The Lighthouse Chapter 14

Chapter FOURTEEN:

Alice waited on the bottom step at Robin’s house, her phone her only companion. This felt so much like her life at home—sitting, waiting for someone to come home, hoping they’d had the time of their lives.

If there was anyone on this planet who deserved an amazing first date, it was Eloise Hall. Behind her and down the hall in the living room, Robin snored softly. She wanted to hear all about the date too. Kelli had gone to bed at least an hour ago, but she wanted to be awakened when Eloise finally returned.

The clock had just ticked to midnight when the motion light on the front porch burst to life. Alice looked up from her phone, where she’d been entertaining herself with a game. She heard voices, one low and one Eloise’s. She wanted to jump to her feet, rush to the window only five feet away, and pull back the curtains to see what was happening. Alice forced herself to stay. She’d had plenty of practice in staying put when she wanted to flee, and her will now remained as strong as ever.

Aaron and Eloise had fallen silent, and Alice wondered what they could be doing. Perhaps they’d just lowered their voices, so as to not wake anyone in the house. But if Eloise thought she could sneak in with her shoes pinched between her fingers, she wasn’t as smart as Alice knew she was.

Several more seconds passed, and finally the doorknob creaked and the door opened a couple of inches. “…okay,” Eloise said. “See you tomorrow.” She entered, her smile made of pure gold and filling her face with light.

She closed the door and looked at Alice as she leaned against it, a sigh coming from her mouth. Alice knew instantly that she’d kissed Aaron Sherman, and her own heart started beating too fast. “Well?”

Eloise just shook her head slowly and closed her eyes. “If he asked me to marry him tomorrow, I’d say yes.”

Alice appreciated the dreamy quality of her voice, and she took the couple of steps and embraced Eloise. “Oh, I’m so glad. He’s nice? You like him? You had a good time?” She stepped back, feeling so protective of Eloise that night. She’d been the only one of them never to go to a school dance, because no one had ever asked her.

She told Alice once that she felt invisible, but Alice had assured her she wasn’t. It sure had seemed that way, though, and now that Alice knew what it felt like to be passed over by someone she desperately wanted to see her, her heart ached for Eloise.

Her heart ached for herself.

She’d texted Frank that night about being in Five Island Cove, and he’d responded with five words.

Great. I won’t come home.

Great?

Alice had no idea what was so great about not coming home, or her being gone, or the fact that she’d pulled the children from school to come to a funeral.

“He’s amazing,” Eloise said, obviously still on a high. “Dinner was amazing. Kissing him is amazing.”

“Eloise,” Alice admonished, pure surprise moving through her. “You kissed him on the first date?”

Eloise looked at Robin, so much hope in her face. “He kissed me, if we’re going to be technical. And I’m going out with him again tomorrow night.” She took Alice’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you so much for helping me with the makeup.” Her hazel eyes sparkled with a new kind of life that Alice had forgotten existed. She hadn’t felt this excited about anything in far too long. “I felt beautiful, and he told me I was.”

Alice squeezed her hand back. “Remember the beach party, El.”

She nodded, some of her happiness diminishing. “I remember. I’m not going to do anything stupid.” She started for the stairs at the same time Robin cried out in her sleep. “Did she wait up?”

“She tried,” Alice said. “You better go talk to her. She’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”

Eloise detoured around the steps leading to the second floor and walked toward Robin. Alice stayed next to the banister and watched as Eloise woke Robin. She sat straight up and hugged Eloise, already asking her a question. The two of them sat side-by-side on the couch, and Alice found the scene before her utterly serene.

Safety lived in this house in a way Alice had never experienced in hers. Growing up, her father was always late, or her mother was always mad. Then her mom had passed away, and a drape of sadness had covered the Williams house twenty-four hours each day.

The only time she’d felt like she could breathe was at the lighthouse, with Joel and Kristen. Now one of them had become the reason her mother had died and the other would be devastated once she knew. Alice had stewed all day about pulling Kristen aside for just a few minutes. She wouldn’t even have to speak; she’d just unfold the letter and show it to her. Kristen was smart. She’d put all the pieces together by the third line, the same way Alice had.

She blinked, her mind conjuring up the image of her in Kristen’s tiny bathroom, sitting on the toilet, the letter shaking in her hands as she read it. She’d given herself a huge amount of credit when she’d come out five minutes later, and not a single person—not even Robin—had seen or sensed her distress.

Of course, she’d been living with Frank for eighteen years, and Alice had learned to cover everything with enough makeup, enough gold veneer, enough laughter, and no one even wanted to know what was underneath.

She smiled, because she loved the safety in this house, the same way she had at the lighthouse. Then she started up the steps to her bedroom, where she curled into the bed Robin had provided for her, and cried.

* * *

“Hey, guys,” she said the next day, running down the ramp as she exited the ferry. Ginny opened her arms for a hug, and Alice swept right into her, holding her tight. “Oh, it’s good to see you.” Alice had always had Very Important Things To Do, but she’d made sure her children knew she loved them.

“Charlie,” she said, stepping over to him. “Looks like you got too much sun.” She hugged him tight, glad when he returned the favor.

“A little,” he said. “But I’m fine.”

Alice stepped back and looked at her father. “Thanks for taking them, Dad.”

“They had fun,” her dad said, smiling at the twins. He took Alice into a hug too, and she nearly came undone. She’d let the others go to the lighthouse without her that morning, and she’d borrowed Eloise’s rental car to get to the ferry station. Then onto a boat, and then twenty minutes later, this reunion.

She’d come, because she needed clarity. She’d come, because she needed answers. She’d come, because she needed to find herself, and she knew the last place she’d been herself was right there on Rocky Ridge.

“Della didn’t come?” she asked, glancing around for her step-mother.

“She’s in the car,” her dad said. “She doesn’t like the wind.”

“So she didn’t go sailing.” Alice shouldered her purse and stepped, the others going with her.

“Oh, no,” her father said. “She doesn’t even like boats.”

Alice had no idea what to say. She’d come to Della’s and Dad’s wedding, and they’d certainly seemed like they loved each other. But her mother had been born on Rocky Ridge, and she’d earned her US Coast Guard commercial boat operator’s license before Dad had. In fact, Alice’s mother had been the one to get her husband to complete the training, and they’d run the rescue operation from here to the Massachusetts coast, and over to Nantucket and then to Martha’s Vineyard too.

Her mother had loved Five Island Cove, and she’d explored every trail and path on all five islands. Not only that, but she’d gone off-road too, and Alice’s questions about her death kept piling up on top of each other.

She couldn’t ask in front of the twins, and a part of her clung to the idea of letting this conversation stay in the silence. That part sent tremors of terror through Alice, and she just wanted to enjoy lunch with her kids and her father and even Della.

“Hello, dear,” Della said, getting out of the car to greet Alice.

She smiled at the aging woman, who was fighting every step of the way. Alice knew she’d be expected to do the same, and she instantly bucked against the idea. She didn’t want to have the fake black-from-a-bottle hair Della had, or the false eyelashes, the tucked skin along her mouth and forehead.

Elderly people should look elderly. Wise. Weathered. Like her father, who wore his wrinkles proudly. Alice waited while the twins got in the back seat, and then she slid in beside them.

“How is—how are things at the lighthouse?” Dad asked, and Alice might’ve thought the question innocent had she never found the letter.

“It’s a huge mess,” she said honestly. A sigh simply came from her mouth as she thought of the cottage up the cliff from the lighthouse. “We’re almost done though, at least with the house. Then we apparently have to tackle the lighthouse.”

“Wow,” her dad said, his hands on the steering wheel perfectly loose. He didn’t seem to mind talking about the lighthouse or Kristen, and Alice’s mind raced.

She was very good at compartmentalizing things until they needed to be dealt with. So she enjoyed lunch, asked her children about their studies, and measured and scooped powder into water to make lemonade. She settled on the back porch of the home where she’d grown up with her father and Della, all of them with tall glasses of lemonade nearby.

“Getting hotter,” Dad said, and Della hummed in response.

Alice checked to make sure the twins had stayed inside, both of them on their computers, catching up with the week’s lessons. The private school they attended put all assignments online, and they could access them twenty-four-seven through a portal. No reasons for missing school were necessary. One email, and done, the twins could finish the entire year online if they needed to.

Alice honestly wasn’t sure what she’d do, if she’d stay in the cove past the funeral.

Great. I won’t come home.

Neither Ginny nor Charlie had asked about their father, and Alice hadn’t expected them to. The three of them were used to living their lives without him, and Alice let her thoughts go to a situation where she filed for divorce and left Frank to his women in the city.

She’d have to leave the Hamptons, but Alice didn’t care about that. She’d been in Five Island Cove for five days, and not one friend from the Hamptons had called or texted to see how things were going.

She’d have to find a new house. Alice lifted her lemonade to her lips, sure she could find a home suitable for a single woman and two children.

Where? she asked herself, and Alice thought of her favorite cities. Paris. London. Seattle. Halifax. Any of them would do, though she couldn’t take the children from their school, or their friends.

She thought of the vacation home she and Frank owned on Rocky Ridge. She and the twins could easily live there. “But that would require a serious move for the children,” she murmured.

She’d get money from Frank, as she’d supported him through the last two years of law school, while she worked at a family law firm so Frank could earn the same degree Alice already had.

She’d loved her job, and she’d started to help the people who needed it just before the twins were born.

Inside the house, Charlie laughed, and Alice remembered why she hadn’t left Frank. The kids. They had three years of high school to finish, and then they’d hopefully be out on their own, making amazing lives for themselves.

And Alice would be all alone in that house, the roof growing heavier each day.

Three years. She could probably hang on for three more years—if she had Robin, Eloise, and Kelli with her.

And AJ, she reminded herself. She’d heard Robin talking about AJ with Duke that morning, and her husband had actually participated in the conversation like he hoped AJ would come to the funeral too. No, Duke likely didn’t wear the same worry in his eyes that Robin did, but he listened, and he supported, and he’d let Robin talk as long as she wanted about it.

She’d only stopped when Alice had entered the kitchen. Then she’d hung up the phone real fast, her eyes searching and worried.

“I’m okay,” Alice had told her, because she was.

Or at least she hoped to be.

“Dad,” she said, clearing her throat. “I wanted to ask you some questions about Mom.”

“Alice?”

She heard the fear in his voice, and Alice wished with everything in her that she didn’t have to hurt him to get the answers her soul needed.

“It’s okay, Connor,” Della said, gently patting his knee. “Let the woman ask her questions.”

“Was she…” The words had been right there, stuck in the back of Alice’s throat for so long. Now she couldn’t get them out. She took a drink, swallowing as if through a straw. “Did she cheat on you?” She swung her head toward her father, needing to see his reaction.

The color had drained from his face, and he ground his teeth together. “Yes,” he said through them.

“With Joel Shields,” Alice said, noting that it wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” he said.

“You knew?” Alice asked.

“Yes,” he said again, and she wondered if that was all he’d say. “I knew. I found out when—” His voice muted, and guilt gutted Alice. Still, she waited, because she’d come for the story. The truth. Her need for it seethed beneath her skin, and it would not go away, no matter what she’d tried to tell herself.

“I found out when I found a pregnancy test in the trash can,” he said. “She’d tried to hide it from me, of course.” His voice took on a monotone quality. “But I went on her boat regularly, and I found it there. We hadn’t—I wasn’t able to be a father again by that point. You were fifteen, and Scott was twelve.”

Alice nodded, because she knew the precise day her mother had died. In many ways, she felt trapped in that time, unable to move on. The world had stopped that day, yet only for her. She continued aging, but she’d been living her life from behind glass ever since. Just watching through a window as things happened to her. As she made impossible choices, as she tried to figure out how to be a mother when hers had been taken from her far too early.

“So I confronted her about it,” Dad said, turning away from Alice. “It was a terrible night. So much thunder, heavy rain, such strong wind.” He fell silent for a moment, then a minute. He looked into the distance, as if the scene was replaying on the clouds in the distance, reminding him of the storm that had swallowed his wife whole.

Finally, he said, “She admitted she was pregnant with his baby, and I told her I wanted a divorce.” He cleared his throat and swallowed once. Then again. And again. “I told her she couldn’t stay in my house, not with another man’s baby inside her. I told her she could go stay with him in the lighthouse.”

Alice’s face felt wet, and she reached up to find tears there. Her father swiped at his eyes too, finishing with, “She left on the boat. That was the last time anyone saw her alive.”

“Dad,” Alice said, but her voice broke. Everything broke. Absolutely everything. And Alice Kelton did not break. She bent, sure. She swayed. She slid to the floor and wondered how her life had come to whatever crossroads she found herself at.

She sobbed as she got up and knelt in front of her father. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He looked at her, and the sky that Alice had been holding up by sheer will fell, and the fall thereof was great, and horrible, and so terribly loud inside Alice’s soul.

* * *

The next morning, Alice stood on the sand, her toes just out of reach of the surf. The day had dawned several minutes ago, and the breeze coming off the water meandered around her bare shoulders. She shivered, but she hadn’t brought a jacket with her.

She relished the cold, because it reminded her that she could still feel something. The water washing ashore left behind patches of seaweed, broken shells, and the stench of something half decayed.

Alice loved the smell of the beach, the memories here such good ones.

Her father’s house sat up on the cliff above the beach, the black sand here the stuff of luxury resorts and private beaches. But here at Rocky Ridge, it was untouched by most, unknown to all except the residents of Five Island Cove, and absolutely Alice’s very favorite place on Earth.

The last time she’d seen herself, she’d stood on this beach, the night before she’d left for college. Three years, seven months, and thirteen days after her mother’s death.

Then, Robin had come to the black sand beach on Rocky Ridge. Eloise had come. Kelli had come. AJ had come.

They’d made a pact—the summer sand pact—to congregate here every summer, no matter what. Alice had come for a few years. Then she’d met Frank, and their lives had become so busy.

To Alice’s recollection, Robin had asked about the pact once or twice, and then her life had been one of studies, and a husband, learning to make dinner for two, then four.

Alice hadn’t known herself since standing on this beach, and she reached out toward the horizon, sure she could bring back the young woman she’d been then. Grasp onto some strand of herself that had been lacking lately; the exact strand she needed to know how to deal with the new information she’d learned about her mother, what to say to Kristen, and how to unravel the knotted mess her life had become.

She closed her fingers into a fist and shut her eyes, imagining she could feel some thread of her soul. She pulled, pushing all the air out of her lungs as she seized onto the very core of herself, and sucked in a new breath.

When she opened her eyes, the ocean was still the ocean. Unrelenting and constantly moving—like she needed to be. The sky was still the sky—and it had not fallen. The sand was still the sand—and she knew she needed to get all of them to this patch of black sand again.

Soon.

She pulled out her phone, shivering in the wind again, and dialed Robin.

“Alice,” she said after only half a ring. “You didn’t come home last night.”

Home.

Alice smiled at the concern in her friend’s voice. Robin had been as close as a sister once, and Alice wanted her to be again. “I need AJ’s number,” she said. “Can you text it to me?”

“Sure,” Robin said, surprise replacing the concern in her voice. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “I slept in my old bed last night, and my back aches, but I’m okay. I’ll be back later today.”

“Okay,” Robin said. “I’ll send you AJ’s number.”

“Thanks.” Alice lowered the phone and let Robin end the call. A moment later, her phone buzzed, and Alice studied the clouds moving in the distance. They were still clouds.

She lifted the phone and called AJ.