Дэвид Балдаччи - One Summer

As they headed back to the house, she asked, “So how’s the lighthouse coming?”

“Not great,” he admitted. “I guess I’ll die trying to get it to work again.”

As he drove off later, Jenna watched from the front porch, a worried look on her face.

A week later Jack turned the wrench one more time, taped over an electrical connection, spun the operating dial to the appropriate setting, and stepped back. It had been a week since he’d had dinner with Jenna. And every night he’d been out here working until the wee hours of the morning on the lighthouse. He felt like a marathoner near the end of the run. Three times he thought he had it right. Three times he turned out to be wrong. And his anger and frustration had grown with each disappointment. He’d snapped at Sammy and at all three kids over the last few days. He’d even made Jackie cry one time and felt awful about it for days afterward. Yet still, here he was.

“Come on,” he said, looking at the guts of the light. “Come on. Everything checks out. Down to the smallest detail. There is no good reason you won’t work.”

He stood back and reached for the switch that powered the system. He counted to three, made a wish, took a breath, held it, and hit the switch.

Nothing happened. The light remained as dark as it had been for years.

Instead of another intense sense of disappointment, something seemed to snap in Jack’s head. All the misery, all the frustration, all the loss bottled up inside of him was suddenly released. He grabbed his wrench and threw it at the machinery. It struck the wall, ricocheted off, and cracked the window. Then he ran down the steps, grabbed a crate at the bottom of the lighthouse, carried it out to the rocks, and hurled it as far as he could. It crashed down, and the contents exploded over the wet rocks. With another cry of rage, he ran down to the beach, yelling and cursing, spinning around uncontrollably before he dropped down into the sand and sat there, rocking back and forth, his face in his hands, tears trickling between his clenched fingers.

“I’m sorry, Lizzie. I’m sorry. I tried. I really tried. I just can’t make it work . I can’t make it work,” he said again in a quieter voice. “I can’t accept that you’re gone. I can’t! You should be here, not me. Not me!”

His breathing slowed. His mind cleared. The longer he sat there, the greater his calm grew. He looked out to the darkened ocean. He saw the usual distant pinpoints of light representing far-off ships making their way up or down the Atlantic. They were like earthbound stars, thought Jack. So close, but so far away.

He looked skyward toward Lizzie’s little patch of Heaven... somewhere. He’d never found it. It just swallows you up. It’s so big and we’re so small, thought Jack.

Now he could fully realize how a little girl could become obsessed over a lighthouse. He was a grown man and it had happened to him. The mind, it seemed, was a vastly unpredictable thing.

“Dad?”

Jack turned to see Mikki standing behind him. She was in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, with a scared look on her face.

“Are you okay?” she said breathlessly. I... I heard you yelling.” She wrapped her arms around his burly shoulders. “Dad, are you okay?” she asked again.

He drew a long breath. “I’m just trying to understand things that I don’t think there’s any way to understand.”

“Okay,” she said in a halting voice.

He looked back at the Palace. “I moved all of us here for a really selfish reason. I wanted to be close to your mom again. She grew up here. Place was filled with stuff that belonged to her. Every day I’d find something else that she had touched.”

“I can understand that. I didn’t want to come here at first. But now I’m glad I did.” She touched his arm. “I look at that photo of Mom you gave me every day. It makes me cry, but it also feels so good.”

He pointed to the lighthouse. “Do you want to know why I’ve been busting my butt trying to get that damn thing to work?”

She sat down next to him. “Because Mom loved it?” she said cautiously. “And she wanted you to repair it?”

“At first I thought that too. But it finally just occurred to me when I saw you standing there. It was like a fog lifted from my brain.” He paused and wiped his face with his sleeve. “I realized I just wanted to fix something, anything. I wanted to go down a list, do what I was supposed to do, and the end result would be, presto, it works. Then everything would be okay again.”

“But it didn’t happen?”

“No, it didn’t. And you know why?”

Mikki shook her head.

“Because life doesn’t work that way. You can do everything perfectly. Do everything that you think you’re supposed to be doing. Fulfill every expectation that other people may have. And you still won’t get the results you think you deserve. Life is crazy and maddening and often makes no sense.” Jack paused and looked at his daughter. “People who shouldn’t be here are, and someone who should be here isn’t. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t change it. No matter how much you may want to. It has nothing to do with desire, and everything to do with reality, which often makes no sense at all.” He grew silent and looked out to the black ocean.

Mikki leaned against him and gripped his hand.

“We’re here for you, Dad. I’m here for you. I’m part of your reality.”

He smiled. And with that smile her look of fear finally was vanquished. “I know you are, baby.” He hugged her. “You know I told you I was scared when my dad was dying, that I withdrew from everybody?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, when my mom left me, I pulled back even more. If it wasn’t for your mother, I think I would’ve just kept pulling back until I disappeared. I played sports and all, but I didn’t have many friends, I guess because I didn’t want them. Then we got married and I went off to the military. Then when I got home I picked a job that required a lot of hours and a lot of sweat.”

“You had to support your family.”

“Yeah, but in a way I think I was still retreating. Still trying to hide.”

“Dad, you were there for us.”

“I missed a lot of things I shouldn’t have. I know it, and so do you.”

She squeezed his arm. “There’s still a lot more to see,” Mikki said quietly.

He nodded. “There is a lot more to see, honey. A lifetime more.”

She shivered. He put his arm around her. “Come on. Let’s go in.”

As they walked past the lighthouse, Mikki glanced at it and said, “Are you sure?”

Jack didn’t even look at it. “I’m very sure, Mikki. Very sure.”

After Jack got back to his room, he dropped, exhausted, onto the bed, but he didn’t go to sleep. He lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling. Life was often unfair, insane, damaging. And yet the alternative to living in that world was not living in it. Jack had been given a miracle. He had already squandered large parts of it. That was going to stop. Now.

He opened his nightstand and pulled out the stack of letters. He selected the envelope with the number five on it, slid out the letter, and flicked on the light. What he’d just told Mikki, he firmly believed, because he’d once written down these same sentiments. He had just forgotten or, more likely, ignored them in his quest for the impossible. He began to read.

Dear Lizzie,

As I’ve watched things from my bed, I have a confession to make to you. And an apology. I haven’t been a very good husband or father. Half our marriage I was fighting a war, and the other half I was working too hard. I heard once that no one would like to have on their tombstone that they wished they’d spent more time at work. I guess I fall into that category, but it’s too late for me to change now. I had my chance. When I see the kids coming and going, I realize how much I missed. Mikki already is grown up with her own life. Cory is complex and quiet. Even Jackie has his own personality. And I missed most of it. My greatest regret in life will be leaving you long before I should. My second greatest regret is not being more involved in my children’s lives. I guess I thought I would have more time to make up for it, but that’s not really an excuse. It’s sad when you realize the most important things in life too late to do anything about them. They say Christmas is the season of second chances. My hope is to make these last few days my second chance to do the right thing for the people that I love the most.