I slipped from the bed, pushing past the shadows that hung in the room and flitted around my heart. I knew what they had done. I knew it before I had fully swept the cobwebs of sleep from my mind, but I could not bring myself to embrace it. It was unthinkable. It was beyond cruel. I could not fathom Charlie, even the Charlie who had dragged himself home from the war, his heart and mind wounded deeper than his flesh ever was, that he could be capable of doing something so despicable. And Mother, who had suckled us at her breast, how could she conspire to this end?
I saw her then. Sitting in the chair. Mother was awake, watching me as I knelt on the rough wooden floor where our baby—where Anna—had been, my hands futilely searching, lifting the quilt, moving the basins I had used to wash Emily, opening the curtain that hung around the other bed, the bed she and Pa had shared. She was looking at me, her eyes sad, pitying, but her chin firm, her lips set in a tight line. And then I remembered. I remembered a late-summer night, the year that Charlie went to school in town, when the light blinked about the room and my parents’ voices floated unbidden to me: We have damned them both. Emily will never be right.
I can see now. Emily mourned her twin. She mourned Elizabeth, buried beneath a pile of lichen-clad stones. She was incomplete, one foot in the land of the dead. A spirit in the world of the living. And me, a poor substitute, a sacrificial offering from the Lake. All those years. How could I not have seen it? The times that Emily had wandered away, roaming the island, prone to all its dangers of cliffs and water and wild creatures. And men. Boys.
You should have let her die.
Mother would never have accepted Emily’s child.
“What have you done with her?” I tried to whisper, but the anger in me boiled over and the words were rough, catching in my throat and choking me. Emily stirred, her hand moving. Searching.
“She will be better off.” Mother’s voice was flat, dismissive.
“Better off without her mother?”
Mother grunted. “Her mother is not capable. She cannot care for herself, let alone a child.”
“She is mine just as much as she is Emily’s, as much as Emily and I are one. How could you take her from me?”
She stood, slowly, painfully.
“She is not your child.”
She turned her back to me and moved toward the stairs, climbing them deliberately, methodically. It was done. She had decided it was time to tend to the light, for the few short hours until the sun rose, to resume her dutiful nature, to be vigilant, responsible. Her footsteps shuffled.
I had not moved. I was still crouched on the floor, beside the bed. Her tread thumped, climbing higher and higher. Up to the light.
“You’re wrong.” I did not whisper this time. “She is ours, mine and Emily’s. You have no right.” Emily was awake. She sat on the bed, her eyes searching, seeing me on the floor and Mother climbing the stairs, hearing the silence of the still light, feeling the muted warmth from the glowing embers in the stove. And knowing that Anna was gone. She pulled her knees up to her chest and began to rock.
Mother continued to climb. “Where is she?” I was screaming now, my voice cutting through the dawn, echoing off the cliffs, drifting across the Lake. Still she climbed.
I rushed the stairs, taking them two at a time. Mother’s shuffling gait was quicker than I realized. She was already at the top when I reached her. She was priming the light; the fuel was open, and she poured some into the reservoir. Her back was to me. She set the can on the floor and took the box of matches from the shelf.
*
I pause in my speaking. I don’t even know if the girl is still in the room. She is silent. Listening? I have never given these words life before; speaking them makes them real, and I am afraid to. I have let them lie, hidden in the dark recesses of my mind, buried, dusty, and silent—I cannot deny them if I give them shape and form and sound. I have told no one.
I have thought of that day often. It has haunted my dreams. I have played the scene over and over again in my mind, lived it in the darkness of a thousand nights. I remember. But I am not sure that I remember the truth. It is like a dream from which you wake too soon, a nightmare that leaves you sweating and your heart racing. And then, lying in the darkness, coaxing sleep, you craft your dream until it has an ending that is satisfying, one that does not haunt you, and only then can you return to slumber peacefully and allow the remnants to drift away, like the morning mists. Have I created a truth? One I can live with? Have I relived the moment so many times that my fiction is now my truth—the truth that I want it to be? I have to be honest. I do not know. I do not know what is truth. I do not know who lit the match. I do not know how the fuel spilled. I do not know whether I pushed her, or she pushed me. I do not know.
And so I continue.
*
She opened the box and took out a match and turned toward me. I was shaking from head to foot. My body quivered, and my mouth was so dry, it was difficult to form words.
“Where is she?”
I could hear Emily below. My beautiful silent Emily was making the strangest noises as she stumbled about the room, and I could see her movements as easily as if they were before my eyes, simply from the sounds that echoed up the stairwell; the chairs clattering across the wooden floor, Pa’s books tumbling off the shelves, dishes breaking, pots rattling. She was searching, just as I had.
“Where is she?”
I moved closer, taking hold of Mother’s arm. She pulled away from me, turned toward the light, and ran the striker head of the match across the coarse paper on the side of the box. I watched the sparks trail along behind, sputtering and flickering until the match caught, welling with yellow light in a bright flash, then settling to a steady glow. Mother was intent on the mantle, her back to me so that I could not see her face. She was dismissing me. It was done. We were finished. We would see to our duties. Charlie would become the lightkeeper, shining the great beacon out over Lake Superior, marking the dangers, lighting the path for all the ships that wandered the waves, just as we had done for a thousand and a thousand and a thousand nights. We would bury our dead and whitewash the buildings and polish the great glass lens. We would fish and hunt and plant potatoes in the garden. And Emily would wander, and I would find her. I would always find her. She needed me.
And I needed Anna. It was not over. I was not done. I would not be dismissed. I grabbed Mother again, grabbed her, and pulled her to face me. I could hear Emily climbing, now. I could hear her on each stair, her tread steady.
“Where is our daughter?” My voice shook.
“She is not your daughter.” Mother had the match in her hand. It glowed, reflected in her eyes, and I held her gaze, strong, defiant. “She doesn’t even share your blood.”
The words struck me. And I knew. I knew it was true. Somehow, I had known all along. And then the match fell. It bounced once, spinning on the edge of the alcohol can, twisting, still burning, landing inside the tin, floating, resting on the fuel. I looked at it for an eternity. Emily reached the top of the stairs. She was beside me. Emily saw the match fall. She saw it dancing on the rim of the tin. She saw it hover.