by Susan Wiggs
“Sir, the light at Cape Disappointment went out!”
Mary crushed her hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. Jesse would never, ever let the beacon go out.
“Carry on without it, then,” Granger bellowed.
“But sir, it’s impossible. We’ve got no point of reference to guide us across the bar. We’ll run up on the shoals for sure.”
Mary yanked the door shut. There was no point in telling Annabelle; she was on the verge of hysteria already. Mary closed her eyes to pray, but all she could think of was Jesse. Perhaps she should have listened to him more closely. He was always trying to tell her to get her head out of the stars and realize that life was a struggle, that sometimes it takes more than a glib tongue and a sense of humor to get by. Maybe if she’d believed that, she wouldn’t have been such easy prey for Granger.
“You were right, my love,” she whispered. “But I learned it too late.”
Seconds later, Granger barged into the room. “Your fool of a husband is playing games with me,” he said.
She looked him in the eye, just as she had the night before she had fled San Francisco. “You’re a dead man,” she said.
His hand snaked out and wound into her hair. “Then I’ll take you to hell with me.”
* * *
The windproof lamp in the prow of the pilot boat flickered. Hauling back on the tiller, Jesse aimed the small craft out to sea. He had made this voyage a hundred times—but only in his dreams.
The reality was more fearsome by far, because he never could have dreamed what was at stake. The fear inside him was a greater monster than the swells that rose around him like mountains of glass.
Terror threatened to suck him down, hold him under. But he couldn’t let it win. Mary was out there, lost on the shoals.
It was the most terrifying voyage of his life, but for Mary and the baby he would risk everything. Cloaked in his sou’wester hat and oilskins, he let out sail and battled his way toward the treacherous north-bank shoals. Between lifts of the enormous swells, he was able to glimpse the lights of the Trident.
The schooner was embedded at the keel. Even through the bellow of the storm, Jesse could hear her timbers groaning. Soon she would begin to come apart. The wind veered, and an ebb tide ran. Breakers enveloped the Trident, staving in a cutter. With every wave, the vessel lifted, its twin masts reaching up like the arms of a drowning man.
The moments seemed endless as he swept toward the schooner. And then, once he had it in his sights, time seemed to pass too quickly. He had mere seconds to take out the line with the grappling hooks, to toss it across the churning water. Half a dozen times, he tossed the hook and missed. Once he nearly lost himself when a wave reared up and slapped him flat into the hull of the pilot boat.
Finally, the hook caught and held. Gritting his teeth, Jesse reeled himself toward the schooner.
* * *
“Mr. Clapp,” someone on deck shouted. “We have company!”
Granger flashed Mary a look of contempt and strode out of the stateroom. Annabelle lay collapsed on the small bunk, sobbing hopelessly.
Mary gathered up the baby, making a sling of his blankets and tying him against her. Her hands shook, and her breathing came fast. The terror darted through her, stabbing, cold as ice. Awkwardly, she stumbled out on deck. She preferred to take her chances with the storm rather than with Granger.
Salt spray stung her face the moment she stepped outside. She tucked the blanket more securely around Davy. Everywhere she looked, the ship had sprung leaks. Waves smashed the bulwarks and flooded the spar deck, swamping everyone knee deep in water. The sole ship’s boat lay hull up on the deck, a sharp iron bar sticking through the splintered wood.
“Sweet Jesus,” she said, clinging to a thick rope. Instinct made her look in the direction of the lighthouse, but the beacon had gone out. Where in God’s name was Jesse?
The crewmen and Granger had gathered at the starboard rail. After a moment, Mary saw why. A pilot boat had found them.
She felt the first inkling of hope, then astonishment as the pilot, a big man in oilskins and a wide-brimmed sou’wester, boarded the schooner.
“Man the pulleys,” the pilot shouted.
He didn’t have to speak more than once. The crewmen fitted a pulley onto the line. One by one, they started sliding down the rope to the pilot boat.
Mary darted back into the stateroom. “Annabelle!” she called. “A boat’s come to rescue us! Come quickly!”
Annabelle lurched across the room. Still shielding the baby from the storm, Mary helped her through the door. By the time they got out to the deck, all of the crew had evacuated the Trident. Only Granger and the newcomer remained.
But instead of manning the pulleys, they were locked in deadly battle. The pilot’s hat had blown free. Long hair blew wildly around his face.
“Jesse!” Mary screamed his name. Shock and disbelief and terror exploded inside her. Jesse, who had vowed never to go to sea again, had come for her.
But the hatred of these two men was bigger than the storm itself. Ignoring the gales of wind and the bruising waves, they fought each other, fists flying and feet kicking out.
“Dear heaven,” Mary said, keeping hold of Annabelle’s hand. “They’ll get us all killed.” With her head down into the wind, she struggled toward them. The baby, startled at last to wakefulness, began to cry. “Jesse!” Mary called again.
He looked at her. It was just a brief glance, barely more than a blink, but Granger pounced on the moment, shoving Jesse back against the rail. He jerked something from the cuff of his boot and raised his arm.
The large blade of a knife flickered dully in the gathering night.
Even as she launched herself toward Jesse, she knew she wouldn’t reach him in time. The seconds froze and melded into a single instant of horror. She saw the blade arc downward. Its tip was aimed for Jesse’s exposed neck.
An explosion split open the world, as if lightning had struck or a cannon had been fired. At the same moment, Mary saw Granger’s body jerk and lift off the deck, yanked by the force of some large, invisible hand. Then she saw a dark splotch blossom on his chest. She saw him die even before he staggered, then fell backward over the ship’s rail.
Trembling with amazement, she slowly turned. Annabelle stood slumped against a stanchion, clutching the Smith and Wesson in both hands.
* * *
The feeble light of a watery dawn cracked the horizon, illuminating the beach in somber gray tones. Magnus and Judson had mobilized everyone with the horses and surf runners. The rescuers surged from the shore to meet the pilot boat, crammed full of the weary survivors.
And one fatality.
The body of Granger Clapp lay astern, covered by rain-pelted canvas.
Fiona and Hestia, hardy as sea dogs in their mackintoshes and boots, swooped down on Annabelle and hurried away with her. Jesse knew they would take her to Swann House. He hoped she would heal there.
As she was walking away, Annabelle turned, the misty dawn light stark upon her thin face, the dying breeze plucking at her lashing strands of hair. She locked eyes with Jesse, lifted a trembling hand to her heart, then to her lips. He recognized the look of someone who had faced her deadliest demons and survived. He knew that, this night, he had done the same.
“She’ll be all right,” Mary said, holding the baby in her arms and pressing herself to Jesse’s side as if to assure herself that he was real.
“Yes,” Jesse agreed, bringing his hand up to cradle her cheek. “She’ll be all right.”
“And us?” Mary whispered. “Will we?”
“I hope so.” His voice cracked, and he stopped speaking for a moment to press his lips against her salt-laden hair. “If you’ll forgive me,” he added.
She leaned back a little to look up into
his face. Her fingers lightly traced his cheekbone where Granger’s fist had bruised it, then his lower lip, split and beginning to swell. “A man doesn’t ask forgiveness from a person whose life he’s saved—twice,” she said. “You risked so much. I can’t believe you took to the sea—at night, in a storm—just to find us.”
“To have you in my life is worth any risk.” Despite the physical exhaustion seeping through him, he felt alive as never before. He had taken control of the one thing that was crippling him—his fear of losing loved ones to the sea. He had fought that battle and won it.
“Mary.” He spoke the words that had formed in his heart long ago, the words that wouldn’t go away no matter how hard he fought them. He’d come to the end of a long journey—a journey of the soul that had taken him twelve years was finally over. “The more I draw from the well our love has created, the more I find a source of strength that I never knew was there.”
A flock of seagulls wheeled overhead, their plaintive cries signaling the passing of the storm. A tear slipped from the corner of Mary’s eye. “Ah, Jesse, I’ve never heard you speak so. Like a poet, you are. I l—”
“It’s my turn,” he said, pressing a finger to her lips. “My turn to say it. I love you, Mary.”
She nodded, laughter mingling with her tears. “I know. Haven’t I always known it?”
“Always,” he admitted, bringing his arm around her and leading her up the winding path to the bluff. “Let’s take our son home.”
EPILOGUE
Washington State
1889
On Sunday, something washed up on shore.
The morning had dawned like all the others—a chill haze with the feeble sun behind it, iron-colored swells gathering muscle far offshore, then hurling themselves against the huddled sharp rocks of Cape Disappointment.
All this young Davy Morgan saw from the catwalk high on the lighthouse, where he had gone to extinguish the sperm-oil lamp and start the daily chore of trimming wicks and cleaning lenses.
And to see, once again, the rainbows that would form in the crystals when the sun broke through the haze. His father had taught him that when he was very small—taught him to see the rainbows.
But it caught him, the sight down on the strand.
He wasn’t certain what made him pause, turn, stare. He often gazed at the gray-bearded waves slapping the fine brown sand or exploding against the rocks. He often thought what a wonder it was to live here, where the earth and the sea met.
Amma Palina told him stories of strange creatures and treacherous adventures. Aunt Annabelle liked to read stories, too. She’d even started a lending library in town, and she taught reading and writing to the little ones who lived at Swann House.
Davy believed every one of the legends and tales. Believed with his whole heart. On this day he sensed the tingle Amma’s stories always gave him. He felt a disturbance in the air, like the breath of an invisible stranger on the back of his neck. One moment he was getting out his linseed oil and polishing cloths; the next he was standing in the bitter wind. Watching.
He would never quite understand what made him go to the iron rail, hold tight with one hand and lean over the edge to look past the jut of land, beyond the square-jawed cliffs, down onto the storm-swept beach.
A mass of seaweed. Strands of golden-brown kelp shrouding an elongated shape. For all he knew it could be no more than a tangle of weeds or perhaps a dead seal, an old one whose whiskers had whitened and whose teeth had dulled.
As Davy stood staring down at the shape on the beach, he felt...something. A sudden knife-twist of...what?
Inevitability. Destiny, his mother would call it.
Though there was no one about to see him at this early hour, Davy straightened the brim of his cap. It was part of the livery of the Klipsan Beach Rescue Squad, organized by his father the year Davy was born.
Davy rang the fog bell to alert everyone, then clattered down the stairs. He followed the path to the beach, filling his lungs with salt air and watching the sun break through the morning clouds.
He slowed his steps as he approached the heap of seaweed. It was rounded at one end—the shape of a human head. For a moment, his hackles rose, and he felt a shiver of apprehension. The sea was not always kind. In his twelve years of growing up here, he had learned that much.
He edged toward the rank-smelling jumble, touched it with a booted toe. At the same moment, he heard voices. His father’s deep boom and his mother’s lilting chatter, followed by the bright laughter of Shannon and Malcolm. Monte Cristo, the family dog, barked and ran circles around his family.
Davy sank to his knees and started digging through the heavy weeds. If there was something awful here, he wanted to hide it from his younger sister and brother.
The strands of kelp were spongy and cold to the touch. Clinging thick and stubborn to—To what?
He encountered a thick web of rope, all woven together. A net of some sort, attached to—To what?
Working feverishly now, he dug at the rounded head-shape, finding the object hard and cold, wrapped in the rope webbing. He pulled hard, and the rotted hemp fell away to reveal something extraordinary.
It was a perfectly round glass ball. Intrigued, he took it down into the surf, kneeling, barely feeling the chill of the water through his trousers. Using sand and seawater, he washed the slime from the glass until it shone a bright, clear aqua.
His father had once described a Japanese fishing float to Davy, but he’d never actually seen one. The fact that he’d found something so rare and perfect filled him with pride. Grinning, he stood up and turned to greet his family. As they approached, Davy felt a funny surge of thickness in his throat. A surge of love.
They looked so fine to him just then, with the rising sun behind them. Mum looked as pretty as a girl with her laughing eyes and smiling mouth. Little Shannon, running toward Davy on chubby legs, had hair as red as Davy’s own. Malcolm, who was tall for his age and much too serious, was the image of Papa, with long dark hair and eyes the color of Davy’s favorite bird feather.
And Papa...well, he was just Papa. Full of laughter and high-flown ideas and private thoughts he would only share with Mum. Every once in a while, he’d get a faraway look in his eyes, and Davy would sense a sadness in him. But then he would come back to them, laughing, his huge arms reaching out to draw Davy into a hug.
They were reaching now, those brawny arms that had held Davy through nightmares and the croup and a spill from one of the horses. “What did you find there, son?” Papa asked.
Davy’s grin grew even wider as he held out the treasure. The morning sun shot brilliant light through the globe of glass.
Mum gasped. “Jesse, look what he’s found!”
Papa put his arm around her. For a second, he got that distant look in his eyes. Then he kissed the top of her head and held her close.
“Here, you can hold it,” Davy said, handing his father the globe. Davy was ready to turn his attention to Monte Cristo, who was in a frenzy for a game of fetch. As he picked up a piece of driftwood and flung it into the surf for the dog, Davy glanced back at his parents. He had no idea why a glass globe from the sea would make his mother cry, but she was weeping, pressing her face into Papa’s chest.
Even so, Davy could see her lips starting to smile, could hear her sobs turning to laughter. It was always that way with them, he thought, picking up another piece of driftwood. They always found some reason for joy. Always.
* * * * *
AFTERWORD
Today it is hard to appreciate the treachery of the Columbia bar as it was in the nineteenth century. Thanks to man-made jetties, the location of the old bar, which caused more than five hundred shipwrecks, can only be identified by slight ripples and channel markers.
The use of horses in sea rescue is based on fact
. Prior to the establishment of an organized rescue service, stallions were trained to swim through the breakers, letting shipwreck victims cling to their tails. As many as six people at a time could be hauled to shore in this manner.
The renowned lifesaving crew, fictionalized in this novel, was actually organized by lightkeeper Joel Munson in 1877. The initial lifesaving station at the mouth of the Columbia was erected at Fort Canby in 1878. Their motto was, “You have to go out, but no one says you have to come in.”
If you’re very lucky and very persistent, you can still find antique glass floats along the storm-swept beaches around Cape Disappointment.
Read on for a special preview of
MAP OF THE HEART
by #1 New York Times bestselling author
Susan Wiggs.
PART ONE
Bethany Bay
“Thank you for all the Acts of Light which beautified a summer now passed to its reward.” —letter from Emily Dickinson to Mrs. John Howard Sweetser
CHAPTER 1
Of the five steps in developing film, four must take place in complete darkness. And in the darkroom, timing was everything. The difference between overexposure and under exposure sometimes came down to a matter of milliseconds.
Camille Adams liked the precision of it. She liked the idea that with the proper balance of chemicals and timing, a good result was entirely within her control.
There could be no visible light in the room, not even a red or amber safe light. Camera obscura was Latin for dark room, and when Camille was young and utterly fascinated by the process, she had gone to great lengths to practice her craft. Her first darkroom had been a closet that smelled of her mom’s frangipani perfume and her stepdad’s fishing boots, crusted with salt from the Chesapeake. She’d used masking tape and weather stripping to fill in the gaps, keeping out any leaks of light. Even a hairline crack in the door could fog the negatives.
Found film was a particular obsession of hers, particularly now that digital imagery had supplanted film photography. She loved the thrill of opening a door to the past and being the first to peek in. Often while she worked with an old roll of film or movie reel, she tried to imagine someone taking the time to get out their camera and take pictures or shoot a movie, capturing a candid moment or an elaborate pose. For Camille, working in the darkroom was the only place she could see clearly, the place where she felt most competent and in control.