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R EBECCA

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee...

Annabel Lee

ANNABEL’S LIGHTHOUSE SPRING, 1874

SHE’D WANTED THIS MOMENT TO COME —had ached for it, in fact—but with the onslaught of recollection came the assault of pain such recollection caused. They came in waves, forceful and strong. They held Rebecca under the waters of memory and dared her to try to swim to the surface and break free. But breaking free from such reminders of pain was as impossible as saving a doomed ship after it had foundered and slipped below the waves.

Rebecca no longer struggled against her restraints. Instead, she sagged against the wall of the shack, desperate to regain some sort of hope, some semblance of reason to keep fighting— and she couldn’t find any. That was how it had all begun in the first place. When one lost the will to fight, one was left with only defeat. If defeat became the bed in which she was going to lie for the rest of her life, then any risk to escape it was no risk at all. She would merely dodge death for as long as she could until it came and saved her from this agony she’d lived in since childhood.

She would not bring her own babe into such a world. Rebecca knew she would be judged harshly for that were someone savvy enough to read her mind. But a babe had never been a part of the life Rebecca struggled to escape to. She would never submit an innocent into this world of darkness, of selfish entitlement. And it wasn’t Abel’s decision—he didn’t know, couldn’t know—what it meant to grow up in such darkness. To cower in the corners beneath the doom-filled sound of heavy feet thudding against the floor on a mission to find you. Ghosts? What were ghosts in the wake of human hatred?

Maybe she should throw herself at Annabel’s mercy and allow the spirit of her mother to take her once and for all, to rescue her from this evil as any mother should do—as she would do—for her own child.

Maybe death was better than life. This was a riddle too many misunderstood. Kjersti had already gone before. Eternity was supposed to be filled with hope and grace, and wouldn’t that be a better place to dwell?

But the babe! If she ceased to live, the babe would too, and then she would be a killer—like her father was threatening to do with her. But how could she bring a child into this dark and awful place?

Rebecca closed her eyes against the battery of her internal conflict. The shack was growing chilled. She could hear Bear outside the door, grumbling and growling to himself. The smoke from his pipe—a sickeningly sweet scent of tobacco—wafted toward her through the cracks in the wooden door.

It all came down to this.

This shack.

This place Hilliard, her father, believed would be where Rebecca finally confessed, revealing where she’d hidden the papers—papers she now remembered were the numbers—columns of them—and notes—pages of them—that would prove he’d been partaking in fraudulent business practices. Proof that his investors would be horrified to learn. It would ruin Hilliard. It would ruin his investors if they didn’t find out the truth.

And then there was the map. The map of a silver vein? If true, she could see why Hilliard was gambling, fixing numbers and moving funds. He would start to mine a new vein—one that wasn’t going belly-up—and then the investors would never know of the money he’d stolen.

The miners and their families coming to Silvertown, coming to the Porcupine Mountains, deserved better than Hilliard’s schemes of wealth. She had seen the papers. She had seen what they exposed. She had also seen other fraudulent papers, ones she hadn’t bothered to steal. The modified ones that Hilliard exposed to his investors, promising a controlled wealth of silver in an area where silver would go dry in months.

The truth was that there was no wealth to be had unless her father was able to strike it big with a new vein. Otherwise, there were only investments to be lost—or siphoned into other accounts her father had. Filtered away in small amounts, but enough to fund the new mine, the new vein. Unless Rebecca exposed him, revealing the fraud and hiding the map which led to the silver vein.

Now, Rebecca stared at her feet, her toes growing numb from the bindings around her ankles. She blinked away tears as Abel threatened to invade her fortitude and what small determination she had left.

Abel .

Dear Abel.

He had been an unexpected promise amid the brutality of the world in which Rebecca lived. It wasn’t until last year that she had seen him during the trip she’d made to Silvertown with Hilliard. Abel and his mother, Niina, and his sister, sweet Kjersti.

Rebecca couldn’t stop the tears that trailed down her cheeks at the memories of Kjersti. It was she who had befriended Rebecca. It was Kjersti who had been the first glimmer of hope. It was Kjersti who had convinced Abel to rescue Rebecca with their flimsy marriage.

“It will break your bonds to your father when you become Abel’s wife!” Kjersti had promised.

An elopement with a virtual stranger whose propensity for empathy and protection was juxtaposed with her father’s intoxication with coldness and abuse, which had proven only to compound the problem.

Hilliard had been furious. His pride had taken a major blow. Rebecca was no longer a Hilliard; she was Rebecca Koski now. And that loss of control incensed Hillard.

The lighthouse became their refuge.

The hospitality of Edgar had become their burgeoning hope.

The days of respite away from her father had opened Rebecca’s heart to trust again.

Abel’s tenderness ... his gentleness...

She remembered that night. The first time had been needful, surprising, a consummation of their marriage that was both meaningful and filled with unknowns. Expectations. Feelings. Unspoken words. But the second time?

It was after she had nursed the feverish Kjersti for several days, agonizing that her dearest friend was slipping away from her.

“Never be afraid of him,” Kjersti had urged Rebecca that night. “He will take care of you. For me. Abel will take care of you.”

And he had. Rebecca had slipped from Kjersti’s room as her friend slept. She had sagged against the wall, fighting back tears of desperation. Hope was always stolen by the anger of this life. Her father, Kjersti’s inevitable death, and her comforting but mostly platonic marriage to a man who—

Abel had exited his room at that moment.

He had seen her pain.

He had held her.

His fingers had traced her cheek.

The tenderness—it was the tenderness that had engaged Rebecca that night. Perhaps it was her presence of comfort that had engaged Abel. The strangeness of their situation, the understanding of necessity that had settled between them, the undeniable need for intimacy in crushing circumstances—perhaps it was those that had brought Abel and Rebecca together.

Rebecca’s eyes flew open as Bear punched open the shack’s door, busting into the reminder of what love might have been had she not crossed her father in such a detrimental and final act.

Abel .

In his way, Rebecca knew he had grown to love her. In her way, if she could only come to know what love was, then maybe ... no...

Rebecca lifted her chin in preparation for Bear and his inevitable bruising fists.

No .

She did love Abel. In her way. It was the kind of love that ached at what could have been. The kind of love that knew their babe should not be made to suffer as she had suffered all these years. It was the kind of love that knew her sacrifice would set them all free.

And maybe she didn’t understand it properly.

Maybe she was misguided.

But it was all Rebecca knew.

Love meant giving oneself for another. Though no one had ever done that for her, she would do it for them.