Susan Wiggs - The Lightkeeper

“—for you all,” Palina added.

“—in ways you cannot even imagine,” Magnus finished.

“That’s superstitious horseshit, and you know it,” Jesse said.

“It is the law of the sea, and I’ll not be the one to challenge it,” Magnus insisted. “Will you? Will you take that chance, risk losing her? Just so you can have your life back the way you want it?”

“Maybe I will.”

“Maybe you will not,” Palina said, thrusting her chin out stubbornly and dipping her polishing cloth. She attacked the next panel with savage relish. “What if you move her and she dies, eh? Then how will you feel? This woman is a gift, Jesse Morgan. You know why she came. Do not look fate in the face and deny it.”

A cold shaft of foreboding lanced through Jesse. He gazed out at the blue-gray horizon, then at the waves below the lighthouse. Foam creamed the rocks, seething in and out of the blackness.

A whistle sounded, startling him. It was Judson Espy, the harbormaster, riding up on a naggy-looking, dapple gray mare.

“The sea hasn’t given me a goddamned thing,” Jesse snarled. “Except a pain in the ass until we figure out who this woman is.” He clattered down the iron helix of stairs. Perhaps Judson had the answers he sought.

Judson met him halfway across the yard between the lighthouse and the forest. He waved a sheaf of papers. “Interesting irony here.”

“What’s that?” Jesse hung back, wondering what ill tidings he would hear.

“There was a schooner-rigged four-master bound for Shoalwater Bay for a load of oysters. It left San Francisco with some trade cargo and was supposed to call at Portland. Never arrived.”

Jesse crossed his arms, bracing himself for the news. He turned to look out at the sea, endless and infinite in its bounty—and in its power to destroy.

The story was all too common. The hungry maw of the Columbia River swallowed ships with great regularity, spitting out the remains like undigested skeletons along the beaches. “Do you have a list of passengers and crew?”

“Uh-huh.” Judson handed him a list. “Came over the telegraph wire.”

Jesse groped in his shirt pocket for his spectacles. Putting them on, he studied the list. Each time he did this, he was hurled back to the day he had stood on the river dock, frantically scanning a ship’s manifest, hoping against hope that a mistake had been made, then feeling the world explode when he saw his wife’s name.

“You all right?” Judson asked.

Jesse swallowed hard and glared through his spectacles. “All crew. No passengers?”

“Nope. That’s the entire list.”

He scanned the names, seeking something overtly Irish, like O’Malley or Flanagan. “You think she could be a seaman’s wife and they just forgot—”

“They never forget. Look at the name of the ship. At the shipping company.”

His gaze drifted to the bottom of the page. Jesse felt as if a noose were tightening around his throat. The noose of a past he wanted to forget. “It was the Blind Chance.”

“You remember it well, don’t you?”

“The Blind Chance is a ship-of-the-line for the Shoalwater Bay Company.”

“Your own company, Jesse. They never make mistakes on the ship’s manifest.”

“It’s not my company,” he said dully.

“Not anymore, I guess.” Judson took the list from him. “But it hasn’t changed much since you left. That partner of yours keeps everything shipshape. What was his name again? Flapp?”

“Clapp. Granger Clapp.” Jesse hadn’t thought about Clapp in years. But then again, he hadn’t thought about anything in years. Not Granger. Not his sister, who had married Clapp. Not his parents, away on a two-year grand tour of Europe. Not anyone.

Jesse wouldn’t let himself care.

“So,” Judson said, peering inquisitively at Jesse. “What do you think it means?”

“Either the woman was aboard unauthorized—”

“A stowaway!” Judson snapped his fingers. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Or she wasn’t on the Blind Chance, at all.”

“She had to have been.” Judson showed him another page. “Look. The keeper at Cape Meares recorded seeing the ship’s stern lights at one-twenty in the morning on Sunday. She was logged in at Tillamook Light at four-forty. And you found the woman at what time, six? Seven?”

“Thereabouts.”

“She was on that ship. On the Blind Chance. Had to be. As a stowaway.” Judson shifted from one foot to the other. “Damn, this is a hell of a story.”

Jesse put away his eyeglasses. “We ought to let the papers make the most of it, then. I took her picture. Have Bert Palais run it. And send it down on the next packets to Portland and San Francisco.”

Don’t you do it, boyo.

He heard her words in his mind, her voice trembling with superstition. She was out of her head, he told himself. Not rational, or she’d see the sense in publishing her likeness. Her family was probably frantic with worry, waiting for word.

Jesse knew what that was like.

Circulating the photograph was the best way to spread the word about this woman. He fished it out of his breast pocket where it had lain against his heart. His hand shook slightly as he handed it to Judson, but he pretended it was just the wind.

Judson stared at the photograph for a very long time. Then he let out a low whistle. “Damn, she looks like a princess out of that fairy tale. You know, where she pricks her finger—”

“I don’t read fairy tales.”

Judson put the photo plate in his pocket. “This is one amazing catch.”

“You don’t know,” Jesse muttered, walking Judson back to his horse. “You don’t know the half of it.”

All that day, the new information and old memories haunted Jesse. Ordinarily, he kept the past in some dark corner of his heart, where he couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it. But somehow, the arrival of the woman lit a candle in that shadowy place, shedding light on things he had kept hidden for years.

There was an almost eerie serendipity in the idea that the stranger had been borne into his life by the Blind Chance. In his mind’s eye, he could see the schooner-rigged ship as it had been the day they’d christened it fourteen years before. Jesse hadn’t known it at the time, but his future had been defined that day. He closed his eyes, letting the memories in….

The sleek hull of the ship gleamed with fresh paint, the brass fittings were polished to a sheen and the teakwood railings felt silky to the touch. The scent of ocean spray filled the air.

“Blind Chance,” Emily had teased, tugging at his sleeve. “What sort of name is that for a ship?” She looked as fresh and perfect as the ship, in lots of ruffles and lace, a bonnet shading her china-doll face. There was more to Emily than blond-and-pink prettiness, though. She had a streak of mischief in her that delighted, and a breezy charm Jesse knew he’d never tire of.

“Granger’s idea. He insisted on being the one to name it, since I got to name the Trident.”

“Oh, now there’s an original name.” Her laughter made a bright counterpoint to the melody played by the brass band on the afterdeck. Everything about the day glittered with a diamond brilliance. The ship’s rigging was hung with rows of ensign flags, each deck festooned with huge flower arrangements. Tables laden with sweets and hors d’oeuvres lined the pier.

Company officials and the crew and all their families had joined in the festivities. The ship, Jesse reflected, was a microcosm of his world—friends and family and business associates all united in commerce. He surveyed the scene around him with complete satisfaction.

“You’re grinning like the Cheshire cat,” Emily said, tapping her kid-booted foot in time to the music.