Lighthouse Bay

by Kimberley Freeman

  “Libby?” he said with a nervous laugh. “I just asked you out for dinner.”

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I . . . The man who died. He was . . .”

  “Oh, I see. He was your partner?”

  No. He was never her partner. He was never her husband. He was her lover. They saw each other one weekend a month and the occasional stolen week away in an exotic location where nobody knew them. They never had dinner with friends or family. She never met his mother. She had loved Mark, but he was not her partner. She took a deep, shaking breath. “I’d love to have dinner with you, Tristan,” she said.

  “Really? I mean, I do understand if it’s too soon.”

  “I’d love to,” she said again. “When are you back from Sydney?”

  “Friday morning. How about I pick you up on Friday night at six?”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  She regretted it as soon as she hung up, but it was too late. The future was coming. It had to.

  Libby forgot that Damien was coming for dinner until half an hour before he was due. She scrambled around in her pantry and refrigerator, and was relieved to turn up enough ingredients for pizza. She set about tidying the house, especially the desk where she had been working feverishly the past twenty-four hours on the catalog, trying to distract herself. Her last bad decision had resulted in twenty years of consequences; who knew how many decades she might feel the reverberations of this one? To take the money and regret it; to refuse the money and regret it.

  Libby was in the bathroom, brushing her hair, when Damien knocked at the door. She opened it to find him standing there with a tool kit and a cat.

  “This is Bossy,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind, but I don’t understand,” Libby said, as the fine-boned ginger cat slid past her ankles.

  “I don’t want to leave her alone at the lighthouse. Too many places for her to get stuck or lost.”

  Libby bent to scratch the cat under the chin. “She’s beautiful. Did you just get her?”

  “No, I’ve had Bossy for years. It’s complicated and I don’t really want to talk about it, except to say that this week I managed to get my cat, my utility belt, and”—he lifted up his tool kit—“my tools. You said you had some problems with your linen cupboard.”

  “You can fix it?”

  “Yeah. I’m a carpenter. It’s the least I can do, considering you’re making me dinner.”

  “Oh, I thought . . .” She trailed off, realizing it might be an insult if she said, “I thought you didn’t have a job.” Instead she said, “I didn’t know that.”

  He was already in the hallway, testing the door on the linen cupboard. She watched him a little while. Where had his cat been? And his car and his tools? He must have gone to get them this week, but why? She was dying to ask, but it was clear he wasn’t going to tell her.

  She cooked while he took the doors off, planed them down, then refastened them on their hinges. He was very at ease with her and it made her feel at ease with him, and they chatted about the past and people they’d known. While the pizza was cooking, they sat outside on the mismatched outdoor furniture. She was tempted to tell him about the offer from Ashley-Harris and the potentially disastrous situation with Juliet but decided he wouldn’t be much help. He had no money; he didn’t even have a job. Big property deals were probably beyond his scope.

  In any case, he had other things on his mind to talk about. “I kept looking at the 1901 lighthouse journal,” he said, pulling it out of his tool box. “I found something interesting in the final few pages.”

  Libby leaned forward. “Go on.”

  “At first I thought there was nothing. I thought maybe the keeper—his name was Matthew Seaward—might have been foreign because there were a number of sentences with very odd grammar. Things like, Brought home some fresh apples for I, or I very down today. But then I realized he’s not saying ‘I’ as in himself. I think it’s somebody’s initial.” He flicked through the pages, looking for an entry.

  “Oh? So he means Isaac or Ivan or something like that?”

  “No. It’s a woman. Because there was one entry . . . Ah, here it is: I anxious. Not sure what is wrong with her.”

  “Was he married?”

  “The records say no. And I looked back through his journals from when he started in 1895, and there is no mention of another person, no mention of ‘I’ until after the diary entry I read you. About the strange woman.”

  “And is she there with him until he finishes?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t found all of his journals yet. This one ends in July 1901.”

  Libby turned this over in her mind. “Just because a strange woman turns up—one he sends to town to find a more appropriate place to stay, remember—that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the same woman that he starts talking about later in the journal, does it?”

  “Well, no. We’re working with possibility rather than probability. But it’s fun to imagine, isn’t it? She gets shipwrecked, he takes her in, they fall in love. It doesn’t matter if it didn’t happen; it’s all in the past now.”

  Libby let this idea sink in. Yes, eventually it all becomes the past. Like her love affair with Mark. Time erases everything. Did Mark know that? Is that why he always urged her to live in the moment? She tried to feel the moment now. The soft breeze, the beat of the ocean. Happiness was almost there. But there was still too much sadness lying on her heart. If she could, she would wish Damien away and put Mark in his place. She could have had that. She could have sat here with Mark with the breeze and the ocean, but she had been too stubborn and now it was too late. Time had passed.

  But it also meant that her decision about selling the cottage would disappear into the past one day too. Did that mean it didn’t really matter what she did? She furrowed her brow, trying to make it not matter.

  “Are you okay?” Damien said.

  She glanced up, tried a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Do you think I could hang on to this journal? I’d like to read it for myself.”

  “Sure.” He laid it on the side table. “Shall we check on the pizza?”

  Damien wanted to eat inside, on the couch. He said he hadn’t sat on a couch for a long time and Libby found this both funny and puzzling. But neither of them probed each other’s secrets. It was much more comfortable to eat pizza, talk about the locals and construct an elaborate story behind their lighthouse mystery.

  “I’ll come back during the week and check your other cabinets, if you like. Anything else you need done?”

  “It wouldn’t be right. I’m not really in a position to pay you and—”

  “I have an ulterior motive.”

  For a second her heart fluttered: he wasn’t going to make a move on her, was he? He wasn’t her type and she was a lot older than he was. But then he said, “Is there any chance I could leave Bossy here with you?”

  The idea delighted Libby. “Of course.”

  “And if you can make me a meal once in a while, I’ll pay you back in odd jobs. There are . . . problems with my bank accounts. I can’t even get hold of the bits of paperwork that would make it easy for me to get a job. I need cash jobs and in-kind trades. If you know of anything . . .”

  “Damien, why—”

  “It’s too raw. I can’t talk about it.”

  She nodded. “You should go and see Juliet. She says she needs some work done in the kitchen of the tea room.”

  “Really? Perhaps I will, then. Could you let her know I’ll drop in?”

  Libby’s mind whirled. No, she wasn’t going to speak to Juliet again until she’d made up her mind. If she told Damien she was considering abandoning any chance of a relationship with her sister for two and a half million dollars, he would judge her. Everybody thought that family relationships were priceless.

  “Sure, I’ll let her know,” Libby said. The lie was harmless. “She’ll be glad to see you.”

  Later, after Damien had gone
home, Bossy was waiting on the end of the bed when Libby came out of the shower.

  “Hello, puss,” she said, switching on the lamp and climbing into bed with the lighthouse keeper’s journal. Bossy stretched and came to lie at her side, purring softly.

  At first, Libby found it difficult to decipher Matthew Seaward’s writing, but then she got the hang of it and flicked through, looking for mentions of “I.” Damien was right that most of them were in the last few pages of the journal, recording events in late June. Mostly very mundane things. But then she flicked backwards and found an interesting entry from April. I returned to telegraph sister. I returned. Was he speaking of himself, or of the mysterious woman whose name began with “I”? Curious now, she began to read more closely, as a storm moved in off the sea and made the eaves shake. A list of telegraphs received. At the end, squashed against the bottom margin: Still no reply from I’s sister.

  It sounded as though Matthew Seaward had become invested in the mysterious woman and her sister. A little further in, a longer entry caught Libby’s eye. I has not heard from sister. Best for I if we find her soon. She needs family of her own to love and guide her.

  Libby read these lines over and over. The mysterious woman—possibly a shipwreck survivor—had tried to find her sister. Libby’s imagination toyed with this idea while Bossy slept on beside her and the rain lightened and lifted. In the direst of circumstances, this woman had needed a sister “to love and guide her.” Libby found herself acutely and unexpectedly jealous. Such a relationship didn’t exist in her world, least of all with her sister. And nor would it ever. Since she had become an adult, the only person who had ever loved and guided her was Mark. Somebody else’s husband.

  Bossy stood and stretched, lightly leaped off the bed and padded away, no doubt in search of nocturnal adventures. It was getting late. Libby put the journal aside and switched off the lamp, but lay awake for a long time.

  By Friday, Libby had been enormously productive. She had booked a photographer for the catalog, roughed out three designs to run past Emily, and blocked out her painting of the Aurora. Anything to keep her mind busy.

  She could be rich. Juliet would hate her forever. Two and a half million dollars. Thirty days to respond.

  The decision had a bearing on everything she did. When she worked on the catalog, she thought about how she wouldn’t have to worry about how quickly or slowly she gained new clients for her design business. When she painted, she thought about how she could do it full-time for at least a year. When she researched photographers on the Internet, she slid over to a French real estate site and looked at luxury apartments in Paris. She had missed Paris: its pace and sophistication. And when Juliet phoned to see if she would come over for dinner one night on the weekend, she’d had to refuse because she knew she couldn’t look Juliet in the eye until she’d made her decision.

  Libby suspected that Juliet was wrong in her fear of Ashley-Harris: their eco-resort wouldn’t be competition. Nobody paid nine hundred dollars a night for a room at a B&B. It was a completely different kind of business.

  But then all her rumination would start to feel very much like an elaborate justification for choosing money over family.

  The nights were the worst. She could normally get to sleep, nurturing herself with guilty fantasies about painting in the light-flooded sitting room of her dream apartment in Montparnasse, but at 3 am the hot reality of her dilemma would prickle her awake and she would lie until dawn, unable to sleep. Meanwhile, the thirty days had become twenty-three days.

  Libby was pacing the living room in her high heels and pencil skirt when she heard the Audi pull up. She waited until he knocked, then took a deep breath and opened the door.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “You look beautiful,” he said. He was dressed in a charcoal gray blazer and jeans, and smelled of expensive aftershave.

  Her heart thudded. A date. She was going on a date.

  Bossy slinked out of the hallway and froze, looking at Tristan.

  “What’s wrong, Bossy?” she asked.

  Tristan crouched and rubbed his fingers together, trying to coax Bossy over for a pat. But Bossy flounced straight past him and headed for the couch instead.

  “Cats usually like me,” he said.

  “Don’t worry.” Libby laughed. “I won’t read anything into it.”

  Tristan stood again. “Are you ready?” he asked. “I’m keen to get going. I’m taking you somewhere really special.”

  “Bye, Bossy.” She locked the door behind her and followed him up to the car. Once she had her seatbelt on, he started the engine and drove up the road past the lighthouse, onto the gravel shoulder, and then stopped the engine.

  “We’re here.”

  Libby smiled curiously. “Here?”

  He got out of the car and came round to open her door. Then he popped the boot and pulled out two folding chairs and a picnic basket. “I wanted to impress you by taking you somewhere with great food, great ambience and a great view.” He put down the picnic basket and straightened out the chairs, gesturing to one with a sweep of his hand. “My lady.”

  She grinned. “Why thank you, sir,” she said, imitating a posh English accent not unlike Mark’s. “And what shall we be dining on this fine evening?”

  Tristan opened the picnic basket and withdrew a plastic tablecloth, which he laid on the bonnet of the Audi. Then he pulled out a white paper bag of fish and chips, a bottle of champagne and two plastic champagne flutes. “Only the best. From the village.”

  “The Salty Sea Lion?”

  He poured her a glass of champagne. “Yes. Best fish and chips on the Sunshine Coast.”

  They clinked their plastic glasses together.

  “Here’s to the most beautiful view in the world,” he said.

  Libby looked around. The sea at dusk was gray-blue. Sea mist obscured the headland to the south. The sky was soft blue and purple. “You might be right,” she said softly. She glanced up at the lighthouse. No candlelight in the window.

  “Where do you live?” she asked Tristan, suddenly curious.

  “I have a flat at Noosa, and a country house in the mountains behind Sydney. I don’t get there much these days.”

  “Do we have knives and forks?” she said, searching through the white paper bag.

  “Near my Audi? I don’t think so,” he said, laughing. “It tastes better with your fingers anyway.”

  Libby pulled off a piece of crumbed fish and popped it in her mouth. Divine. Mark had never taken her on a date to eat fish and chips off his car bonnet. For a while, with the champagne bubbles going to her head and the novelty of the setting to distract her, she forgot about her problems. They chatted about work and weather and lightly about their pasts and futures.

  But then her mobile rang. She pulled it out of her handbag and the screen said “Juliet.”

  She’d already turned down two calls and felt bad turning down a third, but she hit the mute button and slid the phone back into her bag.

  “Anyone important?”

  “My sister.”

  “Ah. Juliet?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re frowning.”

  “I’ve got a big decision to make.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, but you can’t talk it over with me.”

  “Really? I can’t talk it over with anyone else.”

  “Libby, I have handed the project over to Yann precisely for this reason. My business decisions and your personal decisions have to be completely separate. I know Yann has handed you a dilemma, but I can’t help you with it.”

  “It’s only a dilemma because Juliet will think wrongly that she’d lose her livelihood.”

  He made a motion, zipping his lips, and shook his head.

  Libby sighed, refilled her champagne glass and sank back into her chair.

  “All I’d say is that you are lucky to have such a decision to make,” he said softly. “You have great financial opportunities, and a family bond t
hat means a lot to you. Some people have neither.”

  She opened her mouth to ask him more questions, but then swallowed them. He was right. She was on her own.

  The sea cooled around ten, and she hadn’t brought a jacket. He dropped her home, and walked her up the front path. She didn’t know if she should ask him in. In her champagne-fueled state she found him devastatingly attractive, but reason told her to wait until she knew him a little better.

  He made the decision for her. “I’d best get going. I have an early flight in the morning.”

  “Away on business again?”

  “Two weeks in Perth.”

  Two weeks? She felt deflated but forced a smile. “That sounds like fun.”

  “Can I call you?”

  “Of course.” By the time he returned, she’d only have nine days to make up her mind. “I’d like that.”

  He caught her cheek with his right hand, softly. Stroked her chin with his thumb. Her heartbeat drowned out all other sounds. Then he leaned forward and kissed her gently on the mouth. Her body responded by pressing against his. His tongue was between her lips.

  It was the strangest feeling, to be kissing somebody else after all these years. Familiar but different. She couldn’t lose herself in the moment because she was too busy watching herself from outside, kissing somebody who wasn’t Mark.

  Then came the sound of a car engine.

  Libby snapped away from Tristan. Was it the men who had been hanging around her cottage? No. It was a police car. And here was Scott Lacey—a little softer around the middle since high school, but still instantly recognizable—climbing out with his hand on his belt. He stood there, hesitant now that he could see Libby was with Tristan, who had his arm around her waist.

  “Scott?” she said.

  “Libby? Is that you?” He strode forward now, offered his hand for her to shake. “You haven’t changed.”

  Libby introduced Tristan, but he said immediately, “Yes we . . . ah . . . we know each other.”

  Libby looked from Tristan to Scott and her stomach dropped. Scott was on Juliet’s side.

  “I’ve been driving by every couple of nights, like I said I would,” Scott said. “I saw the car here and thought . . . ah, well. You’re okay.”