The Library of Lost and Found(88)

But now they did.

Siegfried set the photograph back on the shelf.

Martha pulled her robe around her shoulders, suddenly feeling cold. “I used to tell stories when I was younger. It helped me to deal with things. Is that why you write, too?”

She waited for his reply, though it didn’t come.

Feeling that their conversation was over, she took a step back up the staircase. A wave of exhaustion surged over her and she grabbed hold of the handrail. “I’ll get my things and leave you in peace.”

Siegfried glanced at her. He shook his head. “Stay.”

“I’ll be needed at the library, and Suki’s baby is due soon. I left Zelda alone and I want to know that she’s okay. I’ve not completed my application form yet, for the librarian job…”

With each thing Martha listed, she felt herself diminishing, like a sandcastle washed away by the sea. She pictured the tasks in her head, listed in a column with glaring red dots next to them.

Siegfried waited until she ran out of steam. “Stay,” he repeated.

He opened a drawer, then removed a flat cardboard box. It was brown and worn. He walked over and handed it to her.

Martha frowned. “What is it?”

“Daniel,” he said.



* * *



For the rest of the day, Martha lay in bed in her small room in the lighthouse. Or she sat in the armchair, her face warm as she soaked up the sun rays through the window.

She leafed through the few pages in the box. It contained a couple of poems, an essay on the sea and a birthday card for Siegfried. They were things that someone else might have thrown away. Unless a terrible event had increased their significance.

They were all written by Daniel. His words were simple yet strong. They were emotional and expressive.

Perhaps I took after him all along, Martha told herself. And she clung to this thought.

A feeling of calm began to fall upon her and here, alone at the top of the lighthouse with Daniel’s words, she was able to view everything more clearly. She took the time to think about her family and what they meant to her. They hadn’t been perfect, but what family was?

She could appreciate what her mother went through, the choices she made, that she thought were for the best. Betty had wanted a strong, secure household for her family, after losing a true love, but it came at a price. She had to juggle a difficult relationship between her husband and mother.

Martha imagined Zelda being forced to leave her home and family behind, to start afresh someplace new, because she hadn’t been able to adapt her behavior to suit her son-in-law. She must have been so hurt and bewildered, even if she had Gina’s unending support.

Martha tried to see things from her dad’s perspective, too. A man who had fallen in love with a woman who was already pregnant with another man’s child. Someone she had loved and lost. Thomas made a promise to raise the baby, without his own family knowing he wasn’t the father. He only knew one way to do things, and that was his own.

And Lilian had known that she and Martha had different fathers and kept this secret for decades. Perhaps it had eaten away inside her and shaped her life, too.

And finally, Martha turned her attention onto herself.

She was the same person as before. But after the last week or so, what she’d done and what she had learned, about others and herself, meant that her skeleton felt it was reinforced with steel. The past was in the past, and she had to accept it and lay it to rest, so she could look to the future.

She was no longer angry at Zelda, just terribly sad about the happenings that touched decades of her, Lilian’s, Zelda’s and Betty’s lives. She could spend hours and days allowing them to mill in her mind, or she could strive to put them behind her.

I have to find the strength to move on.

Because there’s no alternative.

She decided that she wasn’t going to focus on always trying to please others. She felt determined to take the time to get to know, and love, herself. And she hoped that the warm glow of appreciation she always looked for might actually come from within.

I want to be glorious again.



* * *



Siegfried brought Martha’s supper for her, a glass of milk and hot buttered toast. Two other things also lay on the tray—an envelope and a small sheet of paper. On the paper were a few lines, written neatly in blue pen.

Suki is okay. She’s given Ben his culmination (ultimatum?)

Zelda says she’s truly sorry

Lilian sends her love

Job application deadline—tomorrow

Owen wants to take you for coffee

“How do you know all this?” she called after him, but he moved quickly away.

Martha opened the envelope and found her job application form inside. It had a yellow sticky note attached, with Suki’s handwriting on it. “Go for it,” it said.

And so she did.

In addition to the questions, Martha thought about the big box full of fancy dress costumes in her shed, and how an Alice in Wonderland outfit wouldn’t be too difficult to put together. She wrote up her idea for a literature festival, where everyone dressed up as their favorite fictional character. She put forward an idea for intergenerational reading groups, where children came together with older people, to share a love of books. She suggested promoting and expanding the reading group further. She stated that the library needed more support from head office.