I saw the flash of flames from below. I saw Mother, a silhouette at the top of the stairs, as I tumbled backward, and then I saw no more.
The flames quickly consumed the dry fir boards that formed the walls of the light tower. They found their way into the rafters, where decades of Pa’s newspapers were tucked away, and hungrily devoured those. They burst through the windows and licked at the lilac bushes Pa had planted years ago, before leaping across to continue feeding on the building that housed the fog station. Only the assistant keeper’s house was spared the flames’ fury.
I remember small, disconnected pieces as I drifted in and out, Emily’s face over mine. The roar of the fire and the snapping of the balsam saplings that stood like torches between the rocks. Charlie shouting. The sail of Sweet Pea above me, white against the purple-blue sky. The acrid smell of smoke clinging to me, to Emily. In the distance, across the Lake, the lighthouse itself, in its entirety, a beacon, flaming orange in the misty haze of the encroaching dawn. That was the last time I saw Porphyry.
*
“I spent months in the hospital, the pain from the burns on my back and chest so intense I longed for death. They told me I cried out, from the depths of morphine-induced sleep, calling for Emily. I knew, deep in the core of my being I knew, that we did not share the same blood, that we were not twins. But that did not change the fact that Emily and I were very much, in every way that mattered, sisters. And so I lived. I lived for Emily.” I close my eyes, my useless eyes that still cannot help but see the memories that haunt me. “Charlie had her institutionalized. They put her in the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital, locked her away.” I pause. “They blamed her for the fire. They blamed her for Mother’s death.” My voice is barely a whisper. “I never told them otherwise.”
She says nothing, the girl. She does not condemn nor console.
“By the time I was well enough to leave the hospital, Charlie was gone. It was another year before I wrote to Alfred and Millie and then managed to get Emily released. By then, I could find nothing about Anna—no one could tell me what had happened to her.”
55
Morgan
We sit in silence for a moment, listening to Emily’s labored breathing. I can tell it has taken a lot for Elizabeth to share that part of her story. But the lightkeeper had more to say. His story isn’t finished. She thinks it is, but it isn’t; it’s what comes next that I’ve been waiting to tell her.
“There’s something else,” I say. “There’s more . . .”
Just as I’m about to begin reading again, Emily stirs, and the words of Andrew Livingstone are silenced. Those haunting gray eyes open, and while the hand connecting her to Elizabeth remains, her gaze finds me, holds me, and I can’t speak any more, not even if I wanted to. Her thin pale fingers seek out my hand. Her eyes grow heavy, and she drifts off to sleep again, one hand in her sister’s and one in mine.
I don’t read any more.
*
The storm rages outside, just beyond the window, beyond the wall, but so far, far away. We sit there, the three of us, joined by our hands. The journal lies, silenced, in my lap.
Emily takes her last breath sometime after midnight. It’s so peaceful, neither Elizabeth or I notice when it happens.
*
We sit for a long time in Emily’s room after she dies. Neither of us wants to take the next step, to get up, move on, leave. Elizabeth tells me about Emily’s dementia, that for months, years even, she had been slipping away until there were very few days where she even recognized Elizabeth. As tears run down her wrinkled cheeks, she says it feels like she had lost her a long time ago, but it was still hard to say good-bye.
I sleep in the chair in Elizabeth’s room, after the nurses come and cover Emily’s face and help Elizabeth to bed. I remember to call Laurie to tell her I’m not going to be home, that I’m going to stay with Miss Livingstone. It sounds lame, like I’m just making up some bullshit excuse to stay out and party. But I’ve never called before—with or without an excuse—so I think she believes me. She says she’s glad I called and to know I’m safe. And she says she’ll leave the front door unlocked, just in case.
Marty comes in a few times during the night to check on us. I don’t see or hear him, but he covers me with the afghan. By morning, the storm has quieted down. I sit in Elizabeth’s room and sip tea.
“In some way,” she says, “I have always known. But I refused to be haunted by a child’s grave, by my mother’s dying words—to spend a lifetime wondering, who am I?” She places her teacup down beside the pile of journals. They’re all there except for the one I have; the one with the truth. “It has only been since they found Wind Dancer, since Pa’s words reached from the grave, that the mystery was brought to simmer at the surface and make me wonder again. But it is irrelevant, isn’t it? I know who I am. I’ve known all along.” She picks up the rattle that sits on the top of the books, and her hand trembles slightly, so the rattle makes a soft sound. “I am the life I lived. I am Elizabeth.”
Emily knew. Somehow she knew. And in her way, she asked me not to tell.
Elizabeth hands me the rattle, and I turn it over to read the name.
Anna. Daughter of Robert Larkin of Larkin and Sons Shipping. She was aboard the Kelowna when it went down near Porphyry Island. Her name was spoken to her, sung to her. It was part of her. And she remembered.
“You keep it,” Elizabeth said. “It means nothing to me; I have no memory of it.”
Elizabeth wouldn’t. It was never hers.
*
It’s been four days now since I found Emily wandering in the storm, since the night she died. I’m down at the waterfront, standing on the rocks at the end of Pier 3. The blizzard only lasted a day, and since then, the sun has come out and warmed things up enough that all that’s left of the snow is a slushy mess. But it’s still cold. Too fucking cold to be standing outside by the Lake. But I’m here anyway.
Marty drove me home, after the streets had been plowed and cars could push their way out from underneath the mounds of snow that buried them. That’s when I realized I no longer had my violin.
When I stopped by Boreal Retirement Home the next day, Marty gave it to me. He’d called the bus depot and they tracked it down. He drove there and picked it up. I’m grateful to have it back—the violin. But it’s the music that speaks to me most, and I almost lost that a long time ago. I won’t lose it again. It’s part of me.