Page 85 of These Summer Storms

“Same,” Sila said, perching gingerly against the opening in the wall where the enormous bell stood silent. “I prefer to watch.”

“What else can I do, Dad?” Oliver asked.

“What else can I do, Dad,” Saoirse singsonged.

“Shut up, Saoirse!”

“You shut up.”

“Both of you shut up,” Sam said, setting the gear back onto the machine and standing to consider his next step.

Sensing the limits of her father’s patience, Saoirse came forward and joined him. She reached out and touched the enormous metal drum, wrinkling her nose at the grime there. “When was the last time anyone cleaned this?”

“When was the last time anyoneusedthis?” Sila asked.

“It gets used,” he said, frustrated and defensive.

“Haveyouever used this?” Oliver asked.

Sam nodded. “This was one of your grandfather’s favorite things about the island.” Seizing the moment, he pointed out the important parts of the machine—the gear, the drum, the cable attached to a heavy weight, the crank, the hundred-year-old hammer that would strike the enormous bell in fifteen-second increments when they were done. “If we’re here and there’s a storm, we’ll wind it, and it will run for hours.”

“Not annoying at all!” Sila said.

Miraculously, the kids ignored her.

“Dad?” Saoirse asked, earnestly, for the first time in what seemed like forever (she was very good at being fourteen). “No offense, but why do you know all this?”

A memory flashed—one he hadn’t thought of in ages. It must have been twenty years earlier—god, closer to twenty-five. He and Greta had been teenagers, Alice only eight or nine, and Emily so tiny it was hard to imagine his parents had let them take her places unsupervised.

“Once, we were on the island for your grandfather’s birthday,” he said. “And your Aunt Greta had this idea…” He reseated the gear on the machine. “None of us had bought Dad—Franklin—Grandpa—a gift.”

“Relatable,” Saoirse quipped.

“Aunt Greta thought it would be fun if we got this thing working. It had been broken for as long as any of us could remember, but Charlie knew a guy on the mainland who serviced lighthouses, and so…”

The memory came back bright and clear. That weathered old manwith his white hair and his rheumy eyes explaining the machine. The Storm kids listening like it mattered.

Sam shrugged. “He came and taught us.” Finishing his work on the gear, he turned his attention to the machine itself, where the drum required a new cable. “How to clean it, how to attach the cable here”—he showed them—“how to wind it carefully.” He turned the crank, watched as the rope coiled in even lines.

“Your Aunt Emily was so little, the drum was too heavy for her to even wind.”

“Can I?” Oliver asked, and Sam stepped back to let him. Saoirse set her fingertips to the winding cable, and Sam watched, feeling an immense satisfaction—one he hadn’t experienced since…

He couldn’t remember.

“This is cool, Dad,” Saoirse said. The greatest of compliments.

Something burst in his chest. Embarrassing. Something like pride.

He kept it secret. Instead, he grinned at his daughter. “I’m glad you like it.”

“It’s cool that you did this when you were a kid, too.” Something about the words, so simple, so obvious, settled in him.

Whatever happened, he had this.He had them.

The roar of a helicopter distracted him from the thought, and he pushed it aside as they all looked out the window, toward the south, where the Bay lay gleaming into the Atlantic, the sky dotted with two massive White Hawk helicopters.

“Who is that?” Sila asked, coming off the windowsill, interested in something, finally.