The Lighthouse Chapter 8

Chapter EIGHT:

Robin wiped the kitchen counter, already late to get over to Kristen’s. Duke had come home last night after a few days at sea, and Robin did love welcoming him back to their home, their family, their bed.

He’d bustled off with the kids to get them to school, and Robin didn’t have to clean up after breakfast. But her habits hadn’t died yet, and she couldn’t stand to leave the kitchen a mess. Then she’d have to come back to dirty dishes and pots and pans she couldn’t use to make dinner.

She hadn’t been doing a whole lot of that either, though. As Mandie and Jamie entered their teen years, they only got busier and busier with friends, activities at school, and homework. And they were becoming more mature, independent girls, and Robin couldn’t force them to sit at the dining room table until they’d eaten all of their vegetables anymore. They had their own tastes, their own likes and dislikes, and Robin had learned through several painful meals that her daughters weren’t her.

It was an eye-opening thing for a parent—at least for Robin—to realize their offspring were actual people. Human beings, with their own ideas about the world. She’d worked hard to realize this, as she was fairly certain her mother still didn’t know that Robin was her own person.

If Robin texted Mandie when school got out, her oldest daughter would probably make dinner. The fifteen-year-old had recently discovered she liked reading recipes and trying new things. It had been Duke who’d suggested they get one of those meal kit boxes for her to try, and Mandie’s skills had started out rough but accelerated quickly.

Robin’s chest pinched slightly, her emotions so close to the surface these days. Normally, she’d think of the fun-loving girl, straight-A student, she’d gotten in Mandie and feel a flash of pride. She’d smile as she wiped up toast crumbs and make everything smell like disinfectant.

But she wouldn’t cry.

Now, she cried.

She sniffled, pulling back on the tears. She couldn’t be broken when she showed up at the lighthouse this morning. She’d stayed yesterday as late as she’d dared, and then she’d come home just in time to kiss Duke when he walked in the house, smelling like salt, grease, and the slippery fish he caught for a living.

They’d showered together, and Robin loved the touch of her husband’s heated hands on her skin. She loved that he was still excited to see her when he got home after several days at sea, and that she still held enough sexuality to arouse him just by slipping her hand around to the back of his neck.

After making love, Robin had left Duke to sleep while she’d snuck into the office and onto the computer. She needed to know everything she could about Joel Shields, and she’d printed numerous newspaper articles, some as old as forty years ago, when he and Kristen had first taken over as caretakers of the lighthouse, after her parents had turned it over to them.

In the few hours she’d researched and read, she did not find one single thing to indicate he was anything but the upstanding, kind-hearted, generous man she’d known. So he’d written one letter and pushed AJ too hard during her training. Everyone made mistakes, and Joel did write down more than the average person.

Not only that, but he’d probably just wanted the best for AJ. Robin remembered once when AJ had come back after her first year of college. She’d laid on the beach with Robin and told her how incredibly hard collegiate coaches were. How hard they pushed their athletes.

“They just want us to be the best we can be,” AJ said. “We’re not like normal people.”

Robin distinctly remembered being annoyed by the comment, but simply agreeing. That was how she dealt with AJ and how everyone fawned over her. She just agreed. She told AJ her hair was the curliest and the highest—the fashion for the time. She told AJ she had every right to sleep with as many boys as she wanted, that her mother was stupid for being worried about things like sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

Now, as a mother of teen girls, STDs and pregnancies were the stuff of Robin’s nightmares. They’d been as a teenager too, and Robin hadn’t entered into a sexual relationship until she’d met Duke and they’d decided to get married.

Her doorbell rang, and Robin pulled herself out of her thoughts. She tossed the rag into the sink and smoothed down her shirt. Before she could get to the door, it opened, and Alice walked in. “Good morning.” She scanned Robin. “Don’t you look perky?” She wore a smile as she came toward Robin, who still wore her running clothes from that morning.

After all of her research, she still couldn’t sleep. So she laid in Duke’s arms for a few hours and then slipped away to get her exercise in. Running was something she could control. Something that never changed. Something that produced the exact same results every time, and Robin didn’t want to know how many pills she’d be on if she didn’t run every morning.

“You look classy,” she said to Alice as the woman reached her and kissed both of her cheeks. She wore a pair of skinny black slacks and a short-sleeved sweater with a sailboat on it. The kind of thing Robin saw trophy wives wear in fancy magazines about the homes and gardens in the Hamptons.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for today,” Alice said.

“What are the kids doing today?”

“They’ve got the boat packed up for a few days at sea. My dad says the weather is ‘superb’ this week, and Charlie would literally be throwing daggers by ten a.m. if I brought him to clean out a house.”

“I understand,” Robin said, smiling at her friend. “Let me grab my purse, and we’ll go.”

“Is AJ really coming?” Alice asked.

“She said she’d try,” Robin said. “Kelli said she’d be here. So I did the best I could.”

“Eloise got in last night.”

“Did she?” Robin grabbed her purse from the built-in desk in the kitchen and went back around the corner. “How do you know? She was supposed to stay with me after she gets here tonight.”

“She only posts on social media when she travels,” Alice said, holding up her phone. “And she posted last night. A picture of the beach—the one on the north side, so I know she was headed to the ferry to get over to Sanctuary.”

“I hope she’s okay,” Robin said, her worry instant and unbidden. Worrying was one of Robin’s superpowers, and she’d given up trying to stop doing it. “She probably just wanted to see her mother for one night.” She thought of the two cats and how she hadn’t exactly told Duke about their three houseguests coming that night.

“Why wouldn’t she be okay?” Alice pinned Robin with a curious look, and Robin kicked herself for saying anything.

“Coming home isn’t easy for her either,” she said. In fact, Robin was surprised Eloise would fly in early to return to Sanctuary Island and see her mother.

“You two have secrets.” Alice grinned like it was such a cute thing that Robin had other friends.

“All of us have secrets,” Robin said, rolling her eyes. “Just like I’m the only one that knows you used to sneak over to Billy Bridge’s cabin after lights out.”

Alice blinked, shock traveling across her face for a moment, before she burst out laughing. “I forgot all about Billy Bridge.” She leaned against the wall and fanned herself. “But wow, that was the best summer camp ever.”

“I’ll bet,” Robin said.

Alice’s smile stretched so much bigger now than it had only a minute ago. “Oh, come on. I wasn’t AJ.”

“No one is AJ,” Robin said, opening the door to the garage and going out as she hit the button to lift the big door.

“I wonder what Billy is doing now,” Alice mused as they got in Robin’s SUV.

“He owns the ferry system,” Robin said. “All of it. Every ferry from every island.”

“Really?”

“Really, really,” Alice said. “His uncle owned it while we were growing up, and he bought it, oh, I don’t know. Five years ago or so? He’s made a lot of improvements too.” She backed out of her driveway. “Hey, what time do you get up?”

“Oh, not until seven,” she said. “It was great to sleep in. When Frank’s home—” She cut off. “I’m usually up early,” she amended, keeping her gaze solidly out the passenger window.

Robin wanted to explore that further, but before she could find a tactful way to ask, her phone rang. Duke’s number came up on the screen in her car, and she tapped the green phone icon. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey, hot stuff,” he said. “Are you gone already?”

“Yeah, just left,” she said. She had not told him Alice was coming to the house this morning, because she knew she’d be gone before he got back, and Duke wasn’t Alice’s biggest fan.

He was an easy-going man, but he found Alice downright fake, and that was one thing he couldn’t abide.

Wonder what he’d think if he knew who Joel really was. The thought popped into her head, and she hated that it was so clear and rang with so much truth.

“Dang,” Duke said, a smile in his voice. “I was hoping we could sneak back to bed. I want—”

“Duke,” Robin yelled over him, her whole face burning with bright heat. “Alice is in the car with me.”

“Hi, Duke,” Alice said, her smile even bigger now.

Duke swore, and that only caused Alice to laugh. She covered her mouth and kept it silent though, and pure mortification moved through Robin. She couldn’t look at her friend and gripped the steering wheel instead.

“Listen,” he said, clearing his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about Alaska again.”

Robin practically stabbed at the screen, trying to get the Bluetooth to disconnect. Really? He was going to bring up Alaska with Alice in the car? No wonder he wanted to sneak back to bed after dropping the girls off at school.

She finally got her finger on the right button and the call transferred back to her phone. She picked it up from the console and held it to her ear. “Can we talk about this later?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s why I mentioned it. I want you to be thinking about it today.”

“I don’t see how it’s going to be different than the last time we talked about it.” She flicked her eyes left and right and pulled through the intersection.

“Bryan says they’re desperate,” he said. “The signing bonus is fifty thousand.”

“Oh.” Well, that did change things, didn’t it? Robin and Duke had money, but just enough to pay for the suburban life on the island. When she had to admit it, she put things on a credit card sometimes, and they lived in her mother’s old house, because she owned it and they paid her a nominal amount in rent.

Fifty thousand dollars was a very big incentive, especially for Duke to do the same thing in Alaska that he did here.

But for Robin…Alaska might as well have been the moon. It was the moon—a completely foreign landscape on a completely foreign planet.

“Think about it, baby,” he said. “And if you’re done early, come home. I’m lonely.”

Robin’s female parts burned, because it was so nice to be wanted. “Okay,” she said, and that was all. She did not think she’d get done early—certainly not before the girls got out of school. “And Duke? I told Eloise she could stay with us while she’s here. It’s just a few nights.”

“Okay,” he said, easier than she’d thought he would.

“She has cats.”

“Really, Robin?”

“Two,” Robin said, glancing at Alice, who still looked one breath away from bursting into giggles. “I couldn’t get her to come otherwise.”

“Well, those felines are going to make me sneeze for days,” he said, and Robin shook her head, eternally glad he wasn’t still shouting through the speakers.

“I love you, Duke,” she said. “I’ll call you later.”

“Okay,” he said with resignation in his voice. The call ended, and Robin replaced the phone in the cup holder. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry for me,” Alice said. “That’s the most action I’ve had in months.”

Robin looked at her. “Really? You and Frank…?”

“Frank has women in the city,” Alice said, immediately clapping one hand over her mouth. “Oh, my goodness. Did I say that out loud?”

“Yes,” Robin said, her heart pricking for Alice. “He does, Alice? He cheats on you?”

“All the time,” Alice said. “I’ve known for years. We agreed that he won’t touch me when he’s home, and I won’t divorce him.”

Robin could not comprehend a marriage like that. Was the money worth it? The house in the Hamptons? The prestige? Robin would rather have her debts and her bills and her hot husband dying for her to come home as quickly as she could. She’d never not known what to say to Alice, and Robin felt like she’d just stumbled off a merry-go-round, dizzy and disoriented.

“Alice—”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Alice said, folding her arms. And Robin knew she wouldn’t. Once she decided she wasn’t going to talk, Alice was like a vault the President of the United States could put his deepest, darkest secrets in and trust they’d never come out.

“Sometimes Duke’s gone a long time too,” Robin said, her throat drying up. “It’s hard. I’m so sorry.”

Alice looked at her, her eyes wide. After a few seconds, she lowered her eyes. “I think this is quite a bit different than your husband going fishing for a few days and then coming home and showering you with love.”

Robin couldn’t even swallow. Of course it was. Her first instinct urged her to make her point. She could make Alice see her point of view.

She bit back on that instinct. She was not her mother.

“You’re right,” she said instead, the words nearly tripping over her tongue. “It’s not the same at all.”

Alice tucked her hair as if she stood in front of the mirror and practiced it for situations exactly like this. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you tell me I’m right,” she said.

Robin looked at her, a healthy amount of surprise moving through her, and then burst out laughing. Thankfully, Alice did too, and all the tension between them broke. A few minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot at the lighthouse, and the weight of the world returned to her shoulders.

“Okay,” she said, sighing as she got out of the SUV. “Let’s get through this day.”

Alice didn’t respond, and Robin looked at her to find her staring at the lighthouse. Robin followed her gaze and found Eloise stomping toward them. Her normally passive features twisted with rage or anguish, Robin couldn’t tell which.

“He doctored my test scores,” she said, waving a fistful of papers. Robin moved toward her, trying to make sense of what she’d said.

Tears ran down the woman’s face, and Robin had never seen Eloise react like this, not even when her father had been led away by the police. “Eloise,” she said. “Explain it to me.”

“He fixed my test scores,” she said again, the tears flowing down her face. The calm, studious, professional woman Robin knew Eloise to be crumbled right in front of her. “I shouldn’t have even gotten in BU, let alone Harvard.”

She opened her fingers and let the papers drift away, tipping her head back as she whispered, “Who am I now? My whole life has been a lie.” She closed her eyes while Alice scrambled around to keep the papers from blowing away in the wind.

All Robin could hear was Eloise whispering into the sky, “Who am I now? Who am I now?” over and over again.