The sadness breathes out of me as a sigh. I can see David’s bright eyes shining out from his sun-burnished face. I can feel the softness of his lips against mine, taste the freshly picked wild raspberries that stained our tongues. I sense his hands, coarse but gentle, tracing my hip, my waist, my breasts, as we lie naked on a bed of moss, surrounded by a guard of trees that mottle a ceiling of azure sky.
“It happened late that summer.”
*
When we arrived back at Porphyry, I was surprised to discover that Mother had returned to our dwelling, where she had put coffee on to boil. She was no longer operating the horn; Emily was. The fog still hung above the water, although the rising sun desperately reaching to touch the earth had tinged it orange. Emily was crouched beside the wooden case, cranking the brass handle with precision. Emily, who had never managed to complete a single chore at the light, had remained to work the signal, guiding us back to the point, guiding us back to her. She stood when your grandfather and I approached. Her face was difficult to read; it often was. She looked between the two of us, and I knew that she knew, and I was the one to lower my eyes. I felt as though I had betrayed her. But she walked to me and touched my face. It was as though she were thanking me. I could not imagine what she could be grateful for.
The fog cleared later that day when the sun was high enough to burn away the mist; the wind joined in to chase any lingering filaments across the choppy waves of the Lake. A few weeks later, The Red Fox brought news of the Palisade and her harrowing night drifting in the fog off Isle Royale. The timely actions of the lightkeepers at Porphyry Station were to be commended for saving the ship from grounding after becoming helplessly lost, surprisingly far from the shipping channel. There were whisperings of drink on the bridge, of the first mate falling asleep, but they were only whisperings.
The Red Fox also brought news of Charlie. He was stationed in Great Britain, he wrote, but would be deployed soon. He didn’t say where or when. He sent his love, thanked Mother for the package she sent him at Christmas, and promised to kill plenty of Germans for all of us. I wonder if it ever occurred to him that Mother’s greatest fear lay in one of those Germans claiming another of her sons.
While the war seemed so very far away, it also crept past our lonely island, sleek and gray. At first there were a few corvettes, followed by minesweepers; Middlesex, Rockcliffe, Oshawa. Through the binoculars we kept on the hook in the light tower, I watched them pass, saw their identification numbers painted in large, bold block letters on their hulls. They slipped into the water amid celebrations at the Port Arthur Shipbuilding yard, to be cradled by the Lake and sent out to fight distant battles in foreign seas. I sent wishes across the waves, asking them to carry with them even just a small drop of Superior, clinging to their hulls, to remind Charlie of home, to bring him back to us.
Mother spent more and more time sitting in her chair, her back bent and painful. She sent me to gather the stems of the big-leafed devil’s club from the Indian cemetery, and, carefully avoiding the sharp spines that protected the healing roots, I brought them to her. She peeled the outer bark and mashed the pulpy insides to a paste and had me spread it on her back. She drank tea made from the tender shoots of poplar, and on cold nights I heated up rocks on the woodstove and wrapped them in cotton, tucking them beneath her covers to keep her warm. I urged her to go to town, to see the doctors in Port Arthur, but she stubbornly refused, just as she refused to inform the Department of Transport that her health had declined to a point where she was unable to complete her duties. Instead, she let me take on more of the responsibilities. We were biding our time until Charlie returned, which suited me fine. When he came home, we could stay on the island, Emily and I, and we would be a family again.
And then there was David.
I fooled myself into thinking that Mother didn’t know. It was part of her greater plan, I expect. She said nothing, asked no questions, but noticed our love as it bloomed discreetly, tender and hesitant, like the first buds of spring on the lilac.
At first I refused to allow my feelings the freedom to grow. David was a new, unexpected contemplation that left me confused and conflicted. He was patient with me. We continued the routine of lightkeeping, our stolen kiss hovering unspoken between us while we whitewashed buildings, took delivery of kerosene, repaired the foghorn, and planted the garden. But evenings in our home grew rich again, filled with music and laughter, blooming into a happiness I had not felt since before Pa died.
David was kind and gentle with Emily, and I knew she trusted him, maybe loved him even, like she did Charlie. Like she did Pa. She told him so by slipping paintings beneath his door; it was the only language she had. There were few people Emily seemed truly comfortable around. David understood her. She accepted him. And because of that, it became harder and harder to deny the fluttering of my heart when David smiled at me, or the tingling of my skin when our hands accidentally brushed.
One morning toward the end of summer, I climbed the light tower, rag in hand, to polish the lens. It was early, the sun not yet fully above the horizon, and I took a moment to look out over the Lake, to watch the world waking up. There was a light breeze blowing, and I turned my face toward it and closed my eyes. I didn’t hear him come up, but I felt him. He stood beside me, and I kept my eyes closed, feeling the wind, the chill from the Lake, the warmth of his body close to mine.
“Do you ever think of more?” he whispered quietly, as though speaking aloud would break a spell.
I thought of the island, the only home I had ever known. I thought of the chores of the light, of Mother and Charlie, of the baby Elizabeth buried on Hardscrabble Island. I thought of gardens and chickens and the changing of the seasons. But mostly, I thought of Emily.
“I hadn’t,” I answered. It was the truth.
I could feel the sun now. It was reaching above the horizon, sending fingers of orange warmth to caress my cheeks. I hadn’t thought of more.
I opened my eyes and turned toward him. We lived a lifetime in that moment, sharing our breath, the wind and the Lake and the sun wrapping us together so that there was nothing else, nothing else in the world except the two of us.
“Elizabeth!”
We moved apart as Mother’s voice climbed the stairs and summoned me. The spell was broken, but the magic hovered still as David took the rag from my hand and started to clean the great Fresnel lens of the light.
“Coming,” I answered.