The Lightkeeper

by Susan Wiggs

  Mary hastened to let them all in, blushing and laughing through their congratulations.

  “I simply had to come and see if it was true,” Mrs. Swann announced. “I can’t say I approve of the courtship, but I certainly approve of the marriage.” Her straw hat, still festooned with ribbons of red, white and blue, bobbed madly as she looked Mary up and down.

  Bert Palais slapped Jesse on the back. “Welcome to the world of being a husband and papa,” he said. “Things’ll never be the same.”

  Jesse set the beer jug on the kitchen table and started passing around mugs. He moved through the crowd of well-wishers with a sort of awkward dignity that struck at Mary’s heart. This was all so sudden for him, she realized. Twelve years of being alone had not prepared him for this.

  “I knew it would happen,” Palina said, tears of joy running unchecked down her face. “It was destiny. You saved him, Mary. You and the baby saved him from a desperate loneliness.”

  “I’m not certain he wants saving.” Mary watched him from across the room. Even from a distance, she could see that his shoulders were tight, his movements jerky with tension. He reminded her of a wild animal, cornered and not certain where to turn.

  “If you ask him, he’ll say he wanted things to stay as they were,” Palina said. “So don’t ask. Just love him, Mary.”

  She smiled. “I think I can manage that.”

  But she could tell Jesse didn’t like being the center of attention, the object of toasts and best wishes. A tragedy in the past had taught him that love was merely a preamble to pain and loss. It would take more than a mere celebration to convince him otherwise.

  Mrs. Swann sat heavily on the settle and gazed for a long time at Mary. “How lovely you look, my dear. How very, very lovely.” And then Hestia Swann, the iron-willed matron of Ilwaco society, burst into tears.

  Mary rushed to her side. “Mrs. Swann! What’s the matter?”

  The older woman selected one of a half-dozen handkerchiefs from her reticule and dabbed at her nose and eyes. “Forgive me. I was just overcome by memories of Captain Swann and the children. But Sherman’s gone on to his reward and the children, bless them, have gone off to California. I feel so very much alone.”

  “Ah, ’tis sorry I am, Mrs. Swann.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Morgan. I try not to despair, but sometimes I feel my life is without meaning or purpose. I might as well lie down and die.”

  Mary cast an urgent look at Fiona MacEwan, but the doctor was busy inviting a thin-faced woman into the house. On the porch, dutifully lined up like soldiers on parade, were five of the thinnest, palest children Mary had ever seen.

  “There, there,” she soothed Mrs. Swann, taking the lady’s hand.

  “I just rattle around in that huge house Sherman built. It’s so big, I’ve shut off most of the rooms because it’s simply too hard to see them empty.”

  In a way only Mary could see, Hestia Swann and Jesse Morgan both suffered from the same problem. They had lost all they held dear. And neither knew how to cope.

  “Look at me,” Mrs. Swann sobbed, “drowning this joyous occasion with my own bitter tears.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Mary said. “My mum used to say each tear you cry quenches an angel’s thirst.” She felt Jesse’s eyes on her. Flushing, she looked up and shrugged. She expected him to be disgusted with the sentimental notion, but instead he looked intrigued. Even touched.

  Seeking a distraction for her friend, she took her arm and whispered, “Who is that woman who just came in?”

  Hestia Swann sniffed and blinked her eyes. “That’s Melissa Clune. Her man was the cooper on poor Sherman’s ship. They perished together, our husbands did. But a cooper doesn’t command the same income as the skipper, and she’s got at least five little ones. I don’t know how she’s getting by.”

  Mrs. Clune approached Jesse, her thin hand clutching a tattered shawl as she greeted him. “I came to wish you well, Captain,” she said. “And to say thank you for all you’ve done.”

  “All he’s done?” Mary whispered.

  “He paid her room and board through the season.”

  “Jesse?”

  “Yes. Tried to keep it quiet, but word got out. Your husband has a soft heart under that prickly exterior,” Mrs. Swann explained.

  Jesse stared at the cooper’s widow as if horrified by her display. Sweat broke out on his forehead. “It was nothing, Mrs. Clune. Surely the least I could do, and in no way a compensation for your terrible loss.”

  “I wanted to stop in and say goodbye,” she said. “I can’t expect you to pay my keep forever, especially now that you’ve got a family of your own.”

  “It’s my privilege to help—”

  She held up a small, shaking hand, exhibiting a pride not apparent at first glance. “I have to find a way to survive on my own.” She laid her gift—a small crocheted bundle—on the table, then backed away toward the door. “Goodbye, Captain. My best to you and your bride.”

  “Wait,” Mary called to her. She got up, taking Hestia Swann by the hand. She herded all of them out onto the porch. “Mrs. Swann, just how many empty rooms do you have in that house of yours?”

  The older woman looked startled by the question. Then, as comprehension dawned, a keen gleam came into her eye. “Why, exactly enough.” Her assessing gaze swept over the quiet children. “Just exactly enough.”

  * * *

  Later, Mary stood with Jesse on the porch while the guests headed for home. Erik would take the watch tonight, and Mary shivered deliciously, anticipating her first full night as a married woman.

  She leaned her head against Jesse’s solid shoulder. “Thank you for this day.”

  “You’re thanking me?”

  “Of course. You’ve made me so hap—”

  “I’ve done nothing of the sort,” he said, jerking away so abruptly that she swayed. Shoving his hand through his hair, he paced the length of the porch. “Look, don’t make this into something it isn’t. Our getting married isn’t going to change the world.”

  A subtle chill of doubt slithered through her. She couldn’t help wondering if Jesse had married her only out of charity, seeing as how he’d supported Mrs. Clune. No. She pushed the thought aside. Even Jesse wasn’t so extreme.

  She regarded him solemnly, knowing her heart was in her eyes. Not caring that she showed him. “You’ve changed my world, Jesse. I love y—”

  “Damn it.” His fist thudded on the rail. She felt its reverberation down the length of the porch. “Don’t do this, Mary. Don’t build this into some sort of melodramatic claptrap. You’re always doing that.”

  “But people can heal from their grief. They can go on. Look at Mrs. Swann and Mrs. Clune—”

  “So you threw them together under one roof,” he said. “But it’s not going to help those children when they wake up at night crying for their papa. It’s not going to help Hestia when she needs her husband to hold her.”

  “I cannot believe you can be so bitter,” she said.

  “I can’t believe you’re so naive,” he returned.

  “Naive about what?”

  “About love.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “What?”

  “You pretend you know what love is. But if you ever truly loved, deeply, with your whole heart, then you’d know it’s not something you just snap out of because it’s over.”

  “You make it sound like a disease.”

  “Maybe it is. A disease that has no cure.” He strode to the door. “You’re fine company, Mary,” he said. “Too fine for me. When we were...together today, it was good. Better than good. That’s enough for me. If it’s not enough for you, then you should have spoken up in the judge’s chambers.” He went inside, and the door tapped shut behind him.

  Mary stood g
laring out at the evening, watching the pink swirls of clouds on the western horizon. She didn’t dare go in, not yet. If she went in now, she would be obliged to give him a piece of her mind, or perhaps to flounce away as she had that other time, making a fool of herself.

  She forced herself to be calm, to absorb the pain and get used to the hurt. Maybe he didn’t love her. Maybe he didn’t want her in the way she hoped, but staying with him was the only choice for her. Without Jesse, she and the baby would be homeless, penniless.

  There were worse things, she decided, than being married to a man who loved a ghost, who hadn’t decided to start loving a flesh-and-blood woman.

  Yet.

  * * *

  “You’re quite certain?” Granger Clapp asked his solicitor.

  Mr. Stoner pushed a folded newspaper across the desk. “There’s an announcement in the Journal, and I checked the courthouse records myself. She married Jesse Morgan, the lightkeeper.”

  Although Granger didn’t move a muscle, he felt an arctic blast of rage blow through him. “How does this affect the suit to claim my child?”

  Stoner cleared his throat. He took out his pocket watch, flipped it open and shut without looking at it. “We really haven’t a legal leg to stand on, sir. I’m afraid—”

  “Yes, you are, aren’t you?” Granger said. “Afraid to do what truly must be done.”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Never mind. You are dismissed.” With narrowed eyes, Granger watched the man scurry out. The chilled fury inside him hardened to a core of resolution. It was happening all over again. Once more, Jesse Kane Morgan was stealing the future, taking what should have been Granger’s, and Granger’s alone.

  Granger would make him pay, just as he’d done twelve years before.

  * * *

  Within a matter of weeks, reports came from town about the transformation of Swann House. Not only did Mrs. Clune and her brood find a home there; Hestia made it a project to seek out the families of other crewmen who had perished with her husband. She offered a room to Mrs. Selkirk, the aging mother of the fifth mate, and one to Rheingold, the ailing son of the ship’s chandler. The young man had been in agony, worried that he would end his days in a charity asylum. Now he occupied a sunny room on the second story of the busy house, served by the Clune girls and often Hestia herself.

  Mary and Palina took to visiting once a week, bringing eggs and butter, reveling in the boisterous atmosphere of a thriving household.

  “You cannot believe the change,” Mary told Jesse one night at supper. “It does a body good just to see them.” She took a sip of the mulligatawny soup she’d made for dinner. “You should pay a visit.”

  “I’m not much for visits.”

  “You could come with me, since Palina and Magnus have gone away.”

  “With the Jonssons in Astoria for a fortnight, I’ve got more work than ever here at the station.” Each autumn, the Jonssons took a holiday to Oregon, and this year was no exception.

  Mary fell silent as they ate. Although he never said so, he loved her cooking. The creamy soup was another of her mother’s specialties, redolent of carrots and celery with two secret ingredients—a tart apple and a pinch of curry powder.

  “It’s lovely there,” she said at last. “Melissa Clune is manic about cleaning. Every window and surface sparkles. Rheingold—he’s the one who was so ill—is resting comfortably, although Fiona says there is no cure for his fistula. He and old Mrs. Selkirk are quite the pair. Hestia is giving lessons to all the children. She swears young Edward—he’s the eldest—will be the first Clune to go to university.” She cocked her head. “What is that like?”

  “What?”

  “University. It all sounds so grand, but I haven’t the faintest idea what it’s like.”

  “Picture a lot of overprivileged young men who think they know everything and fight like cocks to outdo their fellow students. They debate high-flown ideas as if such things as justice and social morality can actually be resolved by talking over drinks. And they create rivalries that sometimes last a lifetime.”

  “It doesn’t sound like such a grand place after all. Do you think it will help Edward to go to such a place? To learn such things?”

  His lips thinned in a slight smile. “I suppose. But to be honest, the hardest lessons I learned were taught to me right here at the station. My teachers were the storms and the tides and the waves. Somehow, a dry lecture in an echoing hall at university doesn’t compare.”

  “Yet you went. I try to picture what your life was like before you came here, and I can only think of huge houses and fancy parties. It’s so hard to put you into that picture.”

  “I left all that behind,” he said. “By choice.”

  “I think you left too soon,” she said quietly.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  She knew she was about to push his temper over the edge, but she didn’t care. There were some things that simply had to be said. The two of them had been getting along during the early weeks of their marriage, but that was because she had stayed away from his heart.

  Aye, she shared his bed but not his heart. The truth was, she felt no closer to him now than she had the day she married him. She had been treating him as if he were about to explode. That had to stop.

  “You should have stayed with that life long enough to accept Emily’s death,” Mary said at last.

  She could see the fury forming on his face like a sudden frost. She forced herself to go on. “What you have is a broken circle. You didn’t stay long enough to complete it.”

  He cut the air with a sharp movement of his hand. “You’re talking horseshit, and it’s none of your damned business.”

  “Losing her made you afraid to cherish anything else,” she forged on, ignoring his crudeness.

  “You don’t know what it means to cherish anyone,” he growled.

  She shot up from her chair. “Don’t I? Don’t I? What of my family? Every last one—Da and the boys lost at sea, and Mum dying in my very arms. How can you say I never loved them?”

  “Because you can still be happy after losing them!” he roared.

  She sank into her chair, feeling an odd twinge low in her back. “Ah. So that’s it, then. You think I never loved them because I’m not tormented by losing them. You think you’re the only one who knows how to love. You loved Emily so much that you’ve made yourself miserable for twelve years proving it. I’m impressed.”

  “I never asked you to come meddling into my life. I told you I’d hurt you—”

  “Keep trying, Jesse. But you can’t hurt me. Because I know you don’t mean any of it.” In fact, she knew nothing of the sort, but she had to say so or she would fall to pieces. “I loved my family,” she said fiercely. “I loved them so much that I would never dare to dishonor them by being miserable over their deaths.”

  She got up from the table again and walked to Jesse’s side. She closed her hand over his. “Each time I smile, it’s a small celebration of the love I felt for my family. Each time I laugh, it reminds me of the joy we shared. And each time I touch you, Jesse, I thank God for the family who taught me that touching and loving are the very essence of life.”

  She brought his hand to her cheek, then to her lips. “If I dared to pretend otherwise, it would be a denial of all my family meant to me.”

  For several moments, he sat as still as a statue. Then he rose and took both her hands in his. “I was wrong to say you didn’t love them,” he admitted. “But your way doesn’t work for me. It’ll never work for me.”

  “You should try it. Try letting go of the past. Try loving again.”

  He dropped her hands. “That,” he said, “is impossible.”

  It was the speed with which he’d dropped her hands that convinced her. He
would love her one day. It would take a lot of hard work on her part, but he would.

  Wouldn’t he?

  He went to the door and looked out. Autumn was sweeping in, the days growing shorter. The swish of falling leaves accompanied every sigh of the breeze. Tonight, Erik was sitting watch.

  Mary bent and added a driftwood log to the hearth fire. She caught her breath as the twinge in her back struck her again.

  “Is something the matter?” Jesse asked without turning.

  “No.” She straightened, rubbing the small of her back, and went to the long bookshelves that covered the far wall. “Will you read to me tonight? The poem you read about King Arthur was that grand. I was hoping to hear more.” She took down a newer-looking volume. The leather on the spine was still shiny. “So many books. What is this one?”

  He crossed the room and took it from her. “This was a gift from my sister. It’s a book of essays by Emerson.” From between the pages, a folded sheet of paper drifted to the floor.

  Mary stooped to pick it up. “A letter?”

  “Annabelle used to write to me. She gave up because I never answered her letters.”

  “Will you read me this one?”

  He shrugged and went to the settle. Mary plumped the pillows behind her to cushion her back. He was about to share something from the past—surely that was progress.

  He opened the letter, handing her an amber-toned photograph. “That’s Annabelle and her husband on their wedding day.”

  Mary took the small, stiff photograph and glanced down at it. A chill seized her heart, and she gave it a keener look.

  Then her world flipped over. Somehow she managed to sit still, to hold the photograph by its corners and to stare benignly at the smiling couple in the picture. But inside, everything turned black. She felt the darkness. The coldness. And the sheer horror.

  Jesse was reading something—the letter? An essay? Mary didn’t listen, couldn’t listen. She could only stare at the photograph. Annabelle was as beautiful as her name sounded, resembling Jesse, with the same clean facial lines and a dignity of bearing that must be bred in the bone of these two.