by Ellen Block
“Was he the last caretaker?”
“Merle? Heavens, no. He’s an islander. A native. Been looking after the place since the last caretaker left.”
“When was that?”
“Dear me, I can’t quite recall.”
Abigail had no doubt that was a lie. She’d lost count of how many Lottie had already told.
“Takes a rare soul to care for a landmark such as this.”
If “rare soul” was a euphemism for idiot, Abigail thought, then that was the first honest thing to come from Lottie’s mouth since they’d met.
“I should be getting back to the office, leave you to your unpacking.”
“Yeah. Sure. Okay.” Abigail trailed her to the front yard in a daze.
Lottie hoisted herself into the Suburban and tossed Abigail a set of keys for the house. “Almost forgot these.”
The key ring dropped heavily into Abigail’s hand. There were dozens more than she could account for.
“Wait. None of them is marked.”
“Whoopsies. Where is my head? I’ve had them forever, so I remember which is which. What I’ll do is make you a cheat sheet and get you some of those round rubber doohickeys to put on ’em. I adore those. They’re a miracle of science, they are,” Lottie said, starting the engine. “Remember, Abby, call me if you need anything. Or talk to Merle. He knows this place inside and out.”
With a parting toot of her car horn, she drove off, abandoning Abigail in the overgrown grass. She stood in the yard, alternating her gaze between the lighthouse looming above and the mass of unidentified keys in her palm. Abigail suddenly realized that since arriving on Chapel Isle, everything about her identity had changed. She’d gone from being a respected lexicographer to being the caretaker of a ramshackle lighthouse, from a suburbanite to a resident an island that was miles from nowhere. She’d been transformed from Abigail to Abby, a person with whom she was wholly unfamiliar, a stranger.
“Careful what you wish for.”
Dusk drifted down the skyline, enveloping the coast in pale gray, while Abigail doggedly unpacked her car. The air steadily grew colder, and there on the bluff, the wind was unremitting. She made trip after trip back and forth from the station wagon to the house. Every time Abigail thought she was through, she would find more books hidden beneath the seats or tucked into crevices between the cushions. Once the car was empty, she thankfully went indoors.
The house was as dark as it was chilly. She flipped on the lights, and the brass chandelier in the center of the room flickered, brightening reluctantly. With her teeth starting to chatter, Abigail knew what she had to do. She had to light a fire.
“You can do this. You have to do this. Or you’ll freeze.”
She studied the fireplace intently, only to realize what was missing.
“No wood, no fire.”
Abigail trekked to the shed, the wind hounding her along the way. She sorted through countless keys, cursing Lottie for relatching the padlock in the first place. The eighth attempt was the winner.
“This is a giant splinter waiting to happen,” she declared, loading into her arms as much firewood as she could carry. Logs piled to her chin, Abigail slammed the shed door. Locking it with limited mobility was a feat. It took four tries.
The log rack grunted when she lumped the wood into the fireplace.
“You’re not the only one complaining. Believe me.”
Squaring off with the hearth, hands at her side gunslinger-style, Abigail said, “What’s next? Matches.”
A search of the kitchen drawers was fruitless. Most were stuck. Of those she was able to jimmy open, one held a dull set of silverware, another a tarnished eggbeater. The third was full of crumbs.
“Not too promising.”
The upper cupboards were her last hope. Mismatched plates and bowls were stacked haphazardly behind the first set of doors. The next held a motley ensemble of mugs and glasses. There was one cabinet left. From underneath a mound of dinged pots and pans protruded a box of long wooden matches. Abigail shook the box and heard a rattle of salvation.
“You’ve got matches. You’ve got wood. You can do this.”
Her hands shook as she opened the chimney flue and removed a match from the box. Right as she was about to strike it, Abigail stopped herself.
“Kindling.”
She needed paper or newsprint, neither of which she had. The idea of ripping a page from one of her books darted through her mind. It was swiftly rejected. Scouring the kitchen cabinets and drawers again would be futile. As Abigail was eyeing the living room curtains as prospects, it came to her. She ferreted through her purse for the Chapel Isle tourist brochure Lottie had sent her.
“You’re here. What do you need the brochure for?”
Kneeling in front of the fireplace, she pinched the match between her fingertips, but could not strike it. She simply couldn’t do it. Defeated, she tossed the brochure aside, curled up on the couch, and shivered. Every ounce of her was cold, yet she was incapable of lighting the fire.
Abigail had thought she was dreaming that night when she opened her eyes and saw her own home burning to the ground. Support beams buckled and brayed. Windows bellowed as they blew out, exhaling the stench of scorched metal and chemical fumes. The roof roared as it tore from its moorings. The walls crumbled in a crescendo of screams. She had seen and heard and smelled it all as she lay in the street, barely conscious, muzzled by the smoke that had burned her throat, unable to tell the firemen that her husband and their four-year-old son, Justin, were still inside. As her house collapsed before her, the air filled with a swirling storm of burning cinders, a sea of stars cascading through the clouds of smoke as if the heavens had descended to earth for a single night. Neither her husband nor her child could have survived. There were no words Abigail could think of, no words she would have spoken, even if she could have.
She awoke in the hospital to the faces of her parents, her brother, and two policemen. Her father described her injuries, gave her the prognosis. Her windpipe was damaged, but in time she would be able to speak again. Her mother begged her not to try to talk. Her brother urged her to listen to the officers, who explained that the neighbor who called 911 had seen her husband, Paul, carry her out of the house, unconscious, her body limp. He’d laid her gently on the grass, then run back inside to get their son.
Abigail understood why Paul had saved her first. He was a mathematician and had been true to form. Justin weighed about thirty pounds. Abigail was four times as heavy. It was an easy equation. He’d decided to use what strength he had to bring her to safety first, then would go back for their son. He couldn’t have calculated that the house would cave in.
The fire department made every attempt to rescue them; the officers assured Abigail of that. The inferno was too ferocious. It took fire trucks from three towns to quell it.
There was only one question Abigail had for the policemen, though the medication the doctors had her on made it slippery, almost too slick to get a grip on. The mix of anguish and potent sedatives was mentally obliterating. Laboring to stay conscious, she motioned for a notepad.
She wrote the word: How?
The officers traded glances with her father. Abigail felt her family bracing for her reaction. The source of the fire was a gas leak from the new oven that had recently been installed. A poorly fitted pipe allowed a stream of gas to bleed in between the walls, filling the shell of the house. Then something sparked the gas. The fire department couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause. A power surge. A defective wire. Even the flipping of a faulty light switch would have been enough to ignite the gas that had leached into the structure. Despite the drugs, Abigail could comprehend what the officers were telling her, and instantly she knew.
She and Paul had purchased the oven a week earlier. They’d spent hours looking at a multitude of ranges, comparing features and prices. The oven Abigail was leaning toward was expensive, so she’d been open to other models. Paul wouldn’t hear of it.
Cinnamon sugar cookies were her son’s favorite, so the morning the oven was delivered, Abigail went and bought the ingredients. She’d planned on baking them the following day. She wouldn’t get the chance.
For a month, Abigail remained in the hospital. Her family and friends visited daily. Their company did little to console her. The drugs kept her too drowsy to do much other than nod if someone addressed her. Her injuries were slower to heal than the doctors had predicted. During the fire, Abigail had breathed in a combination of burning hot gas and smoke, scalding her lungs and scorching her throat. The mundane matter of breathing became a torture; swallowing, a misery. Abigail could feel the weight of air passing through her nostrils, making its journey through her chest. Although the medication made her thoughts gluey, she was grateful not to have to endure the brunt of the pain. Her grief, however, was an agony unto itself. It had degrees no thermometer could measure. The irony was that she had been burned on the inside of her body. The flames had spared her skin and burrowed deep inside her, leaving scorch marks that wouldn’t heal.
The fire charred everything Abigail cherished, branding both her past and her future. The lawsuit her brother, an attorney, filed for her against the company that installed the stove would take months to settle, maybe years. Meanwhile, the money from Paul’s life insurance policy was cold comfort. Though it meant she wouldn’t have to work for some time, Abigail didn’t care, because she loved her job. She was the lead lexicographical consultant for a company that produced electronic dictionaries for foreign markets, a plum position. But she no longer had the drive to work nor the strength to concentrate for very long. Whenever she tried to read, the words would scramble on the page. Snippets of old conversations with Paul would flare in her mind or, out of nowhere, she would have the sensation of running her hand through Justin’s hair. He’d had cherubic curls that sagged into his eyes if allowed to grow too long. For an instant, she would sense the hair between her fingers, then the feeling would vanish. That was what was left of her family—memories that would blacken around the edges like burning paper and turn to ash.
Darkness masked the view of the ocean from the cottage’s windows. Abigail blew on her hands to warm them, then brushed a stray hair from her cheek, only to discover she’d been crying. She hadn’t noticed.
Her watch claimed it was eight o’clock. It seemed much later. Abigail hadn’t eaten in hours. An apple left over from the car trip was all she had in the way of food.
“It’s that or the crumbs from the kitchen drawers.”
Dinner in one hand and a duffel bag in the other, Abigail trundled up the staircase, carrying her luggage to the bedroom. Two steps from the top, the bag’s handle caught on the railing, wedging her in the stairwell. She tugged and tugged, to no avail.
“Locked doors, stuck drawers, a scary fireplace, and now you want to give me a hard time?”
Abigail clenched the apple in her teeth to free up her other hand and gave the duffel a decisive yank. The strap ripped away from the railing, but the force of the bag coming back at her sent the piece of fruit popping from her mouth. She watched helplessly as it bounced down the filthy stairs. The apple spun to a stop at the front door.
“So much for supper.”
Too tired to care, Abigail tossed the duffel bag onto the bed, sending a disheartening cloud of dust into the air.
“Ditto for a good night’s sleep.”
After stripping the bed, she replaced the unwashed quilt and sheets with the set of towels she’d brought, laying them in a patchwork pattern while saving some to use for blankets. She was changing into her pajamas when it became readily apparent the towels wouldn’t be enough to keep her warm. The house was frigid. Abigail piled on another shirt and a sweater as well as a pair of sweatpants.
“I don’t see how you’re going to brush your teeth. You can’t even move your arms with this many clothes on.”
The same sludge that had run from the taps earlier that afternoon coughed from the faucet, spewing bilge into the basin. Abigail left the water running until she coaxed a clean flow from the pipes. Her reflection was framed in the lopsided mirror over the sink. She barely recognized herself. The extra clothing doubled her size, and her hair was wild from the wind, her eyes bloodshot, and her face puffy from crying.
Was this Abby?
If her full name stood for the person she’d been before the fire, what remained to be defined was who she would be now.
She shuffled to the bedroom, pining for sleep and rubbing her eyes, then remembered she had to remove her contact lenses. When she went back to the bathroom, the light was off. Abigail didn’t recollect flipping the switch. Anxiously, she tested it, waiting for the smell of smoke or the whoosh of flames. The bulb dimmed and lit, the switch clicking. Convinced nothing was going to happen, Abigail shut off the light.
“You forgot your contacts. Again.”
She turned around. The bathroom light was on.
“It’s a short. A short in the wiring. This is an old house. It’s just a short.”
Abigail hastily took out her contacts and put on her glasses. After turning off the light switch, she held it down. The bulb dimmed, leaving her in total darkness. Crawling into bed, she nestled her head on the T-shirt she’d covered the pillow in, wrapped the towels around her, and trembled.
The wind was blowing stridently outside. While the brick house was impervious, the windows weren’t. Each gust set the glass to quivering in the casements, a noise akin to bursts of static on a radio, random and aggravating.
“So much for peace and quiet.”
dree (drē), adj., v., dreed, dreeing. Scot. and North Eng.—adj. 1. tedious; dreary. —v.t. 2. to suffer; endure. Also, dreegh (drēKH), dreigh, driech, driegh. [bef. 1000; ME; OE drēogan to endure; c. Goth driugan to serve (in arms)]
Abigail awoke to the sensation of warmth on her face. She bolted up in bed and sniffed the air, seeking the source of the heat. A few heart-pounding seconds later, she realized it was the dawn light from the window that had roused her.
“Get a grip, Abby.”
During the night, the towels she’d improvised into blankets became tangled, and she had to unlace them from her arms and legs. Since the fire, Abigail slept fitfully. She tossed and turned and writhed, twisting her bedding into knots. Often she woke to find wrinkles pressed into her skin, evidence of her late-night wrestling. Rarely did she remember what she’d dreamed. The marks on her body were battle scars from a war she’d waged in her sleep, so she was thankful not to recall the fight.
The floor was icy underfoot, piercing right through her socks. Abigail slipped her shoes on. The bedsprings whined when she stood.
“My feelings exactly.”
Her entire body cried out with soreness, and her eyes were dry from sleeping on the dusty bed. There were eyedrops in her toiletry bag. As soon as she opened the bedroom door, she could see that the bathroom light was on again.
“It’s definitely a short,” she insisted. “What you have to do is go see Lottie and tell her this is unacceptable. You can’t have lights popping on and off in the middle of the night. She needs to send an electrician here immediately. And a cleaning crew.”
Aside from the light, the bathroom was as Abigail had left it. Her toothbrush was on the edge of the sink, next to a travel-sized tube of toothpaste. Her contacts case rested on top of the toilet tank. Once she had her contacts in, she reinspected the switch. Nothing appeared amiss. Abigail snapped off the light.
Halfway down the hall, she turned back and flipped it on again.
“This way there won’t be any more surprises.”
Downstairs, Abigail found the brochure and the box of matches by the fireplace, evidence of her failure. Whenever she exhaled, she could see her breath. Starting
a fire would have been smart. She wasn’t up for it.
Habit prompted her to go to the kitchen and make herself a cup of tea.
“Except you don’t have any tea. You may not have a teapot either.”
A search of the cabinets yielded a scuffed kettle bearing a dented belly.
“One out of two.”
Abigail wandered into the living room and checked her watch. It was a little before six a.m. She hadn’t been awake this early in ages, not since Justin was an infant. She would stir at the sound of his soft, insistent crying and pad into his room, the carpet muffling her footsteps, then scoop Justin into her arms, and his crying would cease. It was gratifying that her touch could quiet him, that it had so much power. She smiled, then trembled from the cold, shaking off the memory. Abigail rubbed her arms, wondering what to do.
“The lighthouse.”
Why Lottie kept the door locked was a mystery as well as a redundancy, given that the front door was as secure as a vault and practically impossible to open even with the appropriate key. Abigail didn’t get it, which was for the best. Grasping Lottie’s logic would have meant she’d relinquished her own.
A few steps up the spiral staircase, the iron risers began to growl ominously. Abigail froze, afraid the stairs might not hold. To assess their strength, she shook the railing and jumped on the lower landings. The wrought iron held fast, so she cautiously began to climb. Halfway to the top, Abigail made the mistake of glancing over the handrail. The staircase snaked around the walls vertiginously, bottoming onto a concrete slab.
“Note to self: Don’t look down.”
The tower acted as a giant megaphone, amplifying her words into an echo that swirled through the lighthouse like a coin in a drain. Abigail couldn’t resist trying it again.
“Oh, say, can you see,” she sang.
The bar of the song ricocheted off the walls, vibrating impressively.
“Watch out, Celine Dion.”
For as much as Abigail had been talking to herself, this was the first time her voice wasn’t being filtered through her own ears. The echo didn’t match what she was accustomed to hearing. There was a gap between how she thought she sounded and how she really sounded. That was why Abigail always made Paul leave the message on their voice mail.