The Night Mark(83)

“I won’t get sick.”

“You can’t know that. Do you know what the infant mortality rate was back then?”

“What does that matter to a woman who can’t have babies?” Faye shook her head, wanted to laugh and cry, but did neither. “Pat—I was almost eaten by an alligator. Carrick killed it with an ax and Dolly turned it into stew for dinner. Trust me. I know that 1921 isn’t safe. I also know my husband was killed in 2011 when he tried to change a tire for some meth heads. Life is dangerous and it kills us eventually. Right?”

“You can’t live in the past.”

Faye stood up and walked away from Pat a few steps before turning around and facing him.

“You sound just like my ex-husband. That’s such a condescending, male thing to say. It sounds rational. It sounds like something smart to say, but it’s meaningless. We are all the sum of every single day we’ve lived. We are our pasts. Not only can I live in the past, I did live in the past, and it was the first time I was living in a long time. And if the past wants me to live in it, why shouldn’t I? At least the past and I have met. The future’s a total stranger.”

Pat walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders.

“You know Carrick isn’t Will and Will isn’t Carrick. Will’s no more alive in 1921 than he is in 2015.”

Faye didn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t meet them.

“Yes,” she whispered. “But he’s not dead, either.”

“Faye, look at me.”

She sighed and met his eyes.

“Carrick doesn’t know who you are,” he said. “He thinks he’s in love with his war buddy’s young wife. You deserve better than being loved for something you aren’t. You should be loved for you, as Faye. And Carrick—he’s not Will. And he deserves better than that, too. He deserves to be loved for who he is, not who he reminds you of. I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

“I would have told him, but I thought...I thought he’d send me to a mental hospital. Wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe I would have in his shoes. But I’m not Carrick. The man I knew would have heard you out, and he would have bent his own soul backward to believe in you.”

“If I tell him the truth, he might not love me anymore.”

“If you don’t tell him the truth, it’s not you he loves.”

Pat’s words hurt because they were true. She nodded. “I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask. Carrick was a dear friend to me during a hard time of my life. He told me his secrets and I told him mine, and we both respected each other more after. That doesn’t happen often. I almost envy you. I’d like to shake his hand again, tell him how much his friendship meant to me.”

“I’ll do that for you. It would be my pleasure.”

“You’re really going to do this?”

“Dolly had to spend a night in the lighthouse with Carrick to keep him from throwing himself into the ocean. A seventeen-year-old girl—a girl I love and adore—had to sleep in front of a doorway to stop a suicide. If I can save her from that, if I can save Carrick from that... How can I not go back?”

“Is that the real reason? Or is that how you’re justifying what could very well be a suicide attempt of your own?”

Faye crossed her hands on her chest over her heart.

“I love him, Pat.”

“Carrick?”

She nodded.

“He’s not Will,” Pat said. “You know he’s not Will.”

“I don’t know what I know anymore. But I think...I think I know this... Carrick told me about the night mark. You know what that is?”

“It’s the name for the lighthouse’s particular light pattern.”

“That’s right. Carrick said the night mark is the heart of a lighthouse. And Carrick and Will have the same night mark, Pat. They shine the same light.”

“Oh, Faye, love.” Pat looked at her and shook his head in pity and affection.

“I’ve been in the dark too long. I can’t go back to living without that light. I can’t. I just can’t...” She swiped tears off her face until she gave up and let them fall.

“You go, then,” he said. “And you walk in the light, any light you can find.”

“You can come, too,” she said, smiling at him through her tears. “You said you’ve already been there. Come back with me.”

“Oh, no. I’m too old for that nonsense.”

“You said you felt like a young man again in 1921. Why not come be a young man again? Take a second chance at your life. You lived one entire life as a priest who painted on the side. Now you could do it again and this time devote your life to painting.”

“Nice fantasy,” he said.

“You could get married.”

Pat laughed. “Never been a top priority for me.”

“What about helping people? You said you came here the first time because you wanted to help people. Imagine how much you could help them if you knew the future.”

He shook his head, laughed. “Knowing the future and changing the future are two different things. I know the future already—my tremor will get worse. I have maybe two years of painting left. I will slowly succumb to heart disease like normal people do, and I’ll die in a nursing home just like my father did. No way I can change the future. Knowledge isn’t always power.”