I pull the lanterns out carefully, mindful of the old gas-filled weathered glass bases. Dotting them around the space, I set out the candles next. When the last one is secure, I crack each window for ventilation. Guess all there is to do now is hunt for my food.
That thought splits my face with a grin.
The shallow rock pools along the eastern shoreline are a safe haven for crab and oysters, sometimes smaller fish who find their way in and can’t get back. Easy pickings.
I grab up a pot, a less-than-pristine knife from the wire hook, and the wooden spear Iris made our father carve for her when she was nine, just before...
The spear’s tip is metal. It’s been an age since anyone’s used this. The tip is not honed to a sharp, lethal point like it once was, but it will still crack a shell well enough. I grab it with my free hand and pull the hut door shut. The sun’s warmth tingles my face and neck. It’s nice.
But the small swell of clouds closing in from the east catch my attention. They weren’t there this morning when I left.
“Hmmm, stay where you are,” I tell the clouds, like I’m Zeus and can command the weather. I chuckle at my stupidity. One night without the churn in my gut, worrying about something or someone, is all I want.
Maybe Iris is right. I should relax. Take up meditation like she teases me about any chance she gets.
Like she would ever sit still long enough to meditate.Fucking hypocrite.
The sand gives way under my boots as I find the rocky patch to the east. An abundance of crab and small pickings waits for the taking.
This is going to be fun.
With a haul one man could never possibly eat in a single trip, I trudge back to the hut. Those clouds to the east have grown with a ferocity that makes me nervous. It’s not that I don’t think the hut can withstand it. It’s still here after every storm that’s rolled through in the last three decades. It’s the girl I left alone in the lighthouse that worry is gnawing my insides about.
She knows the drill. But it’s not the same when you’re by yourself. And I have lived here for almost twenty years. Evie hasn’t been here long. I pray she stays inside and hunkers down. She knows where to go if she’s scared—the basement, into the generator room, the last resort space. Nothing can break down that robust space. The only downfall is the fumes if the generator is running, which it is at night.
“Dammit.”
I slam a hand onto the front door when I reach the hut, dumping my haul before the threshold. I should have stayed.
Nope. Give the girl more credit, asshole.Not like she can’t look after herself. She’s smart and cautious. Levelheaded. Evie will be fine. She’s probably more worried about me in the bundle-of-sticks hut, that the storm will try to huff and puff and blow my house down. I can imagine her saying it, a ridiculous grin on her beautiful face.
That settles it, then. She will be fine.
She will befine.
I take to prepping the spoils of my hunt. With a pot on the stove boiling away, I decide crab will make a decent dinner. Maybe followed by the handful of oysters I managed to scrape from the underside of the salty rocks. And two small fish that flop helplessly in the bucket. Their life force drains as their gaping mouths slow to a still.
Thunder rumbles, its menacing presence moving closer as the light starts to fade. I’m settled in the chair reading by lantern light when the first pitter-patter of rain hits the tin roof. I glance upward, as if greeting it with an eye roll will somehow make it go away. If it rains the entire time I’m here, I may as well have stayed home. But it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been out here in the weather.
Mud squelches through my clawed fingers. Rain pounds into me. Knees dug into the mushy earth as the air in my lungs burns its way from my body in racking assaults.
How could I let this happen?
The pouring rain drowns out the thundering beat of my heart. And it’s the first sliver of relief since I left the hospital three days ago. Left without Ava. Without?—
A feral scream rips through my throat. My forehead hits the mud. I claw at the ground.
The blaze consuming my chest doesn’t fade.
Nothing helps.
Things were fine. Everything was going to schedule, to plan. When I left, she wasn’t far along. Every letter she sent me, there was no reason for me to think she was in trouble. Why didn’t she tell me she was in pain all this time?
“Why, Ava?” The words echo off the trees that stand like ever-patient guardians all around me. The rain continues to slam into me. I don’t know if it’s a comfort or a blunt reminder I’m alive.
And my Ava is not.
I shake the memory from my mind and readjust my focus on the page. Twenty years, and it still burns like yesterday. Still chokes me up like it damn well should.
