The Lighthouse Chapter 9

Chapter NINE:

Kristen stared in disgust at the four-drawer filing cabinet. What else would she find inside those drawers? They felt like vaults, like somewhere only the devil himself would file his most important contracts.

First, the letter she’d had to deal with. After a long day of going through things in the living room, Alice and Robin had left her alone to the cottage she’d shared with Joel for the last few years. His scent still rested on the sheets, on every blanket, in the very air.

All Kristen could think as the sun had sunk behind the lighthouse was Who was she? When did this happen? And the worst question of all: Why didn’t I know?

She’d never even suspected Joel of cheating on her. The man had worked long evening hours at the lighthouse, and sure, he went into town sometimes for a drink with friends. But town was only ten minutes from the shore, and he wasn’t jetting off to other cities to meet women.

Kristen hadn’t been able to go get the milk she needed for her coffee that morning. Every woman she saw could be Joel’s mistress, and she didn’t trust anyone’s tears anymore. The clerk at the post office who’d shed a tear or two with her when she’d gone on Monday could have been shacking up with her husband.

She could’ve been anyone on the island, and Kristen knew everyone who lived here permanently. Maybe not from every island, but definitely Diamond Island. She wanted to rush down to Aaron Sherman at the police station and demand a list of every resident. She could eliminate women under, say, fifty. There couldn’t be that many people left.

She’d find them, and she’d—

Kristen cut off the thoughts, realizing how tightly she’d started to clench her fingers. Knowing who the woman was wouldn’t do any good; she knew that. Intellectually, she knew that.

Not only that, but the island had been hosting tourists for a solid fifteen years, and Joel could’ve had a fling with anyone coming in and out of the cove.

She turned when Robin said, “Kristen?”

Thank the heavens that Robin was here. She stepped over a huge pile of paper—what she and Eloise had started on—and over to the blonde woman. She hugged her tight, wishing such an embrace could keep everything inside.

If hugs could re-bury secrets, Kristen would hug every person she saw from now until the day she died.

“What’s going on?” Robin asked. “Eloise is ranting about test scores, and Alice is trying to calm her down.”

“I don’t know,” Kristen said. “She found something, and she said, ‘oh, these are my SATs’ and she sat and looked at them for a minute. When I realized how quiet she’d gotten, I asked her what was wrong.” Kristen stepped away and swiped at her eyes. “I think I’m done for today.”

Robin frowned around at the mess, but Kristen didn’t care about it. She’d been living with piles and papers and a packed house for decades. “Should I make tea?’

“Finish the story,” Robin said. “I’ll make it.” She stepped around the end tables, the bins with magazines, the floor lamp, and moved into the kitchen. When Kristen still didn’t start talking, Robin gave her a pointed look.

“She held up a bunch of papers and said, ‘these are not mine. But they have my name on them.’ I didn’t know what she was talking about. That’s when she started jabbing at her phone, muttering to herself. A few minutes later, she jumped to her feet and said, ‘he changed my test scores,’ and ran out of the house.” Kristen had lost track of time after that. Lost her train of thought as they started to derail in her mind.

Robin put a cup of brewed tea in front of her, and Kristen realized she’d done it again. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Robin asked.

Kristen wrapped her icy fingers around the warm mug and shook her head.

“I said, I think you should let me and the other girls box up every single piece of paper here. Every file. Every single thing and take it back to my house for analyzation. We’ll decide what to keep and what to throw away.”

“No.” Kristen shook her head. “I can’t let you do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” she said.

“Because why?”

Annoyance streamed through Kristen, and she glared at Robin. “I’m not your teenage daughter.”

“No,” Robin said. “But you’re stuck with me, and it’s nine-thirty in the morning. We can’t be done for today. If you’re going to be done, we’ll take it all back to my house and go through it without you.”

“No,” Kristen said, panic building in her chest.

“Why not?” Robin demanded again.

“Because,” Kristen said. “I might be able to find out who his mistress was if I go through it.” Her chest heaved, and she maintained eye contact with Robin until the door opened again.

Alice came in, one hand looped through Eloise’s and one gripping a bunch of crinkled papers. “I think I got most of them,” she said. She closed the door behind her, and Kristen just looked at the two women. They’d meant so much to her once; they still did. The three of them were the only lifeline Kristen had at the moment. Reuben hadn’t been home last night when she’d gone down to the lighthouse, but later, the beam had been on, same as usual.

His wife had not come home, Kristen knew that. He probably hadn’t answered the door, because he didn’t want to answer Kristen’s questions. She didn’t want to ask them, but she had to know if Jean was going to be able to come to terms with her life on Diamond Island. And if not, what Reuben was planning to do.

The couple didn’t have children yet, and while Kristen didn’t want her son to suffer through a divorce, she knew that not all marriages survived.

She’d called Clara last night too, and her daughter hadn’t answered. With both of her children dealing with issues of their own, Kristen literally had Robin, Alice, and Eloise.

She didn’t want Joel to be the reason they suffered, and Eloise was definitely suffering. Her eyes and her nose held a red tint around the edges. Kristen could not stand the thought of hurting any of them, and instant anger shot to her head that Joel could do this to the people she loved.

To her.

Her insides quaked, and she didn’t know how to make them stop.

“I made tea,” Robin said, as if tea would fix everything. Kristen distinctly remembered how she’d made tea for the girls when only AJ had been asked to the prom. That night, the four of them had gathered at the lighthouse, and each of them baked a different kind of cookie, and they sat on the deck as the sun went down, eating and drinking and laughing.

The next year, Robin’s gymnastics skills paid off, and she joined the cheerleading squad. After that, she had plenty of boys asking her to dances, and the crowd dwindled to Alice, Kelli, and Eloise.

The next year, it was just Eloise, and Kristen remembered going down to the kitchen in the subterranean level of the lighthouse to make cookies, leaving Joel and Eloise on the deck alone. They’d gotten along well, as Eloise loved talking about academic things, and Joel was constantly challenging her to think bigger, think broader.

Eloise had consulted with Joel about what field of science she should study. She’d come to him when she won the Academic Olympiad as a sophomore. She’d come to the lighthouse to show him her SAT scores, her face full of joy and light.

How had he changed them before she’d seen them?

Kristen got up and picked her way across the room, taking Eloise into an embrace that seemed to stitch some of the loose pieces of her heart back together. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what he did, but we will figure it out.”

Kristen pulled back and looked at Eloise. “Okay?” She held her by the shoulders and looked at Alice behind her. “We will. All of us. Together.”

Eloise nodded, and pure relief streamed through Kristen. Maybe she wouldn’t lose everything. She’d thought she’d lost the world when Joel took his last breath. Looking around, she realized how much more she had—and how much more she could lose—as she met Alice’s eyes, Eloise’s, and lastly Robin’s.

“Come have tea,” Robin insisted. “And I’ll figure out some breakfast too.” She started bumping around in the kitchen, pulling out eggs and bread and setting a pan on the stove. Kristen sat at the tiny table she and Joel had pushed into the corner of the cottage and sipped her tea, trying to find a piece of flat ground to stand on. Alice sat at the bar, pressing the papers down flat and organizing them. The process took a few minutes, and Eloise just stared straight ahead. Kristen wondered where her mind was, and when she’d land on blaming her.

“These are your SAT scores,” Alice finally said as the scent of cinnamon and vanilla crisped on the bottoms of the French toast. She turned and looked at Kristen and then Eloise, who didn’t even flinch. She looked back at Kristen. “You’re saying these aren’t the ones you submitted to BU?”

“I didn’t submit them,” Eloise said, her voice hollow. “Joel did. He helped me with all my college applications, because my father had just been arrested.” Her eyelids fluttered, almost like she was replaying the time she’d spent with Joel, researching colleges and putting together the application fees.

Joel had come to Kristen one day, asking if they could afford to help Eloise apply to Boston University. “It’s where she really wants to go,” he’d said, and Kristen could still hear the echo of his voice in her ears.

She’d been told that the voice would be one of the first things she forgot about Joel. Right now, she was fine with that.

“I’m sorry,” Kristen said again, angry that Joel wasn’t there to say it himself. “But Eloise, you went to Boston University, and you did well. So well, you got into Harvard.” She spoke with as much kindness as she could.

Eloise blinked again, this time her eyes landing on Kristen’s. She nodded and even dared to reach out and pat her hand. “You did well at BU. You got into Harvard.”

“Yeah,” Robin said, grabbing onto the end of that rope and running. She set a plate of French toast on the table, along with a smaller plate of butter. “You’ve been teaching there forever, and you’re good. So who cares about some test scores from literally thirty years ago?” She turned back to the kitchen and went to get the syrup from the microwave. “Now, let’s eat, and we’ll decide on what we want to do to go through all of this as quickly as possible.”

Kristen took a piece of French toast and put it on one of the paper plates Robin had found somewhere. “I have to meet with the funeral director at three,” she said.

“That’s right,” Robin said. “Is Clara coming?”

Kristen shook her head. She wasn’t even sure where Clara was at the moment. She’d come back to the island the day before Joel’s death, so she’d been there when he died. But she’d dissolved into a sobbing mess soon afterward, and she’d run out of the house without a word.

Something seethed in Kristen’s stomach, and she only managed a few bites of breakfast. She noticed neither Alice nor Robin took any French toast at all, and Eloise ate one piece, seemingly without realizing she’d even done so.

“What’s going on with Clara?” Robin asked. “And you don’t have to say, but…I feel like there’s something going on.”

“There is,” Kristen said. “She didn’t get along with her father, and they fought about everything, every time they were in the same room together. Sometimes more than that.” The Internet and texting made prolonging arguments easier than ever. She made a half-hearted attempt to cut another bite of toast. “I thought when he died…I don’t know. She’d find a measure of forgiveness.”

Alice sucked in a big breath and blew it out. “Well, maybe there’s more to what they fought about than we know.” She faced the living room, where the pile of paper remained. Joel’s bookshelves, and cubbies, and that blasted filing cabinet.

“Maybe we should set the whole thing on fire.” Kristen stared at the living room she used to describe as cozy, which was really just a nice way of saying small and cramped. She switched her gaze to Eloise next. She looked like she was seriously considering finding a book of matches.

“Nope,” Robin said. “We’re going to clean it up, clean it out.” She took a deep breath, and Kristen wondered if she knew what she was saying. They could clean out the papers, the journals, the books, the files. But in so doing, she feared they’d have to open the closets of their lives and sweep those clear as well.

“Now.” Robin stepped in front of them all. “Can I get volunteers, or am I going to have to assign each of you a job?”