Susan Wiggs - The Lightkeeper

“What’s that?” Abner Cobb came out of the mercantile, his apron clanking with its load of penny nails and brass tacks.

Jesse fought an urge to jump on D’Artagnan and head for the hills to the south of town.

“Jesse Morgan is keeping a woman at his house,” Hestia Swann announced in her most tattle-sharp voice.

Grinning, Abner thumped Jesse on the back. “’Bout time, I’d say. You haven’t had female company since we’ve known you.”

“She’s not company,” Jesse said, but no one heard him. A babble of voices rose as others came out to the boardwalk to hear about this extraordinary development at the lighthouse station. Abner’s wife joined them, closely followed by Bert Palais, editor of the Ilwaco Journal.

“Where’d she come from?” Bert asked, scribbling notes on a sheet of foolscap.

“I found her on—”

“Oh, I imagine the big city,” Mrs. Swann proclaimed, her prominent bosom rising and falling with self-importance. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Morgan?”

“Actually, she—”

“Perhaps she was someone he knew in Portland,” the widow decided, then nodded in agreement with her own deduction while a few more people joined the group. “Yes, that’s it. Jesse is one of the Morgans of Portland.” She leaned over Bert’s shoulder. “His family owns the Shoalwater Bay Company. They have connections well down into San Francisco, did you know that?”

“Of course I know that,” the newspaper editor said. Not to be outdone, he added, “Mr. and Mrs. Horatio Morgan left in April for a grand tour of Europe.”

“I remember reading about that big society wedding a few years back,” Mrs. Cobb remarked. “Annabelle Morgan and Granger Clapp, was it?”

Hestia’s chin bobbed like a wattle as she vigorously agreed. “Jesse’s sister. It was the wedding of the decade, to hear people talk. Now, I wonder, is this woman a friend of Ann—”

Jesse didn’t stay to hear more. He walked away, feeling like a carcass being picked clean by buzzards. Ordinarily, he did his business in town in a perfunctory fashion and got out, attracting as little attention as possible. No one except Judson, who hurried to catch up with him, seemed to notice that he had broken from the crowd.

“Much obliged,” Jesse said through his teeth. He turned down an alleyway off Main Street.

“Where’re you going?” Judson asked.

“To get Doc MacEwan.”

“The woman needs a doctor?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, she sick or something?”

“Or something.”

Judson scowled in frustration. “Well, what the hell is it, then?”

“She’s pregnant.”

Judson struck himself on the forehead and stumbled back. “Well, I’ll be. You devil, you, Jesse—”

“And if you breathe a goddamned word of this,” Jesse warned him, “I’ll—”

He was too late. Judson was already running back around the corner. “Hey, everybody!” he bellowed to the crowd on the boardwalk. “Guess what?”

Jesse took hold of the brass handle on the door to the doctor’s surgery. He stood for a moment, wondering what had happened to his quiet, isolated existence. Then he thumped his brow against the door once, twice, three times.

It didn’t help.

Dr. MacEwan reveled in being a source of constant controversy. A proponent of radical medical ideas garnered from a fancy eastern college, the physician was aggressive, compassionate, outspoken and undeniably skilled.

Still, many in the close-knit community of Ilwaco regarded Dr. Fiona MacEwan with deep suspicion. Perhaps that was why Jesse felt a vaguely pleasant kinship with her.

He waited in his kitchen while Fiona examined the stranger from the sea. Despite a trying morning in town, Jesse let himself relax a little. By threatening the harbormaster with a large fist, he’d finally managed to get his point across. He told Judson to check his records for a ship that was due in the area. Before long, they would know the identity of the woman.

And now the doctor was here. In just a short time, Dr. MacEwan would take the stranger off his hands and his life would return to normal.

To normal. To its normal hellish loneliness.

Jesse gritted his teeth against feeling, because feeling had been his downfall. This lonely life, his exile, was his fate.

He looked out the broad front window of the house. The days were growing reasonably long, so he didn’t have to worry about getting the light burning for several more hours.

Then the solitary vigil of night would begin.

Hearing a step behind him, he turned to see Dr. MacEwan coming out of the birth-and-death room. Fiona had a broad face and hands that were as sturdy and work-worn as any farm wife’s. She wore her thick, graying hair in a haphazard bun held in place by a pencil or a knitting needle or whatever happened to be at hand. Today it looked as if the object of choice was a crochet hook.

“Well?” Jesse asked.

“She’s semiconscious.”

“What does that mean?”

“Drifting in and out of sleep.” Fiona removed her stethoscope, placing it in its black velvet pouch. “Did you notice she’s wearing no wedding ring?”

“Not everyone wears one.”

“It opens some interesting possibilities,” she said. “She could be a widow—”

“Or a fallen woman.” It was easier to think the worst of her.

“Why is it always the woman who falls?” Fiona mused. “And not the man?”

“For all we know, he’s fallen into the sea, so she’s better off than he is.”

“True.” Fiona lifted her immaculate white pinafore over her head and took her time folding it. “I got her to drink some water and use the necessary. But she’s endured a terrible trauma and is still in danger.”

“Is she…hurt in any way?” Jesse told himself he was asking because he wanted her well and out of his life. The sooner the better.

“I think her collarbone is bruised, so you’ll have to be careful with that.”

“I’ll have to be careful?” A familiar dread crept like a spider across Jesse’s chest.

“Yes. It seems tender there.” Without asking permission, Fiona went to the larder and helped herself to a finger of brandy from his bottle on the shelf. “The right side.”

“Seems to me you should be talking to the people she’ll be staying with.” Even as he spoke, Jesse felt a thump of suspicion in his gut.

Fiona tossed back the brandy, closing her eyes while a look of pleasure suffused her strong, handsome face. Then she opened her eyes. “She’s staying right here. With you. Jesse, you saved her. She’s your responsibility.”

“No.” He strode to the kitchen, slapped his hands on the table and leaned across it, glaring at the doctor. “Damn it, Fiona, I won’t have—”

“You won’t have,” she mocked. “It’s always about you, isn’t it, Jesse Morgan? You see everything in terms of yourself.”

“How else am I supposed to see it?”

“In terms of that poor creature in there, you great thickheaded lout!” Fiona sloshed more brandy into her glass. “I said she has no visible injuries other than minor bruises and abrasions. But that doesn’t mean we can drag her from pillar to post, man. She’s in a bad way, and don’t fool yourself that she’s not.”

“You have to take her away.” His voice was a low rasp in his throat.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”

“She can’t stay.”

“You kept that Mexican sailor for six weeks last year.”

“That was different.” Jesse had rescued the sailor from a lifeboat in the surf. “He slept in the barn, and he was able to send a telegraph for help.”

“And he didn’t speak English,” Fiona said as if it were Jesse’s fault. “So he didn’t intrude on your solitude.”