Kitabı oku: «The Lightkeeper»

Praise for the novels of
SUSAN WIGGS

HALFWAY TO HEAVEN

“With its lively prose, well-developed conflict and passionate characters, this enjoyable, poignant tale is certain to enchant.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

THE FIREBRAND

“With this final installment of Wiggs’s Chicago Fire trilogy, she has created a quiet page-turner that will hold readers spellbound….”

—Publishers Weekly

THE MISTRESS

“Susan Wiggs delves deeply into her characters’ hearts and motivations to touch our own.”

—Romantic Times

THE HOSTAGE

“Once more, Ms. Wiggs demonstrates her ability to bring readers a story to savor that has them impatiently awaiting each new novel.”

—Romantic Times

THE CHARM SCHOOL

“The Charm School draws readers in with delightful characters, engaging dialogue, humor, emotion and sizzling sensuality.”

—Costa Mesa Sunday Times

THE DRIFTER

“A smart, unorthodox coupling to which Wiggs adds humor, brains and a certain cultivation that will leave readers anticipating her next romance.”

—Publishers Weekly

Susan Wiggs
The Lightkeeper

For Jay—again and always

You’re with me wherever I go.

Special thanks to

Barbara Dawson Smith, Betty Gyenes, Christina Dodd and Joyce Bell for performing feats of impossible electronic mail contortions in order to read and critique the manuscript.

Also, thanks to Kristin for having brainstorms when all I had was a weak drizzle, Debbie for the neurotic lunches, Suzanne for the most excellent advice and Palina Magnusdottir for the Icelandic translations.

Finally, thank you to

Robert Gottlieb and Helen Breitwieser, and to Dianne Moggy and Amy Moore-Benson of MIRA Books.

And the sea gave up the dead…

—Revelation 20:13

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Afterword

One

Washington Territory

1876

On Sunday, something washed up on shore.

The morning had dawned like all the others—a chill haze with the feeble sun behind it, iron-colored swells gathering muscle far offshore, then hurling themselves against the huddled sharp rocks of Cape Disappointment. The rising sun looked like a wound trying to break through the clouds.

All this Jesse Morgan saw from the catwalk high on the lighthouse, where he had gone to extinguish the sperm-oil lamp and start the daily chore of trimming wicks and cleaning lenses.

But it caught him, the sight down on the strand.

He wasn’t certain what made him pause, turn, stare. He supposed he had always looked but rarely paid attention. If he gazed too long at the gray-bearded waves slapping the fine brown sand or exploding against the rocks, there was a danger that he would remember what the sea had taken from him.

Most days, he didn’t look. Didn’t think. Didn’t feel.

Today he felt a disturbance in the air, like the breath of an invisible stranger on the back of his neck. One moment he was getting out his linseed oil and polishing cloths; the next he was standing in the bitter wind. Watching.

He experienced a sensation so subtle he would never quite understand what made him go to the iron rail, hold tight with one hand and lean out over the edge to look past the jut of land, beyond the square-jawed cliffs, down onto the storm-swept beach.

A mass of seaweed. Strands of golden-brown kelp shrouding an elongated shape. For all he knew it could be no more than a tangle of weeds or perhaps a dead seal, an old one whose whiskers had whitened and whose teeth had dulled.

Animals, unlike people, knew better than to live too long.

As Jesse stood staring at the shape on the beach, he felt…something. A dull knife-twist of…what? Not pain. Nor interest.

Inevitability. Destiny.

Even as the foolish thought passed through his mind, his booted feet clattered down the iron spiral of stairs. He left the lighthouse and plunged along the flinty walkway.

He didn’t have to watch his step as he followed the winding, rocky path to the desolate strand. He had made the short trek a thousand times and more.

What surprised him was that he was running.

Jesse Morgan had not been in a hurry for years.

Yet his body had never forgotten the feeling of pumping thighs and of lungs filling until the sharpness hovered between pain and pleasure. But once he reached the object on the strand, he halted. Stock-still and afraid.

Jesse Morgan had been afraid for a very long time, though no one ever would have guessed it.

To the people of Ilwaco, to the two thousand souls who lived there year-round and the extra thousand or so who migrated to the shore for the summer, Jesse Morgan was as solid and rugged and uncompromising as the sea cliffs over which he brooded in his lighthouse.

People thought him strong, fearless. He had fooled them, though. Fooled them all.

He was only thirty-four, but he felt ancient.

Now he stood alone, and the fear scorched him. He did not understand why. Until he saw something familiar within the heap of seaweed in front of him.

Oh, God. Oh, sweet Jesus. He plunged to his knees, the chill of the sodden sand seeping through his trousers, his hands trying to decide, without consulting his head, where to start. He hesitated, awkward as a bridegroom on his wedding night, about to part the final veil that draped the sweet mystery of his bride.

The strands of kelp were spongy and cold to the touch. Clinging thick and stubborn to—

To what?

He encountered a piece of fine-grained wood. Smoothed, planed, varnished. Part of a ship. A section of mast or bowsprit with rope lashed to it, the tarred ends trailing.

Stop, he told himself, already anticipating what he would find. The old horror, still raw after all these years, reared up inside him.

Stop now. He could stand and turn his back this moment, could climb the path, wend his way through the woods and rouse Palina and Magnus. Send the assistant lightkeepers to investigate.

But his hands, still the eager, persistent hands of a bridegroom, kept digging and pulling at the slimy shroud, digging and pulling, finding more and more of the mast, the broken-off end, the—

A foot. Bare. Cold as ice. The toenails like tiny seashells.

He drew a harsh breath. His hands kept working, the movement frantic, a rhythm pumped by his own pounding heart.

A slim calf. No, skinny. Skinny and dotted with freckles, stark against the lifeless ivory skin.

Jesse was swearing through gritted teeth. Fluent phrases spat past a clenched jaw. He used to talk to God. Now he swore to no one in particular.

Each passing second stood apart in time, crystallized by the knowledge he had been fleeing for years. He had come to the very ends of the earth to escape the past.

He could not escape it. Couldn’t help thinking of it. Of what the sea had stolen from him.

And of what the sea had brought him today. A woman, of course. That put the final twist of cruel irony on it.

He quickly moved upward, uncovered the face. And almost wished he hadn’t, for when he saw her, he knew why he had felt so compelled to run.

An angel had died on his beach this morning. Never mind that her halo was fashioned of kelp and endless tangled strands of dark red hair. Never mind the constellation of freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose.

This face, this pale face with its lavender bow of lips, was the one sculpted by every artist who had ever tried to turn marble to poetry. The face envisioned by hopeful dreamers who believed in miracles.

But she was dead, back in the realm of angels where she belonged, where she never should have left in the first place.

Jesse didn’t want to touch her, but his hands did. His idiot bridegroom’s hands. They took her by the shoulder and tugged gently, at the same time rolling the mast to which she was still tied. He saw her fully now, head to toe.

She was pregnant.

Rage charged like a thunderbolt through him. It was not enough that a beautiful young woman had been taken. But the sweet, round swell of her stomach, that dark mystery, that whispered promise, had been claimed, too. Two lives had been snuffed out by the merciless breath of the wind, by the wall-size waves, by the uncaring sea.

This was the start, Jesse thought as he unbound the ropes and gathered her in his arms, of a journey he had no desire to undertake.

The corpse flopped forward like a rag doll. A cold hand clutched at Jesse’s arm. He reared back, leaving her on the seeping brown sand.

She moaned and coughed out seawater.

Jesse Morgan, who rarely smiled, suddenly grinned from ear to ear. “I’ll be damned,” he said, ripping off his mackintosh. “You’re alive.”

He settled the plaid wool coat around her shoulders and picked her up in his arms.

“I’m…alive,” she echoed in the faintest of whispers. “I suppose,” she added, her head drooping forward, “that’s something.”

She spoke no more, but began to shiver violently, uncontrollably. She felt like a large fish in its death throes, and it was all Jesse could do to keep from dropping her.

Yet even as he bore his burden up the impossibly steep slope, running faster than he’d ever run in his life, he knew with stone-cold dread that this day had brought something new, something extraordinary, something endlessly fascinating and frightening, into his world.

Two

Panic rushed over him in huge, nauseating waves. Why him? Why now? He held her very life in his hands, yet saving a stranger and her unborn child was the last thing he was prepared to do.

At the same time, he knew he must rescue her. Twelve years ago, he had dedicated his life to watching over the shoals and keeping the light burning. He had taken an oath as head lightkeeper. He had no choice. No choice.

He ran swiftly, mounting the sinuous path toward the station, then racing down the other side of the promontory and into the woods where the lightkeeper’s house was located. The dead weight of her dragged at him. He took the steps two at a time, pounded across the porch, shoved the door open with his shoulder.

Plunging into the dimness of the quiet house, he brought the woman to a room off the kitchen and deposited her on the bed. The mattress was musty with disuse, the ticking worn and yellowed. He plundered a tall cabinet, finding a few old quilts and a tattersall blanket that had seen better days.

He covered the woman. She didn’t stir. He tried to get her to drink something—water, whiskey—but the liquid merely trickled over the sides of her mouth and down her neck. She was out cold.

He rushed to the porch to ring the big brass bell, summoning Magnus Jonsson and his wife Palina from their bungalow a quarter mile down the woodland path. He stirred the banked coals in the kitchen stove and filled a kettle with water, setting it on to boil. Then, bracing himself for the task ahead, he returned to the woman.

He had to get the wet dress off her. Had to touch her. Gingerly, he lifted the layers of blankets. His hand shook a little as he brushed aside a sodden strand of hair and found the top button of her dress.

The act of disrobing a woman felt alien to Jesse. Yet at the same time, it seemed unbearably familiar, as if he were that bridegroom once again.

He set his jaw and undid the row of buttons. She lay unconscious, oblivious to his clumsy manipulations as he peeled off one sleeve, then the other, rolling the flimsy wool garment over her arms and legs, dropping it on the floor.

Beneath it she wore a simple shift that had once been white. Her breasts and belly stood out in pale relief against the thin fabric. With his teeth tightly clenched, he forced himself to honor her modesty and cover her, working the shift off by touch alone. Yet he didn’t need his eyes to detect her graceful curves, the smooth texture of her skin.

Her skin was dangerously cool.

In his blind haste, he tore the shift as he finished dragging it down the length of her. He added it to the pile on the floor, tucked the blankets more securely around her and stood up.

He was shaking from head to foot.

Back in the kitchen, he filled canteens and bottles with hot water and placed them around her, insulated by the blankets. That done, he leaned against the rough-timbered wall of the room and closed his eyes briefly. Finished. That phase, at least, was over. The difficult part lay ahead.

The lightkeeper’s house was less a home than a refuge. The one-and-a-half-story dwelling, embraced by a towering forest, had been enough for Jesse, who needed little except to survive from one moment to the next. Yet now, with the light spilling through an east-facing window and slanting across the unmoving form on the bed, the house felt small, cramped. Dingy, even.

The birth-and-death room off the kitchen was designed with the idea that a patient lying abed should be close at hand, where the heart of the house beat the strongest. In all the years Jesse had lived here, no one had occupied this room, this bed.

Until now.

She lay unmoving beneath the blankets and quilts. Her face was pale and serene. Her dark red hair fanned out in untidy hanks, stiffened by salt. She held one perfect hand tucked beneath her chin. Her delicate eyelids were webbed with faint blue lines.

I’m alive. I suppose that’s something.

The words she had uttered so quietly on the beach whispered through his mind. He had thought he detected an accent of sorts, a lilting inflection that was hard to place. She hadn’t opened her eyes.

He caught himself wondering what color they were.

“Who are you?” he whispered, his voice harsh. “Who the hell are you?”

She was Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tale. Her bed should be a sunlit arbor entwined with roses, not a crude bedstead with a sagging mattress. She should awaken to Prince Charming, not to Jesse Kane Morgan.

He forced himself to turn away. It hurt to look at her, the way it hurt to look directly into the sun on a summer day. Better for all concerned if she were simply whisked away, still unconscious, never knowing who had pulled her from the sea.

Yet he had an urge to sink to his knees beside the woman, to grab her by the shoulders and plead with her to live, live.

He began to pace, wondering what was keeping the Jonssons. Trying to shove aside a jolt of urgency, Jesse observed his house through new eyes, trying to see it as a stranger would. Sturdy pine furniture, hand-hewn. A plain wag-on-the-wall clock, its long pendulum measuring the moments with unrelenting reliability. The shutters were open to the morning. Palina had offered to make curtains, but Jesse had no use for frills.

The longest wall in the keeping room was lined with books. Novels by Dumas, Flaubert, Dickens. Essays and stories by Emerson, Thoreau. When Jesse left the world behind, the only possessions he’d brought along were his books. He read constantly, voraciously, escaping into worlds of make-believe. In the early years, after the tragedy had first happened, he had clung to the books like a lifeline. The babbling voices of fictional characters had blocked out the howl of emptiness that screamed through his mind. The books kept him from going insane.

Lined up neatly on shelves in the kitchen, jars and cans and crocks were stacked by height so he always knew where his supplies were. The Acme Royal stove had been well maintained, blacked over and over again throughout the years he had been here.

The years he tried his best not to count.

Impatience drove him out to the porch to ring the bell again. He gave the rope pull a quick jerk, but he needn’t have. He could hear Magnus and Palina coming.

Their voices took on a hushed quality in the strange green wilderness that surrounded the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse Station. The forest floor was paved with layers of brown needles, cushioning their footfalls. They spoke in their native Icelandic, animatedly, like old friends who had just met again after a long separation.

It never ceased to amaze Jesse, the way they found constant interest and delight in one another, even after some thirty years of marriage. They had a grown son, Erik, who was simple but beloved of his parents. Strong as a young bullock, Erik spent his days working in contented silence around the station.

The Jonssons appeared around a bend in the forest path. The morning sun, filtered through lofty boughs of the soaring cedar and Sitka spruce trees, was kind to their aging faces, giving them a soft glow as they smiled, lifted their hands in greeting and hurried toward him.

Magnus Jonsson had a fisherman’s deep chest and broad shoulders, the result of decades spent hauling nets and cranking winches. He had retired after an injury had taken his left hand. When most men would have lain down in defeat and died, Magnus had willed himself to heal.

Beside her adored and adoring husband, Palina looked dainty, though she was as sturdy as any pioneer in the prime of life. She had bright eyes and prominent teeth, and in her face there was an unexpected depth that hinted at a keen, quiet intelligence and a vivid imagination.

“Good day, Jesse,” she said, a light singsong in her voice. “And look at the fine morning Odin has given us.” She encompassed the small clearing with a sweep of her arm, showing off her bright orange shawl. On the slope below, the horse pasture shone in the radiance of the sun.

“All the clouds chased off and the fog burned away by the breath of Aegir,” Magnus added.

Jesse nodded a greeting. He had grown used to their constant references to the legends of the sea. And who was he to discount them? Many of the ancient tales they recounted held an almost eerie ring of truth.

“That’s not all the morning brought,” he said, motioning them up the steps to the porch. He pushed open the door and held it as they moved inside. They followed him through the keeping room and past the kitchen, into the birth-and-death room.

When the Jonssons spied the woman on the bed, they froze, clutching each other’s hands.

“Hamingjan góoa,” Magnus said under his breath. “And what is this?”

“She washed up on the beach from a shipwreck.” Feeling inexplicably awkward, Jesse was reminded of a moment in his boyhood, when he’d gotten a gift he hadn’t wanted. What did one say?

Thank you.

But he wasn’t thankful, not in that way.

“She’s still alive,” he said clumsily.

Palina was already bending toward the woman, clucking like a hen over a chick. Jesse moved closer. “Isn’t she?” he asked.

“Yes, yes. Alive but nearly frozen, litla greyid, little one. Build up the fire in the stove, Magnus,” she said over her shoulder. “Ah, you’ve got the wet dress off her.” There was no censure in her tone; she was as familiar as he with warming chilled victims.

“She needs dry clothes, quickly.” Palina took one of the woman’s hands and gently cradled it between her own. “Ah, blessed, blessed day. Never have I known the gods of the sea to give a man such a gift.”

A gift?

Foolishness. Superstition.

Now, where the hell was he to get clean, dry clothing for a woman? He possessed only two sets of clothes—winter and summer. Kentucky jeans, several shirts and standard-issue lightkeeper’s livery. Those he wasn’t wearing on his back were currently in the laundry kettle, ready to be boiled on the stove. Just this morning he had put his only nightshirt in to wash.

“You must have something at your house for her to wear, Palina,” he said.

“Ah, no. She’s half-frozen already. Just find something—anything!”

“There is noth—” Jesse cut himself off. Against his will, he glanced at the foot of the bed, where an old sea chest sat.

“There’s nothing,” he lied hoarsely, his throat raw. “Look, I can get to your house and back in ten min—”

“I need the dry clothing now.” Palina fixed him with a gaze that dared him to defy her. “She needs them now.”

Jesse clenched his fists. No. He recoiled at the idea of plundering his past. But then, with the reluctant movements of a condemned man, he did something he’d sworn he would never do.

He lifted the lid of the sea chest and removed the sectioned tray from the top.

A scent too rich and evocative to be borne wafted from the contents, and he almost reeled back. Emily. He plunged his hand into the stacks of folded clothes, found the thick, smooth texture of cotton flannel, yanked it out and flung it at Palina. I’m sorry, Emily. “Here,” he said gruffly. “I’ll help Magnus with the fire.”

Feeling the burn of Palina’s intense curiosity, he stalked out of the house and down to the side yard, grabbing his ax from the toolshed.

He upended a huge log and lifted the ax high in both hands, bringing it down to split the timber with a single blow. The heart of the wood appeared torn and shredded, a fresh kill. Jesse split it again and again with the grim, rhythmic violence that coursed through his body.

But mere expended energy couldn’t keep the demons out. He had known that even before he’d opened the sea chest—a Pandora’s box he had been trying to keep shut for most of his adult life.

Though he had barely looked at the flannel nightgown he’d handed Palina, he could see the fabric in its minutest detail—the little green leaves and blue flowers, the bits of white trim circling the neckline and wrists. Worst of all, the scent still clung to the garment.

His wife’s scent. It was as haunting as a melody, bringing back wave after wave of unwanted memories. He could see her, could hear the sound of her laughter and smell the soaps and powders she stroked across her skin.

Even after all these years, he still bled inside when he thought of her. Of them. Of the hopes and dreams he had so thoughtlessly shattered.

He brought the ax down relentlessly, over and over, trying to purge himself of all feeling. His shoulders ached and sweat ran down his face, into his eyes and over his neck and chest. By the time Magnus came out, a huge supply of freshly cut wood lay massacred around Jesse.

Magnus stared at the wood. “You had best come in now,” he said.

The house was warm, almost oppressively so. The woman’s blue dress had been added to the laundry vat on the stove. Jesse hated the thought of the stranger’s garment mingling with his own in the kettle.

Palina was bent over the bed, plumping pillows behind the woman and clucking, always clucking.

“You’re a meddlesome old biddy, Palina,” Jesse said. He was surprised. He sounded almost…normal.

“And proud of it,” she retorted.

If Jesse had been the sort of man who smiled, he would have just then. He harbored genuine liking for Magnus and Palina, who knew when to keep their distance and when to lend a hand. At the moment, he needed their help.

“Well?” Palina prodded him. “Aren’t you going to ask if your little visitor is all right?”

“Is she?”

Palina nodded, smoothing her hands down the front of her white apron. “With plenty of attention and care, she and the little one will be just fine.”

He almost flinched at the mention of the baby, but he forced himself to remain stoic, emotionless. “We can use the flatbed cart to get her to your place,” he said.

“No,” said Palina.

“Then I’ll carry her—”

“Not so fast, my friend.” Magnus held up his good hand. “The woman is not coming with us.”

“Of course she is. Where else—”

“Here,” Palina said with brisk finality. “Right here, where she can heal and grow strong in the care of the man who found her. The man for whom the gift was intended.”

“We must be practical,” Magnus added. “You have plenty of space here. We have but two cramped rooms and a loft for Erik.”

Jesse forced out a dry bark of laughter. “That’s impossible. I don’t even keep a dog, for chrissakes. I can’t keep a—a—”

“Woman,” Palina said. “A woman who is with child. Can you not even say it? Can you not even speak the truth when it is right here before you?”

Panic flickered to life inside Jesse. The Jonssons were serious. They actually expected him to keep this stranger. Not just keep her, but tend to her every need, nurture and heal her.

“She’s not staying.” He tried to keep the edge out of his voice. “If you won’t tend her, I’ll take her to town.”

Magnus spoke in Icelandic to his wife, who nodded sagely and touched her neat kerchief. “Moving her would be a terrible risk after the shock she has suffered.”

“But—” Jesse clamped his mouth shut until his jaw ached. He pinched the bridge of his nose hard as if trying to squeeze out a simple solution. If Palina was right, and something terrible befell the woman as a result of moving her, he would feel responsible.

Again. Always.

“It is the law of the sea,” Magnus said, running his weathered right hand through his bushy hair. “God has given her to you.”

They stood together on the tiled hearth in front of the massive black stove, Palina absently tugging at a thread on Magnus’s empty white sleeve. Yet her gaze never left Jesse’s, and he saw again a spark of faith, ancient and obstinate, in the depths of her eyes.

Faith.

“I don’t believe in the old sea legends,” he said. “Never have.”

“It does not matter what you believe. It is still true,” Magnus said.

Palina set her hands on her hips. “There are things that come to us from beyond eternity, things we have no right to question. This is one of them.”

Every aching fiber that made up Jesse Morgan leaped and tensed in painful denial. He would not, could not, accept this stranger into his house, into his world.

“She can’t stay.” Fear turned his voice to a whiplash of anger. “I can’t give her anything. Can’t give her help or hope or healing. There’s nothing here for her, don’t you understand that? She’d stand a better chance in hell.”

The words were out before he realized what he was saying. They came from the poisoned darkness inside him, and they rang with undeniable truth.

Magnus and Palina exchanged a glance and some low words. Then Palina tilted her head to one side. “You will do what you must for the sake of this woman. This child.” Her eyes sharpened with insight. “Twelve years ago, the sea took from you everything you held dear.” Her words dropped heavily into the silence. “Now, perhaps, it has given something back.”

The couple left the house. Jesse had no doubt that Palina was aware of what she had just done. She had breached the bounds of their association. In twelve years, no one—no one—had dared to speak to him of what had happened. That was the way he had coped—by not speaking of something that lived with him through each breath he took.

He stalked out to the porch. “Get back here, goddammit!” he yelled across the yard. He had never yelled at these people, never sworn at them. But their stubborn refusal to help him set off his temper. “Get the hell back here and help me with this—this—”

Palina turned to him as she reached the bend in the path. “Woman is the word you want, Jesse. A woman who is with child.”

“Can you believe this, D’Artagnan?” Jesse asked in annoyance. He dismounted and tethered his horse to the hitch rail in front of the Ilwaco Mercantile. “The Jonssons think I have to keep that infernal woman because of some legend of the sea. I never heard of such a damned cockamamy thing. It’s about as crazy as—”

“As talking to your horse?” asked someone on the boardwalk behind Jesse.

He turned, already feeling a scowl settle between his brows. “D’Artagnan gets skittish in town, Judson.”

Judson Espy, the harbormaster, folded his arms across his chest, rocked back on his heels and nodded solemnly. “I’d be skittish, too, if you named me after some Frenchy.”

“D’Artagnan is the hero of The Three Musketeers.”

Judson looked blank.

“It’s a novel.”

“Uh-huh. Well, if the poor nag is so damned nervous, you ought to let me take him off your hands.”

“You’ve been trying to buy this horse for ten years.”

“And you’ve been saying no for ten years.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t caught on yet.” Jesse skimmed his hand across the gelding’s muscular neck. D’Artagnan had come into his life at a low point, when he had just about decided to give up…on everything. A Chinook trader had sold him the half-wild yearling, and Jesse had raised it to be the best horse the territory had ever seen. Over the years, he’d added three more to the herd at the lighthouse station—Athos, Porthos and Aramis completed the cast of the Musketeers.

He joined Judson on the walkway. Their boots clumped as the two men passed the mercantile. As stately as a river barge, the widow Hestia Swann came out of the shop. Touching a bonnet that was more flower arrangement than hat, she lifted a gloved hand with a tiny wisp of handkerchief pinched between her thumb and forefinger.

“Hello, Mr. Espy. And Mr. Morgan. This is a surprise.” She hung back, keeping a polite distance.

Jesse didn’t take offense. He was a stranger to most of these people, even after twelve years. He didn’t blame them for being wary of him.

“Mrs. Swann,” he said, lifting his oiled-canvas hat.

A smile forced its way across her lips. Famous for her social pretensions, Mrs. Swann was unfailingly cordial to him—because of his family in Portland.

As if that mattered anymore.

“How do, ma’am?” Judson said. Jesse started to edge away.

She waved the handkerchief limply at her face. “Not so well, Mr. Espy, but bless you for asking. Ever since Sherman was lost at sea, I’ve been suffering from melancholia. It’s been two years, but it feels like an eternity.”

“Sorry to hear that, ma’am. You take care, now.” Judson turned to Jesse as they started walking again. “What’s this about you keeping a woman at your house?”

He’d raised his voice deliberately; Jesse was sure of it. Hestia Swann, who had been heading for her Studebaker buggy in the road, stopped and stiffened as if someone had rammed a broomstick up the back of her dress. With a loud creaking of whalebone corsets, she turned and bore down on them.

“What?” she demanded. “Mr. Morgan’s got a woman at the lightkeeper’s house?”

Judson nodded. Mischief gleamed in his eye. “Ay-uh. That’s what he said. I just heard him telling his horse.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Why would he be talking to his horse?”

“Because he’s Jesse Morgan.”

“And he’s not deaf,” Jesse said in irritation.

“You hush up,” snapped Mrs. Swann. “This is serious business, keeping a woman—”

“I’m not keeping her—”

“Ah! So there is a woman!” Mrs. Swann exclaimed.

“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.”

“Since when has it been a crime to want solitude?”

“It’s a crime when you put someone in danger because you’re afraid of having her under your roof.”

The accusation chilled Jesse’s blood. “That was a goddamned low blow, Fiona.”

She sipped her brandy. “I know. I learned to fight dirty back in medical college. And I’ve never been beaten. Certainly not by such a creature as a man.”

Jesse shoved himself back from the table. “What about her reputation? She’s probably a decent, God-fearing person. Mrs. Swann’s probably spreading lies about her all over town. It’s not right for a woman to live under the same roof as a man she’s not married to.”

“Once I explain to everyone the condition she’s in, only the smallest of minds will dare to think there’s anything improper going on.”

“You have enormous faith in your fellow man,” Jesse said. “They’ll flay her alive with their gossip.”

“Since when does Jesse Morgan care about gossip?” Fiona asked, finishing her brandy and fastening the clasp on her large brown leather bag. “I’ll stop in to see how she’s doing. If she tries to talk, find out where her family is, how we can contact them.”

Jesse followed her to the door. “Don’t do this, Fiona. Don’t leave her with me.”

He could almost hear the snap as her patience broke. She glared at him, her eyes bright with outrage. “You’ll keep this woman safe, Jesse Morgan, and you’ll help her get well, I swear you will. She’s pregnant, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I noticed.”

“Pregnancy is always a risky proposition, even for a woman who hasn’t suffered a major trauma. If she lost her family in the shipwreck, then the baby will be all she has left. It’s only right that we do everything we can to make sure she carries the infant to term, which, unless I miss my guess will be four months from now.”

After she was gone, Jesse stood for a long time listening to the wag-on-the-wall clock ticking away the moments. And in the room off the kitchen, the beautiful stranger slept on.

Three

Darkness. The rasp of her own breathing. Images and flashes of things that had come before. The face of a stranger. The feel of strong arms around her.

The ball of shame in her belly that she couldn’t help loving.

It was the thought of the baby that brought her to full wakefulness. Beneath her, the bed was surprisingly soft, a welcome luxury after the cramped discomfort of the ship.

What’ve we here, then? A stowaway? I’ll have to report this bit of baggage to the skipper.

Shuddering from the memory, she blinked slowly until she could make out vague, dark shapes in the room. The small square of a window with the shutters drawn. A washstand and sea chest. A tall piece of furniture, a cupboard of some sort.

A strong but pleasant smell hung in the air. Lye soap, perhaps. And coffee, though it had not been made recently.

Safe. She felt safe here. She had no idea where “here” was, but she sensed something vital in the atmosphere that protected and insulated her. Safe at last. Anywhere felt safe compared to the place she had fled.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she ducked from it. She wasn’t ready to think about that yet. She must not. Perhaps there was a way for her never to think about the past again.

Her hand curled over the gentle swell of her belly. No. There was no chance of forgetting.

“Hello?” she whispered into the darkness.

No answer. Just a low, constant growl of sound in the distance.

Gingerly she lifted the covers, wincing at a pain in her shoulder. She was wearing a gown of some fine stuff—thick cotton flannel such as she would have welcomed as a girl, shivering in her loft above the family cottage and wishing the peat fire gave off better heat.

Feeling the way with her hands, she moved along the wall toward the door, which was slightly ajar. A splinter of rough wood pierced her hand, but she barely flinched. After all she had been through, a splinter was hardly cause for notice.

In contrast to the door, the floor was worn smooth as if by years of pacing. She paused in the doorway, trying to get her bearings.

It was the sea she heard, the throaty basso call of waves on the shore. She had lived by the sea all of her life, and it was a good, strong sound to her ears. Even the shipwreck had not soured that pleasure for her, the sense that, no matter what happened, the sea never ceased, the sound never died.

Faint heat emanated from a huge iron stove that dominated the kitchen. The room gave access to a larger area, a keeping room or parlor. She creaked open the door of the stove so the embers would give her some light. A warm orange glow painted the sturdy furnishings and a narrow stairway. She went up the flight of stairs and looked through an open door. Within the shadow shrouds, she could make out a large tester bed, its four posters stark and bony in the dimness.

The bed was empty.

What sort of place was this?

Though each movement caused a wave of dizziness, she felt the need to press on, to answer the questions swirling in her mind. Unsteady on her feet, she descended the stairs, stepped outside and found herself standing on a veranda with a railing around the front.

The waves boomed as loud and rhythmic as a heartbeat. High clouds glowed in the distance, and a strange light silvered their underbellies so that they resembled fat salmon swimming through the sky.

That light. She shook her head and grasped the porch rail, feeling nauseous. Her injured shoulder throbbed. She spied a small outhouse fronted by lilac bushes. The necessary room? Yes. She was glad to have found that. As she stumbled across the lawn, the ground felt chill and damp beneath her bare feet. When she finished and made her way back, she noticed that the grass had been cropped or scythed.

Again the silvery light drew her. Slowly, she made her way up a slope covered by spongy grass to the top of the yard. Beyond a thick stand of towering trees, a stately silhouette stood out against the night sky. That was it, then. A lighthouse.

A memory drifted back to her. The sickening lurch of the ship’s hull on the shoal. The groan and crash of boards breaking apart. A seaman shouting raw-throated at her, tossing her a rope. The solidity of a mast or yardarm bobbing free of the wreck, floating. She had used the rope to secure herself. She recalled looking up, scanning the horizon.

As the sea swallowed the four-master—Blind Chance, it was called—like a hungry serpent, making a great slurping sound, she had spied the light. She’d known it wasn’t a star, for it lay too low on the horizon. She had followed the light, kicking toward it for hours, it seemed. The water, though cold, was bearable. With a rhythm as faithful as music, the rotating beacon had drawn her closer and closer: a long, thoughtful blink followed by a second or two of darkness.

When dawn tinged the sky, exhaustion had overcome her. The last image in her conscious mind had been that light. She remembered thinking that it was rather lovely for one’s last vision on earth.

Now she stood amazed that she had survived.

But what of her rescuer?

She wondered if she should go and find him. She stood in the shadow of a huge tree, feeling the moist springy earth beneath her feet and trying to decide.

It was then that she saw him.

Her first impulse was to run and hide, but surely that wasn’t necessary. Surely he couldn’t see her.

He stood on the skeletal iron catwalk and faced out to sea. She could tell that his hair was long, for when the light rotated to the left it illuminated a dark, windblown tangle. There was something about the way he stood that caught at her. He kept his hands crammed in his pockets and his shoulders hunched as if it were cold.

But it wasn’t cold. Cool, perhaps, but a lovely night.

There was a stillness about him. As if he were carved in stone, as immovable as the tower upon which he stood. It was eerie the way the light passed over him as it swung in one direction, then the other.

The light moved, but he didn’t.

She watched for what seemed like a long time. But she, not the stranger, was the first to move. Fatigued, she returned slowly to the house and crawled back into bed. She barely made it; she was weaker than she thought.

In moments, she was falling asleep again. Falling asleep and, for the first time in too long, unafraid.

It was time to bid the night farewell.

Jesse always savored the endless moments between dark and dawn. The smells of damp earth and evergreen mingled in the air. The cormorants, nesting in the cliffs, released their distant, plaintive calls. It was a gray, nothing period of time when all the world fell still. Night was gone and a new day was coming. But for now he was alone.

That was what he treasured. The silence. The peace.

The new day held no promise. Just the sameness of the day that had gone before and the dull awareness that tomorrow would be no different, either.

This awareness was never more acute to Jesse than in these moments, when the horizon lightened like water spilled in a pool of black ink, and then colors of aching intensity tinged the sky from the east.

Yet today there was a difference, he thought, wrenching open the front door of the house, stepping inside, hurrying to the room off the kitchen. Because of her.

She had shifted position. He could see that immediately as he looked into the room where she slept.

In the gathering light, he observed the way she lay across the bed in comfortable abandonment, relaxed as a child, her sleep untroubled. One of the quilts had fallen in a heap on the floor.

His gaze darted around the room. The bowl and ewer on the washstand had not been disturbed. But the way the covers were twisted up looked suspicious. He bent forward for a closer study.

A small bare foot, so dainty it almost didn’t look real, stuck out from beneath the sheets. A few damp pine needles clung to the sole of her foot.

Jesse straightened so quickly he smacked his head on a low ceiling beam. He clenched his jaw, but a muttered curse escaped, anyway. It was damned eerie to think of this stranger walking around the house. His house. Seeing the things that made up his life. Invading the world he’d carved out for himself.

Looking at him. Judging him.

He tried to brush off the thought. The woman was ill. Why would she have any interest in him? She had probably stumbled around in a daze, perhaps seeking the husband she had lost in the shipwreck.

Yes, that was it. She’d have no interest in a lightkeeper, no reason to pry into his life. As soon as she recovered, she’d leave, rejoin her family.

As well she should.

Jesse lingered a few moments longer. The room lightened with the dawn. He told himself he should leave her be, but still he waited, caught up in a sort of horrified fascination.

Fiona had been so matter-of-fact about the whole situation. Couldn’t she see how extraordinary this was? Couldn’t she see that he had to stop this from happening, stop himself from knowing this woman?

The delicate beauty of the stranger was a blatant taunt. A test. To see if he was strong enough to resist an angel’s face and a body as ripe as the sweetest fruit of the vine.

“Damn,” he whispered to the empty air, “why couldn’t you have the face of a lingcod?”

The odd thing was, he knew it wouldn’t matter. If she’d come wearing a bridle or had three arms, he would feel no different. He would still be held in the thrall of her mystery. Her loveliness only added that extra twist of irony.

Daylight glowed brighter through the slats in the shutters. She sighed in her sleep and turned, her knees coming up and her arm sliding down to make a protective cradle for her belly.

She was five months along, or thereabouts, Fiona had pronounced. The baby had started showing. The mother would be able to feel its movements. Fiona had smiled as she told him this, as if he was supposed to welcome the news.

A long hank of hair fell over the stranger’s face, and she sniffed as it tickled her nose. Jesse stared at the lock of hair. A shaft of newborn sunlight through the window touched it, turning the deep red to a blood-ruby hue. It was the color of dark fire. As the thought crossed his mind, he leaned down and gently lifted the lock away from her face. Its softness, the silky texture of it, were so acute and so unexpected that he almost yelped in surprise.

He stepped back quickly, horrified at himself. He had touched her. She was a stranger. Another man’s wife. Or a widow. It didn’t matter. Jesse Morgan had no right to touch her.

He left the room, closing the door to the merest crack, so he could hear her if she got up again. Then he made his way to his own room, kicked off his boots and collapsed with a rumbling sigh on the bed.

But he didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. Because he felt her presence in his house, the warm, alluring song of a siren’s call. The taunt of a treasure he could not have.

“Good to see you, Mr. Jones,” said the doorman with an obsequious smile.

Granger nodded a curt greeting. The shiny-faced doorman knew full well that Jones was an assumed name, and the man delighted in saying it with a wink and a nudge.

This was not a good day for winking and nudging. It was not a good day at all. He had arrived Monday morning at his San Francisco office only to learn that one of the company ships had failed to arrive in Portland. By Tuesday, company officials were preparing to call in the insurers, for it was likely the four-master had gone down. Wrecked at the Columbia bar. Wrecked like so many others.

He wondered what had happened. The skipper was one of the best, a longtime employee. Had fog hidden the shoals, even from that old salt? Had the lightkeeper been remiss in his duties? Granger certainly knew what a calamity that could cause. He had caused it himself years ago, exacting lethal revenge from his worst enemy—Jesse Kane Morgan. His best friend, his business partner, his rival, the man who had stolen everything from him.

Even now, all these years later, Granger still felt the sting of rejection as the woman he loved had turned him down, turned to Jesse, married Jesse. Emily and Jesse, the golden couple, the toast of Portland and San Francisco alike. The fact that Granger had destroyed it all didn’t dull the sting. Perhaps he hadn’t gone far enough. Perhaps there was still more to do.

He brushed past the doorman and strode across the tiled foyer of the Esperson Building. It was the best residence in San Francisco, and it was costing “Mr. Jones” a fortune.

Ah, but the rewards were sweet. As he climbed the brass-railed staircase, a bouquet of fresh flowers in his hand, he buried his nose in them and inhaled, thinking about the gentle stroke of her hand on his brow, the uncritical way she had of looking at him. She was his shelter from the storm, the place he came to when everyone else was against him. His nagging parents, his disappointing wife, his raging creditors—he left them all behind when he came here.

He’d be giving the place up soon, though. Now that he had what he wanted from the girl, he could move her into more modest digs. When he’d first met her—destitute, close to starving, yet maddeningly attractive all the same—he had needed to woo her. To feed her appetite for feeling safe and protected. He’d set her up in a luxurious apartment at the hallowed Esperson, visiting her whenever he found the time.

He found time often. And soon he would get his reward. A few months ago, she’d announced that she was pregnant. She’d looked at him with such hope in her eyes. “Now we must marry, so the wee babe has its papa’s name,” she’d said.

He shouldn’t have laughed at her, but he couldn’t help it. He did want her to have his baby—that was the whole point. The child would indeed bear his name, as soon as it was born and she surrendered it to him. But it had been a grave misjudgment on his part to tell her the plan. He should have kept it a secret until the very end. He’d underestimated her maternal instinct.

She’d been appalled, terrified, grabbing a hand mirror and preparing to hurl it at him. He’d tried to calm her down, crooning to her as he approached. “Don’t be afraid. I don’t want to have to hurt you…”

And in the weeks that followed, she did calm down, so much so that he began to hope she was coming to accept his point of view. She’d want her child to have all the advantages he could give the heir to his fortune—the best schools, the best doctors, the best society of San Francisco and Portland.

The flowers would please her, perhaps even coax a smile from her. He stood outside the door for a moment to catch his breath from climbing the stairs. The thought of the child seized him without warning, and he felt a yearning so powerful he nearly cried his need aloud. A son, an heir. Someone to bring along in the world, someone who’d watch him, worship him, learn at his knee. Someone to love as he himself had never, ever been loved.

With a twist of the crystal doorknob, he let himself in. His foot always managed to find the one floorboard that creaked, and now it squawked loudly in the silent apartment. “It’s me,” he called. “I’ve brought you something.”

Silence. Perhaps she was sleeping. He’d heard women in her condition slept a lot. But the bed was empty. Made up as neatly as always.

A cold feeling of foreboding slithered over him, though he managed to keep control. Methodically, he went through every inch of the elegant apartment. Not a single thing was missing—not a silver fork nor a painted lamp chimney nor any of the clothes and jewels he’d given her. The only thing missing was the only thing that mattered: the woman.

He told himself to be calm, to wait. She’d gone out shopping or for a breath of air. Yes, that was it. But later, after questioning the doorman and learning that she’d left the week before and hadn’t been seen since, he was forced to admit that she was gone.

With some surprise, he looked down at the bouquet of flowers he’d brought her. He hadn’t even remembered he was carrying it. He’d mangled them beyond recognition, breaking and bruising every flower in the bunch.

Jesse stared at the rough-hewn ceiling beams, listening to the wag of the clock pendulum. Then, after a long time, he pulled his boots back on and went to tend the horses.

On his way to the barn, he encountered Erik Magnusson. Towering at least six and a half feet in height, the youth moved with a giant’s ambling gait, unhurried and untroubled by the press of the world. The wind blew his straight, straw-colored hair across his brow.

“Morning, Captain,” Erik called. Erik always called him by the head lightkeeper’s title. “Did the lady from the sea wake up?”

“No.”

“Father said we’re going to tar the bottoms of the surf runners today.” Erik’s mind always flitted from one subject to the next like a hummingbird going from blossom to blossom. Jesse liked the big lad, but he never quite knew what to say to him.

“That’s fine, Erik,” he said. “It’s good to keep the boats in proper order.”

“You never take the boats out,” Erik said, planting his hands on his hips. “Why do you never take the boats out?”

Because I’m a coward, Jesse thought.

“Why is that, Captain?” Erik persisted.

“The boats are for rescue and should never go past the surf,” Jesse said, then started walking away. “I’m off to the barn.”

He turned the four geldings out to the sloping pasture. Palina’s rooster crowed, the sound insulated by distance and by the light, fine mist that hung in the morning air.

He ambled down the long, switchback trail to the beach. Twenty-four hours ago he had been on this same path, and in his arms he had held an extraordinary and unwanted burden. For years he had been successful in getting people to leave him alone, but the red-haired woman was different. He couldn’t make her go away.

Why was he so reluctant to help her? He had come here to do just that—save victims from the sea, help boats navigate the perilous shoals at the mouth of the Columbia. It was the life he’d carved out for himself. It was his penance.

He negotiated the twisting path and walked across the damp, densely packed sand. His gaze automatically scanned the area, seeking more wreckage from the ship that had brought him the woman. But he saw only the endless expanse of the strand, littered here and there by seaweed or a chunk of driftwood. The morning breeze rustled through the dunes, rattling the reeds like dried bones.

A harsh barking sound came from Sand Island in the middle of the huge estuary. Sea lions. Sometimes they came to the cape, but Jesse shooed them off. Fishermen often shot the seals to keep them from preying on the salmon and steelhead.

As he walked, Jesse filled his lungs with heavy salt air and tried to empty his mind. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her, the fairy-featured woman who had invaded his house, his life. Companionship was the last thing he wanted. No one seemed to understand that. The people of Ilwaco regarded her presence as a great adventure. Palina termed her a gift. Fiona called her a challenge.