The Lighthouse Chapter 21

Chapter TWENTY-ONE:

Kelli heard Alice, but the words simply bounced off her eardrums. Then Eloise had the paper in her hand, her eyebrows furrowed. She extended the paper toward Kelli, who wasn’t sure she should take it. It felt like a snake, ready to strike.

Finally, AJ, who stood the closest to Kelli, took the paper and said, “What do you mean?”

Robin sniffled, and Kelli focused on her, watching the tears flow down her face. Why was she crying?

Numbness moved through Kelli, and she wasn’t sure when the world had narrowed to just the upper deck of the lighthouse.

AJ stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the other three women. “Kel,” she said gently. “Alice is right. This is the deed to your dad’s studio. You know, the one he had to sell when…everything happened?”

Kelli nodded. She knew what had happened. Her dad was a very talented artist. He sold beautiful, hand-made glass pieces to tourists when they came to the island, and he even went to Nantucket, Cape Cod, and some markets on the mainland when the summer season in Five Island Cove dried up.

He’d made a very good living, and she could close her eyes and see the stained glass he’d put in her bedroom for her tenth birthday.

He’d fallen on some hard summers—three in a row—and he brought in an investor. But instead of just funding the business until it could recover, this investor had actually bought the shop out from under her father. He hadn’t even known until it was done.

They’d lost everything, including the house with all the custom windows, all the sparkling, colorful light, all the happy memories.

Kelli and her family had moved from Bell Island, where everything and everyone was happy, clipping their grass on Saturday mornings in near unison, and glad to see each other—until something bad happened.

Then they whispered over fences and cast sidelong looks from down the aisles at the grocery store. The kids teased about the length of someone’s jeans and how they had to use duct tape to keep the soles of their shoes on.

Kelli could see the house clearly now. Much more clearly than the paper AJ now held up for her to look at. “Joel bought it.” AJ’s words fuzzed and blurred in Kelli’s ears, and she had to get off this deck.

Off this island.

She snatched the paper, turned, and ran for the door. She didn’t care that she knocked into Kristen as she went, and she ignored the calls of her friends for her to come back. She pulled at the air and commanded her feet to move faster.

She’d felt like this before, a couple of times. Once, when she’d first found out they had to sell their home and move to an apartment on Diamond Island. Yes, she’d been closer to Robin’s house on the biggest island in the cove, but she longed for the winding paths through the trees on Bell Island, and the swatch of beach where she used to go with her sisters to see the sea lions and whales.

She’d mourned the loss of her stained glass window until her father was arrested, and then she’d decided the less she had to do with her family, the better. She never invited anyone to the apartment. She always went to her friends’ houses—or the lighthouse.

The lighthouse had saved her.

And now she knew that Joel Shields had been the one to take everything from her. She expected tears to come, but they didn’t. Her eyes stayed extraordinarily dry as she burst out of the navy blue door that had once brought her so much comfort.

She didn’t have a car; Robin had picked her up at the airport. She couldn’t wait around here for a car.

Frantic, she ran down the sidewalk toward Kristen’s house, suddenly so glad for the aerobics classes she taught twice a week. It was odd what her mind landed on in this panicked moment, and that it would be a job back in Jersey she’d never set out to get.

Inside Kristen’s house, she snatched the car keys from the peg next to the door, turned, and left again without even closing the front door. She made it to the car as Alice came out of the lighthouse, but Kelli didn’t slow down.

She got behind the wheel, and she twisted the key in the ignition, and she put the lighthouse in her rear view mirror as quickly as she could.

Her fingers gripped the steering wheel like it was that poisonous snake she needed to strangle. With her heart racing, she drove to the closest ferry station, which was on the north side due to road construction leading to the south station.

She needed the south station to get to Bell Island, but any ferry would do. Anything to get off this island.

She pulled up to the curb, not caring that it was red and the car would likely get towed, and hurried to the ticket kiosk. Ten minutes later, she boarded a ferry going to Sanctuary Island, huddled on a bench on the inside so she wouldn’t have to deal with salty spray and sea air.

From Sanctuary, she continued on to Rocky Ridge, where she ignored everyone trying to get people to come eat from their food trucks, and Kelli bought the long cruise from Rocky Ridge to Bell Harbor.

It would take over an hour, and if any of the women could follow her trail, Kelli would be impressed. She kept her eyes closed on the seventy-five-minute journey from Rocky Ridge to Bell, but she didn’t sleep. She just didn’t want to decline the food cart or talk to the woman next to her.

Twilight fell, but Kelli didn’t need light to navigate to her destination. She knew the way like her own face, and she could make the walk from the west station to the house on Seabreeze Shore in ten minutes. No car needed.

She still had not cried, and her chest and throat felt like someone had pressed her between two slabs of concrete. Somehow, her feet kept moving, the paper still clenched in her fingers flapping with each step.

She turned the corner onto Seabreeze, and the trees thickened. There were no sidewalks here, and only four houses on this lane as it curved out to the very edge of the island before connecting back to the main neighborhood. She’d always been at home in these woods, and she used to cut through the trees and brush on her right to get to the bus stop that would take her to the ferry station, where she’d ferry over to Diamond for school.

The kids on Bell had to get up early to be on time, and Kelli once again marveled that she was thinking about her childhood wake-up time in such a crisis.

The house appeared in front of her, seemingly out of nowhere. It was a great, hulking, black shape against the graying trees. Kelli could suddenly breathe, the concrete slabs being pulled apart so her lungs could expand.

The window above the front door spanned ten feet, and while Kelli stood too far down the street to really see it, she knew precisely what it looked like. The last name Watkins had been done in blue glass, her father’s favorite color. Surrounding that were all the trees Kelli loved. In this island environment, the trees didn’t tower like they did in other places. The trunks were often gnarled and twisted, and she’d had to crawl under the limbs to find shade as a child. Pines had been introduced as wind breaks, and they grew taller. She used to know all the names of them, but her memory had been filled with other things over the years.

She stepped again, feeling calmer now that her destination waited in front of her. The house called to her, welcomed her home after many long years away.

Kelli bypassed the front door, which would be locked. She had the key on her ring in her purse, which currently sat in the bedroom she shared with Eloise at Robin’s house. But she kept a spare in a box inside the garage, and as she moved past the dwarfed trees that had once brought her so much companionship, Kelli finally started to cry.

She collected the key while sniffling. Fitted it into the lock while sobbing. And the first wail filled the house the moment she stepped inside and locked the back door behind her. She slid to the ground, utterly spent now that she was in the house on Seabreeze Shore, and let the storm that had been gathering in her soul for hours finally come out.

* * *

Kelli heard a noise somewhere around her, and she shot to a sitting position. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass window in her childhood bedroom, throwing pinks, purples, and greens around the room.

Perhaps she’d been dreaming, because she heard nothing now but the pounding of her own heartbeat. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to stumble up the steps to her bedroom, or how long she’d cried by the back door.

Her stomach growled at her for something to eat, but she didn’t keep anything in the house.

Guilt, familiar as this house, crept through her. She should’ve told her parents she’d bought the house. They could’ve lived here in the last years of her father’s life. He could’ve died with his creations standing guard over him.

But Kelli had made a box for herself over thirty years ago, and breaking out of it had been impossible. That, and her father had said some very hurtful things to her when she’d left the cove. He’d apologized, but Kelli hadn’t known how to forgive in her twenties, and she’d let the sore between them fester until it was too late.

Kelli swung her legs over the side of the bed and put her feet on the dusty hardwood floors. She hadn’t come to the cove to sign for the house, but she’d asked the real estate agent to send her everything necessary to get the deal done, claiming to be out of the country during the signing period.

And in a lot of ways, New Jersey was a completely different country than Five Island Cove. Sitting on an old bed, which the family who’d lived here when she’d bought the house had left behind because they didn’t have a way to take it with them, Kelli felt like she was staring right into the face of unhappiness.

She’d done so many things wrong, and she had no way of fixing them. She couldn’t tell her mother about the house now. She’d tried to buy it back, years later, but the house on Seabreeze Shore wasn’t for sale anymore. And when it did go on the market, she hadn’t been able to afford it.

Kelli had, though.

She’d owned the house for twelve years, having purchased it back when she and Julian hadn’t thought they’d be able to have children. She’d told him it would be their baby, and they’d take care of it, come visit the cove in the summertime, when so many other people wanted to do the same. And they’d always have somewhere safe to stay. Somewhere beautiful and serene.

But in reality, Kelli had come to the cove alone for the first few years. She’d cleaned up behind the family that had left the island suddenly, and she didn’t talk to any of the neighbors. She hadn’t alerted her parents or Robin to her presence.

Then, when Parker had come along, Kelli came less and less. She hadn’t been back to the cove or the house on Seabreeze Shore in almost seven years, and she’d never told her father she’d reclaimed it for their family.

The air held a feeling of neglect, and Kelli sniffled as another round of tears threatened to spill from her eyes. She wiped them and left the bedroom just as someone pounded on the front door.

She froze, her heartbeat going right back to that booming pulse that radiated through her shoulders and up her throat. She had heard a noise, and now that she stood in the hallway, she could hear AJ calling her name too.

Without hesitating, she flew down the steps and around the corner to the front door. Her fingers fumbled with the lock, but when AJ heard her, she at least stopped yelling. Kelli got the lock undone, and she paused to take a deep breath.

She did not want to face all four of them. AJ was fine. AJ had been there for Kelli in the lowest moments of her life. The others had tried, but Kelli and AJ had always been the outliers in the group, and they’d bonded over that as much as they had over their mutual love for rainbow sherbet.

Kelli pulled open the door, and thankfully, only AJ stood on the front porch. Their eyes met, and Kelli leaned into the door for support.

“Kel.” AJ swept into her personal space, wrapping her up in a tight, tight hug that Kelli needed so desperately right now. They cried together for several moments, and then Kelli stepped back and said, “Come in, so we’re not putting on a show for everyone.”

“Everyone who?” AJ asked, giving a half-laugh. She came in, and Kelli closed and re-locked the door. She had no idea what to do now. The air felt stale, so she stepped over to the thermostat midway down the hall that led back into the kitchen and main living room and pushed the button to turn on the fan. In April, she didn’t need heat or air conditioning, but it would be nice to get some of the desolation out of the air, some of the dust, some of the desperation.

“How did you know where I’d be?” she asked.

“Please,” AJ said as she followed Kelli into the kitchen. “I know the places where you hide.”

Kelli turned to face her, half-wishing that weren’t true. At the same time, she was eternally grateful it was true.

“I would’ve been here last night,” AJ said. “But the last ferry to Bell left five minutes before I got to the station.”

Kelli nodded and looked around the bright, airy kitchen. The whole place needed a thorough cleaning, but the bones of the house were still perfect. “I was okay,” she whispered.

“You went silent,” AJ said. “And I’m sure you know how that affected Robin.”

“I’m sorry,” Kelli said, though she didn’t have to apologize for not answering her phone, especially to AJ. Robin could be a little too mother hen sometimes, and Kelli was forty-five-years-old.

She did love the mother hen, though, so she probably should at least text the group thread so they wouldn’t worry about her.

“You don’t have to apologize to me,” AJ said. “Or anyone, Kel. I wouldn’t even be in the cove right now if I’d learned what you did yesterday.”

Kelli nodded and stepped over to the fridge. “There’s no food here, but I might have left some bottled water in the fridge.” She couldn’t remember, because so much had happened since the last time she’d been in this house.

Parker’s first words, his first day of preschool and then kindergarten, his discovery of lobster mac and cheese, and his first lost tooth. Kelli loved all of his firsts, and she needed to find a way to preserve the life she had in Jersey and meld it with the one she also wanted to have here.

But she didn’t know how to thread them together, because she’d spent so long keeping Five Island Cove at a distance.

“We can call and order something,” AJ said. “Did you eat at all last night?”

Kelli shook her head as she opened the fridge. A case of eight water bottles sat there, along with a box of baking soda. She wasn’t thirsty, and she closed the fridge aimlessly. She couldn’t look at AJ as she asked, “So now what?”

“Now,” AJ said. “We order lunch—because it’s after noon, Kel. Did you know that?” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, we order lunch, and then we talk about what you’re going to do with that deed.”

“What can I do?” she asked, desperate for AJ to just tell her what to do. Kelli knew she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. She had no idea about contracts, and deeds, and titles.

“Kristen said she’d give it to you,” AJ said. “After you left, she said she intended to tell you she’d sign the shop back to you, or your mother. Whoever. She doesn’t want it.”

Kelli’s hopes started to lift, and when she met AJ’s eyes, she couldn’t help but feel like maybe the shattered pieces of her past could be mended. Somehow.

“And I’m going to call and get that shrimp fried rice we used to eat by the boxful before we do anything else,” AJ said. “We can’t be making huge decisions without it.” She lifted her phone to her ear, a smile stretching across her beautiful face.

Kelli had always admired AJ’s confidence. She’d been jealous of her beauty, and she’d wanted all the boys to pay attention to her, until some of them did. Then she’d learned what a great burden AJ carried, managing their expectations and her own life and her athletics simultaneously.

“Yes,” she said, leaning in to press her cheek to Kelli’s, a gesture they’d established at age thirteen as an alternate form of hugging. “I need two orders of shrimp fried rice…yes, large. Extra-large, if you’ve got it.” She grinned at Kelli, and Kelli couldn’t help feeling that now that AJ was here, they’d get everything figured out.

She stepped over to the light blue table that sat in front of a pair of French doors. The deed to Guy’s Glassworks lay there, but Kelli didn’t remember putting it down. She smoothed the crinkled edges where she’d gripped it during the journey from the lighthouse to the house on Seabreeze Shore.

AJ finished ordering their food and stepped to Kelli’s side. She slipped her arm around Kelli, who leaned her head against AJ’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” AJ whispered, and just like she always had, Kelli believed her.