The Night Mark(29)

Looking up at the sky, Faye searched out a shooting star, but they all seemed firmly fixed in place. That was fine. The lone wish she harbored in her heart was for one more night with Will, and it wouldn’t have been polite to ask something of a star that a star couldn’t give her. She did see something in the sky, though, something large with white wings. It landed on one of the old pier’s remaining pillars.

“You again,” Faye said to the stork. “Stalker.”

Faye left her perch on the widow’s walk—wasn’t everywhere a widow walked a widow’s walk?—and went back down the stairs. She made her way around the wide base of the lighthouse, looking up at it from below. On the side facing the water she saw a rectangular brass plaque screwed into the plaster. The moonlight illuminated the words, but the plaque was old and the typeface worn down. Faye ran her fingers over the indentations, reading the words with both eyes and fingertips.

“In Memory of Faith Morgan. Born May 30, 1904, died June 10, 1921. The Lord brought her to us, and the Lord took her home. May her spirit forever live in this light.”

Who had placed the plaque on the lighthouse? Her father, Carrick? The people of the area? Seventeen years old and dead. Will hadn’t lived much longer. He’d died at barely twenty-four. Faye placed her hand flat on the plaque. She mourned for anyone who died too soon, even this young woman she’d never met.

“Faith,” Faye said, “if you see my husband wherever you are, tell him I miss him. And please remind him he promised to take care of me. I could use his help.”

She sighed and let her hand fall away.

“And now I’m talking to dead girls,” she said.

Faye pulled herself away from the plaque and strolled to the edge of the water, looking at the sand. Apart from a line of broken shells at the swash line, the beach was free of debris and litter. The tide was high and rising. It chased her as she walked down the beach so Faye took off her shoes and set them on a dune in a clump of sea oats, where the water couldn’t reach them. She rolled her jeans up to her knees and waded into the ocean. Bathwater warm, the water wrapped around her legs and scooped the sand away from her feet. The ocean played at her feet, pausing every now and then to kiss her knee, her thigh.

“I am loved,” she said aloud, and only after saying it did she wonder where that had come from. But she realized she knew. The ocean, of course. She had scattered Will’s ashes in the ocean. If any part of Will was in the water, then the whole ocean must retain some of his love for her.

No wonder she felt so calm and happy near the water. No wonder she felt like she belonged in this place, where a man who looked just like Will had lived and worked and cared for a daughter who had died here. Carrick Morgan’s heart was in the ocean as much as Faye’s was. The water was warm with love tonight. It loved her, and she loved it in return.

Faye brought her fingertips to her lips and kissed them. She bent and pressed them to the ocean’s surface. As her hand touched the water, Will’s championship ring slipped off her thumb and the tide snatched it away.

“Shit.” She dropped to her knees, not caring that she hadn’t brought a towel with her, not caring about anything but getting Will’s ring back. She clawed at the water, chasing the ring’s silvery glint into the sand. She panted in her panic. “Shit, shit, shit. Damn it, where are you?”

A wave struck her hard enough to knock her over. Another wave followed it, even higher, even harder, and struck her again, dragging her under with the force of a hundred hands. She fought to find her footing but couldn’t get her legs under her. Was this the riptide Pat had warned her about? A sneaker wave? She scratched her way to the surface and caught one breath. In that breath she saw something that made no sense at all, something that convinced her that if she wasn’t dead already, she was dying fast. She saw a beam of white light, bright and strong and steady, shining out from the top of the lighthouse. Before she could make any sense of it, a current jerked her backward and dragged her under again. A force stronger than wind or gravity was sucking her out to sea.

“Faye!”

Her name echoed across the water. Someone was screaming for her.

“Faye! Where are you?” the voice yelled at her again.

Someone was out there. Someone had seen her. Someone could save her if she didn’t give up. But if she gave up...if she gave up, she could see Will again, couldn’t she? Maybe? Or at least if she gave up, she wouldn’t miss him anymore.

But she wouldn’t give up.

Faye’s mouth broke the surface. She managed a single scream before the water claimed her again. She continued fighting, but only occasionally surfacing for air as the water dragged her back and down, back and down.

Until, finally, it was too much.

She let go.

She wasn’t afraid. The panic had dissipated entirely. She assumed that if one was awake when facing death, one would know the fear of it. But there was no fear. There was nothing, not even the burning in her lungs as she used up the last of her oxygen.

Far away she heard a voice, strong and steady. “In and out, love. Breathe for me. I’m here. The world’s not ending.”

And she believed the voice.

Because someone was here. She could feel his hands.

Then the world ended.





8


So this was death.

Death wasn’t that bad.