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S HEA

That the wind came out of the cloud by night, chilling and killing my Annabel Lee...

Annabel Lee

ANNABEL’S LIGHTHOUSE PRESENT DAY

SHEA HAD DODGED PETE the morning following their interlude with August Fronell while he was out combing the shore for fossils. He’d been reading a book about fossils in Lake Superior last night before she’d gone to bed, and he’d barely looked up when she said good-night. The day together had been a mixture of uninterpretable emotions. One moment she was irritated he was there, and the next moment Shea had little glimpses back into the early days of their marriage when they’d done things together, when they’d worked well together.

August Fronell was an example of that. Shea couldn’t help but be impressed at the way Pete had directed the conversation and won the elderly man’s friendship. That Fronell’s mind was sharp, was clear, and he hadn’t been manipulated by Pete, but genuinely won over. The only piece of the conversation that had bothered her was when they’d bidden Fronell a thank-you and goodbye, and Pete had promised to pay him a visit in the future for a game of chess.

Chess? The future?

Pete should be getting ready to go home now, despite his husbandly ambitions to protect her from ghosts and snooping tourists.

Shea bounced on the seat of Holt’s truck as it hit a pothole. Yes, Pete should go home. Although she noticed Holt was more standoffish today. Friendly, but not nearly in the warm way he had been when she’d first arrived at the lighthouse. Yet he’d been willing to pick her up this morning and take her to Ontonagon to get her car. The windshield was repaired, the message on her voicemail had stated this morning. It was a stroke of luck Holt was on the lighthouse grounds working on maintenance issues, and so Shea had left a note for Pete—so he knew where she was and wouldn’t interrupt her by trying to track her down—and garnered Holt’s assistance.

“I can drop you off at the glass repair shop first.” Holt kept his attention on the road ahead, bordered by wilderness. The trees whizzed by on either side, with Lake Superior being an occasional blue glimpse between thick trunks and forest growth.

“Thanks.” Shea smiled but suddenly felt awkward. Silence drifted between them, and then she ventured, “Do you know where I could even begin to look for Captain Gene?” He seemed to be the universal answer for who the best person was to talk to about the history of Annabel and the lighthouse.

Holt gave her a sideways glance. “Not a clue. Well, that’s not entirely true. They say he has a cabin somewhere in the Porcupine Mountains State Park.”

“You can live on state park land?” she asked.

Holt’s chuckle eased some of the tension. “Nope. You can’t. Which is why they say Captain Gene has a cabin there, but no one has ever found it.”

“Where else might he live?” Shea’s question followed the swift deduction that, aside from Ontonagon and Silvertown—with Silvertown being a pit stop on the way through to the Porkies—there wasn’t much else for options in the northern wilderness area.

“I personally believe he’s a drifter.” Holt checked his speedometer and let off the gas a bit. “I think he just roams and lives off the land, and no one really questions it. Even if he strays into state land, Captain Gene is just, well, a fixture of the area. Kind of like Pressie, you know? Rarely seen, debated existence, legendary intrigue and local fame.”

“So local enigma spots local lake monster and ... huh.” Shea cut off her line of reasoning.

“What?” Holt pressed.

“Well.” Shea thumbed the screen on her phone. No signal. “I’m just thinking, even if Captain Gene had a lot to tell me, how could any of it be substantiated?”

Holt’s chuckle helped Shea relax despite her skepticism about Captain Gene. “Shea, if you’re writing a historical record, then Captain Gene won’t be in the bibliography of reliable resources. But then neither would Edna, or August Fronell, or really any veteran of the area. This place is steeped in lore and legend. It was that way long before the Europeans set foot here. So if you’re wanting verifiable historical facts?” Holt clucked his tongue. “Good luck with that.”

“I’ve been deducing that very thing.” Shea opened the notes app on her phone and typed in a few key words: conspiracy , legend , theory . She’d need to contact Pat, her editor, and reassure herself that he’d be okay with the book taking a more legends-and-lore feel rather than a historical recounting like her others. “Why is Captain Gene considered the authority on all things Annabel’s Lighthouse anyway? No one’s been able to clear that up for me.”

Holt slowed as a white-tailed doe pranced across the highway. He watched carefully for any more, but none followed. Speeding up, he answered, “Captain Gene worked on the lake as far back as the mid-fifties. He has roots here that run deep. He’s fifth generation to the region.”

“How old is he?”

“Probably in his nineties.”

“And he lives off the land?” Shea’s disbelief carried through the cab of the truck.

“He’s a tough old geezer who prefers his own company. Heck, he could be dead for all we know. No one’s seen him since last Christmas.”

“That’s what Marnie said.” Shea sagged back against the seat and blew out a sigh. “I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle trying to find him.”

“You probably are,” Holt agreed. “To be honest, it’s better if you don’t worry about the other angles to the lighthouse’s past. Like Jonathan and this Rebecca person. Just focus on Annabel. There’s enough there to write about, isn’t there?”

“Is there?” Shea asked doubtfully, glancing at her phone again. Still no signal, and the only reason she was curious was that she expected Pete to text her. That was what a guilty conscience did to a person—it made them look over their shoulder. But all she’d done was ask to Holt for a ride. Nothing more. She gathered her wits and continued, “I have a very basic ghost story. I don’t know that anything I’ve learned about Annabel will be enough for an entire book.”

Shea felt defeated. Annabel’s ghost was an interesting story. The fact she’d been married was a good start, but hardly an entire chapter’s worth of material. And since she’d died in 1852, the records were sketchy and slim. “I probably should’ve gone to the Pacific Northwest like my editor suggested.”

It also would have been far enough away for Pete not to follow. And honestly, far enough away that Holt would never have entered the picture.

Shea felt grimy. Inside. Nothing here was working in her favor, and now? Now she was beginning to not like even herself. Her self-confidence was waning, and that familiar roiling in her stomach that she’d been trying to get away from by coming here to write and engage in self-care was returning.

She wanted to blame Annabel and the lack of historical documentation. She wanted to blame Holt for being so kind and considerate and stupidly good-looking.

She really wanted to blame Pete for disrupting everything.

But mostly she blamed herself for ever letting things get so bad. No, not bad. More like stagnant . Like pond water covered with green slime because there was no freshwater flowing in. And stagnancy stunk. Literally. She’d smelled dying ponds before.

As the woods finally cleared, Lake Superior broke into view. It stole Shea’s attention and her breath for a moment.

Like the lake, freshwater came with its own unpredictable currents. It was untamed. It was dangerous. It was cold and unforgiving, yet it was gentle and beautiful at the same time. Avoiding the stagnancy wouldn’t result in a vibrant life; that required flooding it with freshwater.

Which could only mean one thing really.

A storm was coming, and Shea was going to need a lighthouse to show her the way out of it.

Shea’s throat hurt from asking so many questions. She sat in the driver’s seat of her newly repaired car and ran a mental inventory of the places she’d visited to inquire as to the whereabouts of Captain Gene. Part of her wondered if he even existed or if he was just a convenient way for the locals to send wannabe mystery-solvers like her on a wild goose chase.

She’d been to the diner and had coffee with Marnie. The dear soul had given her a few more options to check into. The supermarket manager’s mother’s cousin had worked with Captain Gene back in ’84. Maybe they’d have an idea where the old man was. Then there was the privately owned and run pawnshop with the retired shipman who apparently had been pals with Captain Gene. But for the most part, the town seemed to be tight-lipped, as if Captain Gene were a secret and they were protecting him. Or maybe he was protecting them somehow. The library kept archives she could peruse on microfiche if she wanted. She could probably dig up records on Gene while researching the history of Ontonagon and Silvertown.

Shea preferred to interview people yet living if possible before desperation drove her to a library and the migraine-inducing time spent with old newspapers. So she’d followed Marnie’s lead and visited the supermarket manager whose distant cousin now lived in Nevada somewhere; they’d since lost touch with each other. The pawnshop shipman wasn’t much help either. He’d been more interested in selling her something than answering questions. One lead he’d given had led her back to the retirement community to chat with another resident, who pretty much repeated word for word August Fronell’s advice: “Leave Captain Gene alone.”

Now, hungry and discouraged, Shea noticed Pete’s text had finally come through once her phone connected to the Wi-Fi at the retirement home. She sat in the parking lot and checked the message.

You alive?

Hesitating, Shea considered not answering, but then a pang of guilt shot through her. It was Pete. He was there for her. She owed him an answer at least.

I’m fine. Just got my car and am doing some research.

There. That was an acceptable response, right?

She shrugged it off and started the car, veering back onto the road from the retirement home. What if the ninety-something old man really was dead? What if Captain Gene had wandered into the woods and had frozen to death during the brutal Upper Peninsula winter? No, it didn’t make sense that anyone in the twenty-first century would be living off the land in an environment that wasn’t conducive to survival. The U.P. could average sixteen feet of snow during the winter months. How was a ninety-year-old man going to hole up and live in those conditions? If he had a cabin, it would’ve been found by someone by now, and there was no way he’d be in any condition to disappear so deep into the sixty thousand or so acres of the Porkies that no one would see him.

No. Shea concluded that Captain Gene had to be a well-kept secret. Someone in Ontonagon knew where he was. Someone in Silvertown knew. Someone somewhere was making sure the old man had food and water and a place to stay warm. There was no way anyone could convince her that Captain Gene was anything less than a legend that would carry on in these parts ad infinitum. But there was also no way he was anything more than an old man staring down death somewhere safe while his body continued its journey toward the grave.

She didn’t mean to be harsh, but realistically it was ludicrous to fall for the tales that claimed Captain Gene was still out there, a wanderer. The man was simply too old.

Her phone rang via her car’s Bluetooth and startled Shea as she drove out of Ontonagon. She tapped the answer button on the steering wheel. “Hello?”

“Shea?” It was Holt.

“Yep, what’s up?”

“You need to get back to the lighthouse. Now.” The urgency in Holt’s voice stiffened her spine and brought Shea into full alert.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Pete. He fell.”

“Is he okay?” Shea knew he probably wasn’t if Holt was calling her. A broken ankle? Leg?

“Shea, he fell from the lighthouse.”

Her foot pressed harder on the gas pedal. She gripped the steering wheel tighter. “What? Where?” She didn’t understand.

“He fell from the gallery—from the lighthouse balcony.”

“Oh no...” Shea breathed, her throat closing in instant panic.

“Drive careful, Shea, but get here ASAP. I called the EMTs, but ... I think it’s bad.”