock ticked mockingly into the silence.

  He strode to the kitchen, wrenched the cork off his whiskey bottle and took a large swig. Grimacing at the roughness of the liquor, he closed his eyes. So she’d left, after all. It was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

  Then he heard it—the creak of a floorboard.

  Setting down the bottle, he dashed up the stairs. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see—that she had fallen, hurt herself, God forbid that a problem had arisen with the baby. If anything happened to her or the baby, he’d never survive the loss. He went into his bedroom, gripping the lintel over the door.

  “Mary?” Her name rasped from a throat gone dry.

  She sat on the floor with her back against the wall below the single dormer window. Her face was ashen, her eyes large and somehow bruised-looking, as if she had been injured. He took a step toward her.

  And then he saw what lay on the floor in front of her.

  The word that exploded from him was one he had never said to a woman, but even the foul expletive was not strong enough to express his rage.

  She didn’t flinch, only blinked up at him. Then she said, “You should have told me, Jesse. You should not have kept this from me.”

  In two strides he was across the room, flinging things back into the teakwood box. He tried not to see, tried not to remember, but each treasured possession set off an explosion of memories.

  “You should never have come here,” he said in a low, deadly voice. “This has nothing to do with you. You had no right to open that box, to—”

  “The box fell. I didn’t open it on purpose,” she said, unmoved by his rage. “Tell me.”

  He reached for the hinged leather picture frame. Mary got to it first. For a moment, their hands touched. She snatched the photograph away, holding it so that the past was staring him in the face. “I want to know, Jesse.”

  “Damn it, why?”

  “Because I care.”

  “Don’t—”

  “It’s too late, Jesse. I do care, and you can’t stop me.”

  He remembered the night before, when she had borne down on him like a locomotive. It had been easier to take a ride with her than to fight her. Stopping her from caring was like stopping a river from flowing. Even if he built a wall, her caring flowed up and over the barrier.

  She simply didn’t belong here. In his house. In his life. Looking into his past. Perhaps the best way to convince her of that was to tell her everything.

  He forced himself to study the framed photograph. And suddenly he was back in time, back in a place he could never recapture and would always regret. “I was twenty years old in that picture,” he said.

  “You were so handsome. Comely as a prince in a fairy tale.” She set the frame on the floor between them. “Thank heaven you got over that.”

  “What?”

  “Looking like an illustration in one of Malcolm’s books. Every hair patted down, every fold of your clothing smoothed. Now you look human, as if there is something besides air behind that face of yours. Much better.”

  He forced himself to look at the picture in the other half of the frame. If ever nature had fashioned a face and body without flaw, here it was. Decked in bridal lace, she stared demurely at the viewer, a soft smile on her lips, her hair in shining ringlets beneath the veil. He remembered getting dizzy simply looking at her, dizzy with love and with the idea that she would be his. Forever.

  Forever turned out to be less than two years.

  “Go on,” Mary whispered.

  “Her name was Emily Leighton. We were married fourteen years ago.” He made himself speak as if the event had happened to someone else. In a way, it had. He was a different person than the self-assured, baby-faced bridegroom in the photograph.

  “And these—” Mary gestured at the box “—were Emily’s things.”

  He took the frame and closed it, fastening the tiny clasp. The photograph of him and the one of Emily would be facing each other in the dark. Forever. He didn’t have to look at it to remember his joy that day, or the joy that followed. They had been the fairy-tale couple of Portland, the match of the decade. The daughter of the Leighton timber barons had wed the heir to the Morgan shipping fortune. It was as close to a royal wedding as Portland had ever seen. Business associates and family members had come from as far off as Seattle and San Francisco to wish them happiness.

  And their life had gone well—too well. So well that Jesse should have known better than to think it could last. But at the age of twenty, he didn’t understand that life was brutal, that love was painful, that joy was a fleeting illusion.

  “How long were you married?” a soft voice asked.

  Mary. He had almost forgotten she sat there, so lost was he in his memories. “Almost two years,” he said. “And then she...” He looked out the window above Mary and was sucked into the darkest remembrance of them all.

  It had been a sunny day at the harbor in Astoria. Deceptively sunny. Back then, he had lacked an understanding of coastal weather. The azure sky and calm seas had fooled him into thinking conditions were fine for sailing.

  From the distant past, he heard their shouts pounding in his head. It had been the only quarrel of their marriage....

  “How dare you?” Emily had railed at him. “How dare you pack me off as if I’m a child?”

  Vividly he remembered the s
oftness of her shoulders as he held her, his grip becoming firm when she tried to pull away. “Emily, please listen. It’s only for a few days. I’ll be joining you in San Francisco before you know it. You won’t miss me at all, darling.”

  She shuddered and took a lace-edged handkerchief from her little reticule. “You know I hate being without you.”

  “Nonsense, you did so quite cheerfully last summer. You and your stepmother had a fabulous time going to the opera and spending all my hard-earned money.” Though he felt sick with guilt, a teasing tone lightened his voice. “You’re a lady of fashion, dearest. An annual trip to the big city is de rigueur. You’re simply going earlier than usual this year.”

  “This year is different.” She looked down, staring pointedly at her stomach, where the baby grew. His baby.

  When she had first told him, fireworks and pinwheels of joy had detonated in his head. His whoop of gladness had rung through the huge house they shared. But long weeks later, the joy had mellowed to anticipation—and Emily had barred him from her bed.

  Careless and spoiled, Jesse had drifted almost casually into the arms of Lucy, who had a brassy laugh and a physical sensuality that had woven a spell around him, fed his sense that nothing could taint his charmed world and fooled him into thinking he was invincible.

  Until she’d started making demands and he’d come to his senses. He’d woken up one day, seen the harsh morning sun on his lover’s face and realized how perilously close he’d come to destroying everything he had. He knew then that he had to tell Lucy it was over, and he wanted Emily far away when he did so.

  “This year is different.” His voice thickened, and he had to clear his throat. He gathered her to him, knocking her elaborate hat askew and not caring. “I swear, everything will be different once we’re together again.” He gestured at the matronly woman in a gray pinafore, standing with the steamer trunks. “Mrs. Ferris will be with you every moment. You won’t even miss me.”

  Emily’s chin trembled. “I will. You know I will. Come with me, Jesse.”

  “I can’t, Em.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Granger set up a meeting of the board of directors for next Wednesday. I can’t miss it.”

  “Granger Clapp is always interfering with us. Every chance he gets.”

  Jesse suspected it was true. He and Granger had both courted Emily, and when she had chosen Jesse, his rival—and friend—had not lost gracefully.

  “Let me wait with you,” Emily said. “I’ll sail with you next week.”

  “No. It’s all arranged.” He had kissed her cheek, tasting her tears and hardening his heart against her pleas. He happened to look up at the sky just then, and he’d seen a thin line of dark clouds like a frown on the western horizon. It was nothing, he told himself. This packet sailed each week without incident.

  “Kiss me goodbye, Emily. Kiss me now, and we’ll be together again before you know it.”

  “Oh, Jesse, I don’t want to go.”

  “You have to, my love. Your stepmother’s expecting you.” Jesse hooded his eyes from her direct gaze. Did Emily know? Could she look at him and see how he’d betrayed her?

  “I love you, Em,” he’d told her. “I love you so.” Poison words. They’d sent her to her death. Jesse had vowed never to speak them again. Never to feel them again.

  As the tug began hauling the ship to the mouth of the Columbia, Emily stood at the rail. His Emily. His beautiful, perfect wife, pregnant with his child. She had waved a handkerchief—he remembered it looked like a little white bird—and Jesse had felt the strangest darkness come over him, like a cloud obscuring the sun.

  Years later, he knew exactly what was wrong, what had happened that day. The truth and the memories roared like an unchained beast inside his head.

  “How did she die?” Mary whispered. She had been waiting patiently through the long, black moments while he remembered.

  He kept thinking of that white handkerchief, fluttering at him. A bird. No, something purer, cleaner. Something weightless and formless. A soul, ascending to heaven.

  Condemning him to hell.

  He looked Mary Dare square in the eye. How calm and sane she appeared, though pale and slightly apprehensive. As well she should be. Who the hell was he to think he could let her into his life? She had lulled him into a false sense that he could be a man again. And that was wrong. He could never be. Not now. Not ever.

  And so he told Mary the truest thing he knew about that day at Astoria harbor.

  “What happened to Emily?” His voice was brutal. “I killed her.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mary left Cape Disappointment the same way she had arrived—with no more than the clothes on her back. Only this time, they were dry clothes. A good dress of sprigged muslin and a fringed shawl.

  The garments had once belonged to Emily Leighton Morgan. E.L.M. Jesse’s wife. His love. The woman he said he’d killed.

  As she slipped out of the house unnoticed, Mary wondered what memories had passed through his mind when she’d helped herself to the nightgowns and chemises and dresses in the cupboard. She ought to be thankful he didn’t go mad, mistake her for the hapless Emily and do away with her, as well.

  Terrible thoughts dogged Mary’s footsteps as she hurried along a twisting path through the emerald forest. She had always thought this was a magical place, but she hadn’t realized the enchantment was a dark one. The inky greenness that clung to each giant tree, furring the trunks and draping the branches, now seemed ominous to her. On the path, a hideous large banana slug slimed its way across a broad leaf. The ferns, their tender fronds rolling out like slender tongues from secretive centers, suddenly looked sinister.

  This was a place of darkness, of fear, of suspicion. A place for lost souls that prefer not to be found.

  Like me.

  She had deemed Cape Disappointment the perfect spot to stay in safety and obscurity, but she had been wrong. What a muddle she’d made of everything. He would be glad when he discovered her gone.

  The image of Jesse Morgan hovered in her mind like the epiphytes clinging to the trees, haunting the shadowy secret places in the forest. She knew there was much he held back from her, but he’d made one thing abundantly clear: she shouldn’t expect anything from him. He was not interested in anything she had to offer him. He would never love her, never marry her. He had all but admitted that she’d been the first person to make him laugh in years, but it would take more than laughter to light the dark corners of his soul.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d misjudged a man.

  After he had accused himself of murder, she had stared at him in horror. He’d seemed to relish her shock. Like a trench dug by a desperate warrior, he’d made a barrier between them. He had been trying to do that all along, trying to drive her away. But until he had made his ghastly claim, Mary hadn’t realized how intent he was on getting rid of her.

  He was right. She didn’t belong with him.

  She would never forget him. He resembled the sculpture of the Archangel Gabriel in Saint Michael’s chapel back in Ballinskelligs. And etched in every line of his face was an age-old hurt that Mary Dare, who’d never been able to mind her own business, had convinced herself she could heal.

  She scowled at the loamy forest path and concentrated on her journey. A feeling of fear shot through her. Foolish. She had faced more dire straits than this, for certain. After Da and the boys had died, and Mum had quickly followed, she’d been completely alone. In debt, she was forced to sell everything the family owned for the dubious prize of a ticket to America.

  And America, for all the folk back home canonized its virtues, had hardly proved to be paradise. What had she gotten from coming here besides a broken heart and a babe in her belly? A sob—half anger, half despair—tore from her. She forced down the knot of panic in her throat and plung
ed onward. She hadn’t even found a proper home for her baby, and in just four short months, she’d be holding the poor wee thing in her arms and wondering how they’d both survive.

  The daylight was fading, and she knew only vaguely where she was going. Keeping the sun to the left, she headed northward through the shadow-laden forest. The town called Ilwaco lay to the north. Somewhere, there was a road.

  Ah, yes. The road that had been cut off by a huge deadfall. She had encouraged Erik to hack away at the stump, causing the tree to topple, making the road impassable.

  She had wanted to stay.

  After what had happened to her, she wasn’t ready to face the world. And with each passing day, she had grown more and more fascinated with the lightkeeper who lived cut off from the world in the beautiful house by the sea.

  Again his image flashed in her mind. Dark hair, glacial eyes, unsmiling mouth, large and competent hands. Ah, Jesse. He had so much to give. She wasn’t certain how she knew it, but she did, with a knowledge as strong as faith itself.

  She stopped walking for a moment to catch her breath. “No one but me really sees him,” she said aloud. And the certainty hit her again. For some reason, she was seized by the conviction that she alone could save Jesse Morgan from whatever strange invisible bonds held him in a past too dark to contemplate.

  “And why would I be wanting to do a thing like that?” she asked herself, stepping over another slug and continuing down a muddy slope. If he lived alone, like a beast in a cave, that was surely no concern of hers.

  Was it?

  She loosed a long, disgusted sigh. Aye, it was, like it or not. Her destiny was inextricably bound up with that of Jesse Morgan. Hadn’t he lit her way to shore after the shipwreck? Hadn’t he pulled her from the sea and made her warm and dry and safe? Hadn’t he sat tirelessly at her bedside when she had lain senseless?

  Aye, he’d done all of that, but mostly, he had given her a place in his life when his every instinct told him to get rid of her.

  Her thoughts rambling, she trudged on through the increasing darkness. The sun had dropped low in the sky, and a damp chill pervaded the air. She came to a slippery patch of mud, and her feet flew out from beneath her. She grasped at a mass of tangled vines and managed to keep herself from falling.