Diane Chamberlain - Kiss River

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Gina said. She looked genuinely chagrined by the invitation. “You’ve already been so kind. And after I trespassed on your property and took over your evening.”

“You’re staying here,” Lacey insisted. “The spare bedrooms haven’t been redone yet, but you’re welcome to take one of them as is, if you like. We have clean sheets for the bed. So you have no excuse not to stay.”

He knew he should speak up himself. He should tell her it was okay, that he’d like her to stay, but for some reason the words were stuck in his throat.

Gina played with her crumpled napkin where it rested on the table. “Well, thank you so much,” she said, glancing from Lacey to him. “I can’t believe how nice you two are being to a perfect stranger.”

“Let’s go move your car,” Lacey stood up.

“May I use your bathroom first?” Gina asked, and Clay pointed the way. Once she was out of hearing range, Lacey dared to look at him.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said.

“No,” he said. “It’s fine.” But he couldn’t explain the apprehension he felt at the thought of sharing the house with this stranger, a lighthouse enthusiast who couldn’t pronounce Fresnel, if even for just one night.

GINA KNEW THIS ROOM. SHE HAD NEVER BEEN in it before, but she knew it all the same. She stood in the doorway in the darkness, breathing hard, although the small, soft-sided suitcase she’d carried up the stairs, along with her backpack and camera, was not heavy. Without turning on the light, she walked to the window and, with a little work, managed to open it. A soft breeze blew through the screen. The sky had changed since she’d first walked into the house earlier that evening, and now it was filled with stars, more stars than she’d seen before in her life. She could make out the tower, a gray ghost against the night sky, fifty or so yards away from her.

In all her fantasies of what this day might bring, she had not expected to find herself in this room, this house. She had not expected to eat dinner at that old kitchen table, running her fingers over the smooth porcelain, knowing things about it her host and hostess could not know.

The last thing she’d expected was to be taken in, however temporarily, by two strangers. How quickly they had felt like friends! Lacey, primarily. She reminded Gina of one of her students, a red-haired girl with an expansive nature, the sort of person who could talk to anyone as if she’d known them all her life. But Gina was not here to make friends. She was not generally an introvert, but she would have to keep to herself on this trip. Lying to strangers to get what she needed was one thing; lying to friends, another. And already she had lied to Clay and Lacey.

Fresnel . She squeezed her eyes shut, still embarrassed by her faux pas. A lighthouse historian, my foot . But Lacey and Clay seemed to buy it, or at least to accept it. Tomorrow she would find herself a room, then see if she could talk with their father about raising the lens. And if he said to forget it? She wasn’t certain what she would do then. One bridge to cross at a time.

The lens was so close. Through the window, she could hear the sound of the sea, the breaking of the waves. White foam swirled around the base of the lighthouse under the night sky. The lens was out there, just below the surface of the water. There had to be a way.

She switched on the lamp on the night table. From her suitcase, she pulled the T-shirt she would sleep in and her toiletries bag, which held only her toothbrush, toothpaste, floss and sunscreen. She wore a bit of makeup when she taught, but lately, her looks had been the last thing on her mind.

The small pink diary with its broken lock and tattered corners rested on the clothing in her suitcase, and she took it out and set it on the bed Lacey had already made up for her. She knew the diary’s contents by heart.

Pulling off her shorts, she extracted the picture of the little girl from her pocket and propped it up against the lamp. She finished undressing and climbed beneath the covers, then picked up the picture to study it in the lamplight. She had wanted things in her life. She’d wanted her mother to get well. She had at one time wanted a husband and a good marriage, but that was not to be. But never had she wanted anything so much as to hold this child in her arms again.

She set the picture back on the night table, then turned out the light. Lying in the old, full-size sleigh bed in the dark, she could still see the stars. Years ago, the light from the lens would have shot through this small bedroom once every four and a half seconds, illuminating the walls and the ceiling and the covers on the bed.

Yes, she knew without a doubt whose room she was in.

Saturday, March 7, 1942

THE LIGHTS WENT OUT AGAIN TONIGHT. I’M sitting on my bed, writing by the glow of the hurricane lantern, just like I used to do when I was younger, before the electric came to Kiss River. Daddy’s put the lighthouse on the emergency generator—he won’t let that light go out no matter what. But here in the house, we have no backup. Mama says “You’ve gotten spoiled and soft, Elizabeth.” Maybe she’s right. She argues with me no matter what I say these days. Or maybe I argue with her. I don’t know. We’re not getting along well, is all I can say about that. All I know is, even though it’s not unusual for the lights to go out, tonight I feel scared by the sudden darkness. And I have to add that nothing much usually scares me. Not the storms that wash clear across this island or even the wild boar that kill chickens and sometimes a dog or cat and once that I heard of, but don’t know for a fact, an old woman hanging out her wash on the line behind her house. I’m not even sure now why I feel scared. Maybe because the adults are. They don’t say it, of course, but I can feel fear everywhere I go. Everybody’s talking about the war. People sit around at Trager’s Store and talk about it, not laughing much or telling jokes like they used to. In my own living room, my parents sit right next to the radio, listening. Always listening. There’s still music. I am sick of hearing that song, “Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor,” and especially “Perfidia.” What does Perfidia mean, anyhow? Is that supposed to be someone’s name? If it’s not Glenn Miller music, it’s Gabriel Heater and his “Up to the Minute World News!” and none of that news is good. Lines I never noticed before are on Mama’s forehead. Although I am angry with her and all her rules for me, I want to take my hand and smooth it over her forehead to erase those lines. When I feel like that, I know I still love her and Daddy. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that!

We’re not in any real danger up here in the northern beaches, Daddy said to me just yesterday, even though some ships have been sunk not far from here. Most of the ships that have been torpedoed by the Germans were down around Hatteras. After today, though, I bet Daddy’s thinking he might have to eat his words.

This morning, I was up in the lantern room, cleaning the lens. We are not needed here the way we used to be before the electric came, when we had to keep the lighthouse lantern lit all night long, winding the clockworks and toting oil up them two hundred and seventy steps. The keepers of other lights have been let go, but somehow Daddy’s been allowed to stay on as a “civilian keeper,” as long as he does all the maintenance work around here. So I help by cleaning the lens. At least, the lower part of the lens. I can’t reach much higher than that, and Daddy won’t let me use the ladder near all that glass, and secretly I’m glad he won’t, because it’s much harder work than I guessed. All these years, I’ve been watching him clean the smooth glass prisms with his soft chammy and jeweler’s rouge, wishing I could do it myself. A year ago, when I turned fourteen, he finally let me, and now I wonder why I begged him to do it. You have to be so careful not to scratch the glass. I wasn’t supposed to ever touch it. “Eighteen panels of crown glass prisms, manufactured and polished in Paree, France,” Daddy says to anyone who will listen and even some people who won’t. Fingerprints can dull the light, he always says, but I used to touch the prisms when he wasn’t looking, because I loved the slick, cold feel of them. The lens is more than twice his height and I never realized how truly huge around it was until I had to clean it myself. I think it would take up half this room (my bedroom).