The Lighthouse Chapter 22

Chapter TWENTY-TWO:

Robin came out of the bedroom, fully dressed and ready to get over to Kristen’s. But she didn’t want to go, and she should text her friend and say they weren’t going to make it. Maybe by lunch, she’d feel better.

But Kelli hadn’t come back to the house last night, and AJ hadn’t checked in.

She’d gone into the bedroom after breakfast while Duke took the girls to school, and she stopped on the edge of the rug and looked at Alice and Eloise curled up on the couch. Neither of them had moved to go change out of their pajamas.

Alice’s were pale blue and made of some kind of fancy silk that probably came from worms raised in special bins and earmarked just for women like Alice.

Robin took in a breath as she spiraled out of control, but the air shook in her lungs. She couldn’t break down; she’d never been able to. Robin was the strong one. The one who already knew what to do, and who never took no for an answer. If something happened that left everyone scratching their heads, Robin had the solution, tucked away in the back of her mind.

But right now, there was nothing tucked away anywhere. No money left in the bank account, and they still had a week to go until the end of the month. No ideas for how to soothe Kristen or get Kelli to text her back. No solutions for Joel’s lies that continued to pile on top of each other, drowning her, suffocating her, killing her.

She tried to breathe again, but it got stuck in her throat and sounded very much like a sob. Her hand flew to her mouth, but it was her eyes that betrayed her as they filled with water that spilled down her cheeks.

“Oh, dear,” Eloise said, springing to her feet.

“I can’t—” Robin said, sucking at the air. Eloise reached her, and Robin allowed her to fold her into her arms. “I don’t know what to do.” Her voice sounded like she’d inhaled helium, and she clung to Eloise as her shoulders started to shake.

Robin did not break down in front of people. She kept herself composed at all times. Sure, she could be frustrated, and she could cry. But this was so much more than that, and Robin felt like she was falling.

Falling down into a hole she’d never be able to get out of.

“Tell me what to do to help,” Eloise begged her. “You take on too much, Robin.”

“I know.” She stepped back and wiped her face, where every available opening was leaking. “I know I do. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at.” She looked at Eloise. “If I’m not good at shouldering the load for everyone, and making eggs and toast for everyone, and knowing precisely what everyone needs, then what am I good at?”

She looked wildly at Alice, who’d stood from the couch but hadn’t approached.

“I can’t do this,” Robin said. “This—this thing with Joel lying about everything and living this completely separate life—I can’t do this.” She turned around, feeling smaller and more insignificant than she ever had in her whole life.

Eloise put a light touch on her back, and Alice moved like a wraith, silently and swiftly, so Robin flinched when her cold hand landed on her shoulder.

“You’re the only one who can do this,” Alice said. “But I know exactly how you feel, and I think you should start throwing things while you scream about how unfair it all is.”

Robin half-laughed, half-choked on another sob. That made her throat hurt, and she shook her head, fresh tears pouring down her face.

“Come on, now,” Alice said, turning her into her own body. She wrapped Robin in a hug too. “Cry on me, Robin. Heaven knows you’ve let me wet your shoulder with my tears.”

And cry Robin did.

Eloise moved away, taking her voice with her as she explained something to someone. Robin wasn’t sure who she was talking to, because her entire world had narrowed to this one pinprick of grief and despair.

Robin usually didn’t cry for very long, and it felt like no time at all had passed before she stepped back, keeping her head down out of the sheer embarrassment now flooding her. “Okay,” she said. But she didn’t know what came next.

She looked up too, hopefully, because in the past, when Robin had run out of ideas, her insane suggestions had usually sparked something in Alice or Eloise.

They stood side-by-side, looking at her. “Right,” Alice said. “Eloise is going to drop me at Kristen’s, and I’ll help her today.”

Robin looked at Eloise, who nodded at Alice and then faced Robin. “I’m going to go spend the day with Aaron. I need a day off too.”

“I can’t today,” Robin said. “I just…can’t.”

“And that’s fine,” Alice said.

“Where do you think Kelli went?” Robin really needed to know that she was okay. She’d seen the horrified, desperate look on the woman’s face before she’d snatched the deed and run from the lighthouse.

The rest of them had stayed on the upper deck with Kristen, who’d composed herself enough to say she’d found the deed in Joel’s files on the second floor of the lighthouse, and she was willing to sign the shop right back to Kelli or her mother.

AJ had said, “I’ll find her. Don’t worry,” and she’d left too.

But if Robin was good at making enough scrambled eggs for a houseful of guests, she really excelled at worrying.

“I’m sure AJ will check in soon,” Alice said, instead of answering Robin’s real question. “Come, Eloise. Let’s go get dressed so we can get out of Robin’s hair.” They left her standing in the living room, the kitchen to her right still filled with the evidence of breakfast.

Normally, Robin wouldn’t leave the dishes sitting on the counter or in the sink. She’d scrub everything, set things right, and then retreat to her office to get started on whatever event awaited her attention.

But she stared at the mess that no one else had bothered to think about, and the feeling of overwhelm engulfed her. She turned her back on the dishes and the mess, and she walked down the hall to her office just as Alice and Eloise came back downstairs.

“We’re headed out.” Alice gripped Robin in a quick hug, stepping back as Eloise did too.

“Okay, you two have a good day. Be safe.” Robin watched them go through the front door, and then she turned back to her office.

She’d laid out her clients and tasks associated with them in neat rows on her table, and she hadn’t touched them since. Normally, her work grounded her, gave her an anchor to hold onto when she felt one breath away from drowning.

But now, she lunged at the table, knocking into it and sending it skidding closer to the wall. That scream Alice suggested Robin let loose gathered in her gut and rose quickly through her body. It flew from her mouth as she swiped her hand across the table in a wide arc, dismantling her rows and details—all the things she’d relied on for so long.

Cards laid neatly on a table didn’t make what Joel had done to Guy Watkins okay. Her carefully organized events didn’t make him into the decent person she’d believed him to be. No amount of tears or screams or the signing of deeds to transfer ownership would ever make anything that had happened in the past week bearable.

“Robin.”

She spun to find Duke standing behind her, filling the doorway, complete alarm on his face. “What’s going on?”

Robin’s chest heaved as she faced him. “Nothing,” she managed to say. “Get the girls off to school okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Eloise’s car is gone. I’m surprised to still see you here.”

“I didn’t…feel like going to help today. Alice is going to take care of everything today.”

“Great,” he said with a grin. “Did you clean up the leftovers yet? I’m still starving.” He pushed out of the doorway and headed down the hall, and Robin simply stared after him.

Had she cleaned up the leftovers yet?

She looked down at her feet, where her papers and cards lay littered on the floor. Did Duke not see those?

“Of course he doesn’t see them,” Robin said. Duke didn’t see anything but what he wanted to see. Robin’s obsessive cleaning meant nothing to him, and the invisible load she carried to make sure the breakfast dishes were taken care of was only a weight on her.

He didn’t even consider for a moment that he should clean up the leftovers so she could relax, get to work in her office sooner, or go take care of Kristen.

“Babe,” he called while she still heard her scream reverberating in the ceilings of the house.

Robin drew a breath and started toward the kitchen as he asked her where the salsa was. “Mandie finished it,” she said, and Duke opted for ketchup to pour over his scrambled eggs.

“Listen,” Duke said as he settled at the bar for round two of breakfast. “I want to run something by you.”

Robin pushed down the lid on the ketchup bottle and turned to put it in the fridge, keeping her back to him as she then turned her attention to the stovetop, which had splashes of dried scrambled egg all around the burner. She’d never been the neatest cook, but it didn’t matter, because she cleaned up after herself.

“Bryan says they’re taking summer fishermen. I think I’d like to go to see how it could really be.”

Robin froze, her eyes on the crusty, yellow stain on the stove. “Go where?” she asked, turning around and bracing herself on the stove behind her.

“Alaska.” Duke shoveled another bite of eggs into his mouth before he realized she’d gone completely still.

“I thought we were done talking about Alaska,” she said, her voice barely made of enough air to make sound.

“It would be from the end of May to September,” he said. “Just four months. I’m gone all the time in the summer anyway, and you and the girls wouldn’t even know I was gone. You could still have your beach days, and your spa days, and—”

“Four months?” Robin asked, cutting him off. “Where would you live?”

“They put the temporary guys in a cabin on the coast.” He spoke evenly, but at least he didn’t keep eating.

“How much?”

“A guy was on the call who went last summer, and he said he made as much in four months as he’d made all year down in Louisiana.” Duke got up, abandoning his breakfast as the scream started to gather again. “Babe, listen. If I can make as much as I do in four months, we’d be crazy not to do this.”

“Crazy,” Robin echoed as he rounded the island. He reached for her just as she broke for the second time in an hour. And if he didn’t know how to deal with his twelve-year-old daughter while she cried over a cat, he definitely had no idea what to do with his sobbing wife.

Robin knew this, but she couldn’t stop herself. She collapsed into his arms, the scream morphing into a wail as it traveled through her throat. Duke had the good sense to hold onto her, though Robin wanted to pound against his chest and ask him how he hadn’t even noticed how upset she was.

Was he really that blind?

Perhaps he should go to Alaska for the summer, she managed to think amidst the chaos in her mind. But she didn’t want to think what would happen come September, when he returned. Would they grow apart so quickly? She missed him already, and he hadn’t even decided to go for sure yet.

Yes, he has, her mind whispered, and Robin had learned to listen to that quiet, internal voice that always spoke the truth.

“I just want to try it,” Duke said, rubbing her back.

Robin broke free from his comforting embrace and swiped angrily at her face. “I don’t think it’s wise for us to live apart,” she said. “We’ve never wanted that.”

“I know.” Duke wore a helpless look on his face, and Robin usually knew just what to do to erase it. But not this time.

She couldn’t control this situation, any more than she could control all that had happened at the lighthouse and in Kristen’s cottage.

She couldn’t control Joel, or any of the choices he’d made.

She couldn’t control Duke, or Alice, or Kelli, or AJ.

She needed to stop thinking she could. She stepped around Duke and picked up a washrag from the sink. She could control the state of her kitchen. She could load the dishes in the dishwasher and start it. She could scrub the ugliness from the stovetop and pretend she could do the same with her life.

“Robin,” Duke said again, helplessly this time.

“Go,” she said. “If you want to go.” She looked up at him for a fraction of a second. “Then go.”

“Well, I can’t go now,” he said.

“Duke.” She scrubbed at the eggs that hadn’t made it to scrambled. “Can you just—can you go somewhere else, please?”

He stood there for another moment, maybe two, and then his footsteps echoed against the tile as he left the kitchen and went down the hall to the exit. The garage door slammed closed behind him, and Robin heard the rumble of the garage door as it lifted.

Robin wept as she cleaned up the kitchen, throwing all the leftovers straight into the trash. When she finished, she looked around at the gleaming, spotless surfaces, proud of the work she’d done.

She’d never believed husbands and wives should be apart for very long. Not for a job. Not for anything. And she and Duke hadn’t been. She’d thought that was what had made their marriage so successful. Maybe it had only been part of it.

Maybe they could survive for just four months.

Robin had been clinging so tightly to what she believed—about marriage, about friendship, about Joel Shields—and as she stood in her kitchen, she felt her fist start to uncurl. Letting go was terribly hard, and Robin didn’t know how to do it. She couldn’t not go to Kristen’s with a basket of her favorite treats, and she couldn’t stop hoping that the Seafaring Girls would make it a habit to come back to Five Island Cove more often.

It was part of what made Robin who she was, but she realized as her pinky released its hold that she could change.

She could learn how to change.

“You can,” she whispered to herself. And she let go of everything she’d been desperately holding so close, hoping she’d recognize herself when she came out the other side of all of this.