The Lighthouse Chapter 24

Chapter TWENTY-FOUR:

Eloise breathed in deeply, trying to commit this ferry ride to her permanent memory. The crisp air rushing by her face. The way she smiled as she reached up and gathered her long, dark hair into a ponytail at the nape of her neck and held it because she didn’t have a rubber band. The sun shining nearly directly overhead; the puffy white clouds hovering on the horizon over the mainland in the distance.

The sound of the water slapping against the ferry. The way Aaron shifted closer to her, easily sliding his hand along her back and around her waist. Eloise leaned into him, and the musky, oaky scent of his skin started a new memory.

“Do you have a favorite place to eat on Sanctuary?” he asked, his voice right at her ear.

Eloise turned toward him, finding his face only inches from hers. He’d shown her around the police station with a goofy grin on his face, but that excitement had been replaced by a straight-faced Aaron with a heavy glint of desire in his gaze. He peered right into her soul, and Eloise wanted him to know all of her secrets.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, turning to face the water again and moving her foot so it rested on the other side of his. He put his other hand on her arm, and she stood within the safety and comfort of his arms, more content with a man than she’d ever been.

If only she could take some of this just-right-ness into other aspects of her life. Her thoughts stormed over Robin and Alice, Kristen and Kelli, and AJ before she chased them away. Kelli and AJ had gone dark, and they probably needed it. Robin had broken down. Alice had an impossible task in front of her. They all needed time away from the situation, and Eloise was determined to enjoy her day with Aaron.

“Are you going to make me guess what it is?” he asked, chuckling in a low, throaty voice that sent pleasant shivers across her shoulders and down her back.

She giggled too and said, “Have you heard of The Chubby Pancake?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “Lifer, you know? But don’t they just do breakfast?”

“All day breakfast,” she clarified. “And they have this smoked salmon bagel that is one of my favorite things on the planet.”

“Ah, I see,” he said. “Fancy breakfasts.”

“Does that sound okay to you?” she asked.

“Anywhere is fine with me.” Aaron’s arms tightened around her, and while Eloise would’ve never put her affection for a man on such public display, she found she didn’t care if people saw her with him. She’d only had six days with him, and she only had a few more. Then, they’d have to work something out, and Eloise tried to quell the nervous pit in her stomach that seemed to open every time she thought about returning to Boston.

“Serious truth,” she said.

“All right,” Aaron agreed. He’d been the one to introduce the game they’d been playing for the past couple of days since their talk on the beach. He’d said they’d have to find a way to stay close once she went back to Boston, and they had phones to call, text, or video chat. So he’d told her about Serious Truth, where they got to ask each other questions that were answered truthfully and seriously.

She’d learned that his ex-wife had crazy high expectations for him and the kids, and about the time their first daughter went to kindergarten and didn’t know everything immediately, she’d packed a bag, said motherhood was not for her, and left the cove. Completely gone, in just a day.

He’d been raising the girls alone ever since, and when they asked about their mother, he told them the truth: he didn’t know where she was or if she’d ever come back.

Eloise could not imagine doing that to her own offspring. To any child, really.

“Did you always want to be a cop?” she asked.

Aaron drew in a deep breath, his chest pressing against her back. “Uh, yes and no? I grew up fascinated with policemen, firefighters, paramedics. You know, all the heroes. I wanted to be like them. But I went to college for a year or two before I realized that I hate sitting behind a desk. I hate reading. Don’t laugh.”

Eloise had started to giggle, because she was the exact opposite. If she had to go outside, it was only to get from point A to point B. No sense in getting sunburned or wind chapped lips. Not to her. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s not what you said.”

“Another opposite for you?”

Eloise sobered, because yes, it was another opposite for her. Were her and Aaron simply cut from two different stripes? Could they make a relationship work when they liked hardly any of the same things? And not just a relationship, but a long-distance relationship.

“Yeah, I love sitting behind the desk, and I literally read for enjoyment in my spare time.” She wanted to turn and see his reaction, but his lips landed on the back of her neck.

“So you’ll do that while I take the girls hiking, and then I’ll make dinner.” He had an answer for everything, and Eloise really liked that. She felt like he could integrate easily into her life, but Eloise knew that if they had any chance of a real relationship, she’d have to move back to Five Island Cove.

And right now, that wasn’t even something she could fathom. There was no university here. One high school, where the same teachers held the jobs for decades. What would she do all day without a job? Read? She didn’t like it that much.

“Anyway,” she said. “You found you didn’t like the desk or reading.”

“Right. So I decided to give the Police Academy a try. It was a much better fit. I was done in a year, and I moved back here when an opening came up on the force. I worked in Maryland for about three years before that happened. That’s where I met Carol.”

So he had lived somewhere else. Perhaps he would consider relocating. Even as Eloise thought it, she banished the idea. She was thinking too far ahead. Way too far ahead. She just needed to ground herself in this moment, this right now, this conversation.

“I’ve got one for you,” he said.

“Go.” A slip of unease moved through her, because he could literally ask anything, and Eloise did want to be truthful and serious with him. But she still had things she hadn’t told him, and she wasn’t ready to make a serious commitment on the ferry from Diamond Island to Sanctuary.

“Do you like kids? I mean, did you ever want children of your own?”

“Sure,” she said, relieved the question was an easy one. “I was only married for a couple of years, and we didn’t have kids. We wanted them, but it wasn’t meant to be, and then I was so busy with my doctorate that the time wasn’t right.” Eloise’s memory flowed back to her younger days, and the amount of stress she carried on her back. Classes, thesis work, dealing with a dysfunctional marriage…she was amazed she’d survived those years.

“And then I got divorced, and well, I never married again.” She shrugged, though she’d had a few years in her thirties where her lack of children had definitely been a plague for her.

“And you like girls, right?” Aaron asked.

Eloise faced him then, turning easily in his arms to look at him. “Sounds like you’re thinking way down the road. I thought we agreed we weren’t going to do that.”

“I’m just asking,” he said.

“I’ve met your girls, Aaron,” she said. “They were great.” Eloise had no idea how to be a mother, but she had Robin’s number, and she could ask for help if she needed it. Alice seemed to adore her children too, and they’d displayed such good manners that Alice must’ve done something right with them.

He nodded, suddenly leaning down to kiss her. Eloise didn’t fight for control, and she let Aaron’s passion flow through her as he kissed her more roughly than he had previously. He pulled away just as quickly as he’d leaned down, and he raised his head so he was looking out at the water.

“I sure do like you, Eloise,” he said, and he sounded absolutely miserable about it.

Eloise wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his heartbeat. His pulse raced slightly, and Eloise enjoyed the rhythm of it. She liked the solidness of him in her arms, and the way he was carving a place for himself in her heart.

“Serious truth,” she said again. “What are you worried about?”

“Worried about?”

“Yeah.” She looked up at him again, but he wouldn’t meet her eye. “You just said you liked me, but you sounded like it was a terrible thing. What are you worried about?”

He looked at her then. “Honestly?”

“Serious truth.”

“I’m worried that I’m not a big enough prize for you,” he said. “That you’ll go back to Boston and realize how amazing your life there is, and I’ll…fade away. Out of sight, out of mind.”

Eloise blinked, because she had not realized Aaron didn’t see himself as a purely brilliant catch, especially for a woman like Eloise. “I’m not sure what you think my life in Boston is like,” she said. “But it’s not that great.”

“I know you left the cove for a reason.”

“It was time,” she said.

“And you don’t visit very often.”

Eloise turned around again, because she didn’t want to talk about all of this right now.

“Serious truth, El.”

“I want to pause the game,” she said. “Can it wait until I show you the…what I want to show you on the island?”

“Okay,” Aaron said, and Eloise appreciated that he could be patient though she was sure he didn’t want to be. As the ferry continued chugging along toward Sanctuary, Eloise couldn’t help wondering if she’d made a huge mistake in asking Aaron to come with her to the Cliffside Inn.

She searched for something else to show him, but she didn’t have anything else. And she didn’t want to lie to him. They spoke little for the rest of the trip, and once Eloise had her smoked salmon bagel in front of her, the tension finally broke as she lifted it, smiled, and said, “Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

Aaron laughed, shook his head, and dug into his chicken fried steak and eggs. The conversation picked up again, and breakfast-for-lunch ended far too quickly. Aaron tossed a couple of twenty-dollar bills on the table and looked at her.

“Are you ready? Do we need a car?”

“We definitely need a car.” She took one more sip of water and put her napkin on her empty plate. She met his eye, her chest buzzing with nerves. “And I guess I’m ready.”

“I’ll get a car.” He started tapping, as the island network used a car service app for people who didn’t bring their cars on the ferry. “Five minutes.”

Eloise nodded, and they got up and went outside. The sleek, black car pulled up and the driver said, “Aaron?”

“Right here.”

“Where to?”

He looked at Eloise, who swallowed hard. “Uh, the Cliffside Inn? Do you know where that is?”

“No idea,” the man said, and Eloise didn’t blame him. The Cliffside Inn wasn’t open, and hadn’t been for over twenty years. This guy probably wasn’t even thirty years old yet.

“It’s up on Cliffside Drive,” she said. “Last building at the top of the road.”

“I thought Cliffside Drive was closed,” the driver said.

Eloise’s heart pumped out extra beats. “Is it? I hadn’t heard that.” She slid into the car, and the driver got behind the wheel again.

He tapped on his phone for a few seconds. “Oh, that must have been temporary. Landslide last winter.” He set his phone in a holder attached to the air vent. “All right, here we go. Says twenty-one minutes.”

Eloise smiled and looked from the side of his face to Aaron’s, who wore a curious look on his face. Thankfully, he didn’t ask her any questions during the drive, and Eloise was left to stew in her own thoughts.

A landslide didn’t sound good, and she wondered if the inn had suffered any damage. Her stomach churned around the bagel, cream cheese, and salmon, and she almost wished she hadn’t eaten right before this overdue visit.

Before she knew it, the driver turned onto Cliffside Drive and started going up. Up, up, and then the road leveled to the highest point on Sanctuary Island. “Wow,” he said, looking out his window. “I’ve never been up here.” He passed a house and added, “Huge houses up here.”

“It is beautiful,” Aaron murmured, his gaze out the window too.

Eloise had the picture-perfect image of this place in her mind, and she closed her eyes and saw it expand in every direction. The blue sky. The white-tipped water below. The pine trees that protected the homes up here. The gray and black and white rocks. The pristine swimming pool. Perfectly decorated guest rooms. Delicious meals twice each day.

“Here we are,” the driver said, and Eloise opened her eyes, the gleaming, white building that was the Cliffside Inn disappearing the moment she did.

She got out of the car. While Aaron paid the driver, she stood in the cracked and crumbling drive of the Cliffside Inn, which wasn’t anything like the shiny, black asphalt with clearly marked white arrows directing guests which way to go to get in and out of the inn that existed in her mind.

The building didn’t gleam in any color, and it wasn’t white anymore either. She stared at the siding that bore dirt, water stains, and other organic matter that Eloise could only classify as algae. Slime. Something.

The car drove away, and Aaron came to stand beside her. “Wow,” he said, staring at the building too.

In Eloise’s mind, the front yard of the inn glowed an emerald green, with rose bushes lining the front of it. Several carefully placed trees had flowers growing around their trunks, and when someone arrived at the inn, they were immediately charmed by its appearance.

Weeds overran the grass, with scrub trees shooting up wherever they wanted. The sight of it didn’t charm Eloise, but rather, made her want to hurry past to find somewhere else to stay.

The building in front of her looked exactly like it should—like someone had abandoned it. And then someone else had bought it and forgotten about it for two decades.

“So,” she said, glad Aaron hadn’t prompted her. “I own this place. My dad owned it when I was a girl, and when he and my mom finally got divorced, he closed it. When he died, it went into foreclosure, because he refused to let anyone have the inn but him.” She spoke in a dead voice, one that didn’t inflect up and down. “I bought it in the auction.” She looked at Aaron and away quickly. “I did not like my father much.”

She folded her arms and hugged herself, because she didn’t talk about this. But that door in her mind was open now, and dozens of things were emerging.

“He hit my mother for years, and when he turned his wrath on me one night, that was when she finally got the courage to kick him out.”

“Eloise.” Aaron stepped in front of the inn, blocking her view of it. He gathered her into his arms, and she hugged him instead of herself. “I’m so sorry.”

“The inn sat empty for a few years before I bought it,” she said. “I was twenty-six and newly divorced. I’ve made the payments all these years, and I’ve only been back every now and then to make sure it’s still standing.”

Why, she didn’t know. Perhaps everything would be better if she burned it down, said good-bye to it for good.

“Why?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, stepping back. She took his hand and tried to put a smile on her face. It wobbled though, and she let it fall off. They faced the inn again. “I think…I had great memories here as a little girl. The inn was only open in the summer, and I’d get to come up here with my dad, and he was…different somehow.”

“How?” Aaron asked.

“He didn’t drink or gamble while at the inn,” Eloise whispered, only realizing it in that moment. “My mom never came to the inn, and it was like…my dad came alive without her.” She shook her head. She didn’t know what she was saying. She cleared her throat. “Do you want to go inside?”

“Yes,” Aaron said, squeezing her hand. “Show me your happy times, Eloise.”

She looked up at him, and she knew it was ridiculous to start to fall in love with someone after only six days. But she definitely felt herself falling for a moment. “I haven’t told anyone about this, Aaron. Not Robin, or Alice, or Kristen. Not even my mother knows I own the inn.”

“Then thank you for trusting me with it.” He leaned down and touched his lips to hers in a sweet, chaste kiss so unlike the one they’d shared on the ferry.

They faced the inn again, and Eloise took the first step toward the double-wide front doors, hoping with everything she had that she wouldn’t fall through one of the floorboards during the tour.