The Night Mark(26)
Faye dug through her suitcase for a clean top and spied her little jewelry bag under her black tank top. When she opened it she found Will’s old college championship ring that he’d given her right after they started dating. “Does this mean we’re going steady now?” she’d said, teasing him. She’d worn the ring on a necklace until they’d gotten married and he’d slipped a wedding band on her finger—one that fit.
Though she no longer wore it, Faye treasured the ring. She wouldn’t pawn it, not if she were starving. The ring was white gold with a blue stone in it, Will’s name and a baseball insignia emblazoned on both sides. It comforted her to look at it, to hold it. She slipped it over her thumb and felt calmer in an instant. Here was the reason her marriage to Hagen had been so hard. It wasn’t that she’d had to pretend to be in love with Hagen. It was that she’d had to pretend she wasn’t in love with Will. She didn’t have to pretend anymore.
“I love you, Will,” she whispered, then kissed the ring for luck.
Faye pulled on her jeans and T-shirt, grabbed her camera bag and her car keys and headed out. Earlier that day Pat had asked her what she thought she’d find at the lighthouse. She hadn’t known the answer then, but she knew it now.
She went to the lighthouse for the same reason anyone went to a lighthouse.
She went because she needed the light.
7
Faye had to Google directions to find her way to where Pat’s map began. After one wrong turn on Hunting Island, she righted herself. She crossed the one-lane bridge, which was green with old paint and red with fresh rust. On the other side of the bridge she found a gate unlocked and standing wide-open. She usually wasn’t the sort of person who believed in things like “signs,” but usually she didn’t see photographs of men who’d been dead since the sixties who looked just like her husband. The gate being open was either a sign the universe wanted her on the island tonight or, more likely, a sign someone had forgotten to close it. Either way, here she was.
As she crossed over onto the island, Faye’s heart started a steady march through her chest with the feet of a thousand soldiers pounding the pavement. She could see it now—the cops would show up, arrest her for trespassing, and then she’d have to call Hagen to come and bail her out. She’d rather spend the night in jail than call him for help.
She drove slowly down the tree-lined path, the branches of the oaks forming a tunnel. Low-hanging branches scratched her car roof, and she winced. There wasn’t any money for a new paint job, so she better take care of the one she had. She wished she had some idea of where this road led—south beach or north beach or straight into a swamp? Pat’s map didn’t help much. The dense tree canopy threw off her usually strong sense of direction. Behind her she saw the last rays of the setting sun through a break in the treetops. The sun set in the west, which meant she needed to take a left to go north. She found a narrow road and turned onto it. Pat hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said the island contained nothing but trees. Faye saw no houses, no ponds, no street signs, no flowers. Only a few dirt horse trails, and a gravel road here and there and the trees.
Finally Faye spied the top of the lighthouse dead ahead. The last of the day’s sunlight gleamed off the bell-shaped black dome, and for a split second she thought she saw the light flash. But the lighthouse hadn’t been operational in decades. The keeper was gone. No one was home. The light had been extinguished, never to burn again. No streetlamps or spotlights on Bride Island, either. Once the sun set, there would be no light on the island except what the moon and the stars deigned to offer. She had to hurry if she didn’t want to be stuck on the island in the pitch dark.
The trees opened up to a clearing, and Faye parked on a patch of trampled-down scrub grass. She hopped out of the car, leaving her camera behind. This wasn’t the time for work. She simply needed to see the lighthouse, to be in the moment, to listen to whatever the universe was trying to tell her.
Plus she had no idea what the tide was doing right now, and if she got her camera wet, she would be screwed—and not in the good way that involved alcohol and sexy college boys covered in black fish tattoos.
Faye picked her way down a rocky path toward the beach. The air was warm and smelled of salt and nothing else. An entire flock of little birds, sandpipers maybe, danced at the water’s edge on their tiny little legs, leaving V-shaped tracks in the soft wet sand.
The sun was rapidly setting as Faye walked around the lighthouse, astonished by the sheer size of the monument. It hadn’t looked nearly so wide from the water. The lighthouse was built like a cone that grew narrower as it neared the top. Three vertical windows were cut into the side and looked out onto the ocean. Faye stepped over a long line of square rocks that must have marked the foundation of what had once been the keeper’s cottage. The lighthouse, on the other hand, composed of concrete and iron, had survived hurricanes.
Very likely it would survive her, too.
The door to the lighthouse looked like it belonged on a cathedral. It was tall and dark and made of thick planks of oak with iron hinges and an iron handle. She had to put her shoulder into it to force the door open enough that she could slip through the gap.
“Hello?” Faye called out, not expecting an answer and truly not wanting one. She merely hoped to spook any birds or bats who’d made the lighthouse their home. Better to roust them out while she could run for it than when she was already halfway up that staircase to the top. She heard nothing—not wings nor coos nor her own voice echoing back at her. Inside the lighthouse it was airless and stuffy, and sounds were muted but for the relentless roar and rumble of the ocean outside. Waves rushed the shore, retreated, only to rush back seconds later like a forlorn lover longing to leave and having second thoughts before reaching the door. The sun shone through the three windows and cast arched shadows onto the interior wall and the spiral staircase. Faye had to take a deep breath just looking at it. Dizzying, truly, and Faye didn’t get dizzy when faced with heights. It looked like something from an Escher drawing. Although Escher wouldn’t have painted his spiral staircase solid green. The color was fitting as the banister, plus every single slat and step was molded into the shape of a trailing leafy tendril of ivy.