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S HEA

And so, all the nighttide, I lay down by the side...

Annabel Lee

ANNABEL’S LIGHTHOUSE PRESENT DAY

IT WAS A LITERAL STARE-DOWN. Shea and Captain Gene refused to look away from each other, and it was only when the sound of feet on the metal stairs of the lighthouse alerted them that they shifted to see Pete poke his head into the room.

“What’d I miss?” Pete appeared to have no sense of danger, but the quick assessment he gave Shea announced to her he was far more aware than he portrayed. He shifted his attention to Holt. “You’re back.”

Holt had been silent to this point, and now he seemed to collect himself. He took a step toward Captain Gene, whose arm was still stretched in Holt’s direction as if to keep him at bay, stiffening his arm even more.

“Don’t say nothing.” It was a command that Captain Gene shot at Holt, and it was made with a familiar, patriarchal dominance that was easily recognizable.

“Well, somebody had better,” Shea stated.

Pete’s form blocked the way to the lighthouse.

Captain Gene lowered his arm a few inches.

Holt hefted a breath that could only be compared to a tightly wound sigh of anticipation.

Shea wouldn’t have been surprised if at this moment the ghost of Annabel had swept through the room and cut through the thick tension that was collecting like a pile of washed-up driftwood.

“Grandfather, I presume?” Shea offered the only explanation she could think of to qualify the familial similarity between Holt and Captain Gene.

“You could say that.” Holt grimaced but kept his attention focused on his grandfather.

“Penny’s your mom ?” Shea attempted to connect the dots in this messed-up version of a haunted lighthouse. The mother and son had never once let on or even acted that familiar with each other!

“Yes,” Holt snapped.

Captain Gene’s balance seemed to give out for a moment, and Pete shot out an arm, wincing against the pain from his injured ribs as he half caught the old man.

“Sit down,” Pete stated.

Captain Gene took the opportunity to sink onto the bed that Shea had slept on since she’d arrived at the lighthouse.

The convoluted state of the night, the facts, the story, and even the history of this place were a jumbled mess. The sense of danger had dissipated. Shea attempted to gain full control of the moment, though Pete’s quick look told her she should probably still proceed with caution.

“I’m so confused.” Shea directed her statement to Captain Gene, whose dark look was his only answer. “Holt?” She turned to her host with expectation.

Holt shook his head, sealing his mouth in a tight line of silence.

“What does it matter if we find out?” Shea laughed in disbelief. “Is this part of the rental fee?” she ventured, not fighting the sarcasm in her voice. “Rent a lighthouse, live out a ghost story, and enter a world of local lore and mystery?” She waited for a moment. “Because I’m sort of tired of it. And it’s costing us quite a bit of sleep and physical safety.”

A look at Pete summarized what she meant. Pete met her eyes, and there was a strange glint in his. What was that about now? Warning? Caution? He rarely tried to put her in her place, so the look was unfamiliar, yet it bit at Shea’s inner concern. She frowned.

“Let me take him home.” Holt’s request stilled the room. “I’ll get the old man out of your hair. I’ll refund your money. You can leave in the morning, and we’ll all agree to just call it over with.”

Shea opened her mouth to reply but was held back by Pete’s expression of caution.

“Good idea.” Pete’s insertion was unwelcome, and Shea sucked in a breath to protest. Pete lifted his hand, and the motion silenced her more from surprise than obedience. “Get him out of here.”

Holt stepped toward his grandfather, but Captain Gene scowled. “No, no, young man—stay away.”

“It’s me. Holt.” Holt stated.

Captain Gene’s face furrowed in confusion.

Pete reached out and touched Shea’s arm. “I think he has—”

“Wait,” Shea interrupted, before Pete’s words fully registered. “Do you know where the silver map is? The one that’s been supposedly hidden for over a century?”

Captain Gene’s eyes darted to hers.

Shea drew in a breath. “You do !”

Holt growled under his breath and stalked to Captain Gene’s side, reaching down and hoisting him from the bed. Captain Gene wrangled his arm from Holt’s grip. “Let me go!”

“Yeah. Let me help.” Pete stepped farther into the room to assist Holt with Captain Gene’s removal from the lighthouse.

“No!” Shea held up a hand toward Pete. “I want to know where this map is. If Captain Gene knows ... is that why you’ve stayed under the radar all these years? To keep it hidden? Is it really that big of a treasure map?”

“Shea.” Pete’s voice held warning.

She glanced at him, then at Holt. There was a tension in the air that warned Shea. Warned her that she was consumed—by the story, the missing map, by everything but the people in front of her.

“Let’s get the captain home,” Pete said to Holt.

“Yeah.” Holt led Captain Gene from the room.

Pete moved past her, following the two men from the lighthouse. She followed on his heels.

“Pete!” she called, trying to get his attention.

But he waved her off, intent on making sure Holt and Captain Gene were taken care of.

“Pete, I still have questions. And what if you can’t trust them?”

Pete’s response was swift. “Then trust me, Shea.”

Trust you?

The words penetrated her with a swiftness Shea was not prepared for. Yet his statement was more of a request than a command. It was a need for Shea not only to back down but to show Pete the respect due him as a fellow human being who might just know more than she did in this situation.

Trust Pete?

That required less of her and more of him.

That required a level of respect she’d stolen from Pete long ago when she all but wrote him off, as she grew weary of hoping and wishing and waiting to be cherished. And was that so bad? To want to be cherished? To want to be the center of someone’s affection?

No. No, it wasn’t.

Shea stared after the retreating backs of the three men. One hunched with age, the other with his back so ramrod straight it boasted of hurt and stubborn willfulness, and the third managing through physical pain but steady and straightforward. You got what you saw when you met Pete Radclyffe. There was no charm, no pretense, no romance, no butterflies. It was just Pete.

Her Pete.

The steady, mundane, always-there Pete who got things done and let her be her without argument.

So now he had asked her to trust him. Just trust him.

Like someone pulling scabs from her wounded heart, Shea stilled, not following the men any farther.

She could trust Pete, she just never wanted to. Because that meant she also accepted Pete as he was, and she’d always wanted more. And yet, in this moment, Shea realized she was catching a small glimpse of a long-existent side of Pete.

Sometimes steady was comforting.

Sometimes mundane was reliable.

Sometimes always-there was the most romantic thing anyone could ever be for someone.

The men disappeared outside and into the night, Pete following to make sure Captain Gene was situated in his car and Holt with him. It felt so anticlimactic to Shea. The long-awaited encounter with the captain had resulted in no real answers, just more questions. And Holt wanted them to leave? She couldn’t just leave . But logic told her she could, and she should. There was enough done in the name of research for her book that her editor would work with her, and they’d end up with an acceptable manuscript. In fact, not having all the answers to the mystique around Annabel’s Lighthouse would probably make the book more appealing to readers in the long run.

But to leave meant to close the book on everything else. On Edna’s tales of Annabel’s guardian, of Captain Gene’s vanishing acts and his now sudden appearance for no apparent purpose, and of Holt’s revealing relation to the old man?

Then there was Annabel. The story of Annabel. Of Rebecca. Of the silver ore map that, if one broke it down to bare bones, had to be the impetus for it all somehow. Find the map Rebecca stole a century ago, and it would all make sense. A veritable treasure map of the U.P. It would still have to go through the courts to determine ownership, wouldn’t it? But the lure of it, the potential of a massive silver vein, in the present economy...

Shea stilled as the quietness in the lighthouse pervaded her thoughts. It was very still now with the absence of the men. And Pete. Pete hadn’t returned yet. She moved to the window that looked out to where Captain Gene had parked his vehicle. It was gone. She searched the darkness looking for Pete.

Frowning, Shea hurried to the door and opened it. The lake greeted her, its waters rolling onto shore with an even cadence. The moon had dipped behind clouds, and aside from the light emanating from behind Shea, the world outside the lighthouse was pitch-black.

“Pete?” she called, taking a step outside the door. “Pete?”

Only the waves responded. Shea made her way around the corner of the lighthouse. “Pete?” she called again, this time louder. She reassured herself that Captain Gene and Holt had taken their leave. There had been no sounds of a struggle, so Shea couldn’t imagine that Holt had suddenly turned against Pete and abducted him.

Annoyed at her imagination getting completely out of hand, Shea pivoted to return to the lighthouse. Maybe Pete had somehow slipped back in and past her as she’d been ruminating about life at the wrong time. Maybe he’d gone back to bed? The idiocy of that idea wasn’t lost on Shea, but the sensation of being very much alone was creeping up and becoming more and more real.

She quickly entered the house and pushed the door shut, debating on locking it because it felt better to be locked inside. But if Pete was still outside... Shea decided to leave the door unlocked and returned to the kitchen.

A shuffling sound halted her in her tracks.

Shea looked up at the ceiling.

The lightbulb in its fixture flickered.

The hair on her arms stood at attention. Deliberate footsteps crossed the floor above her. Slow footsteps.

“Pete?” Her voice was shakier than she’d expected.

Shea tiptoed into the sitting area. The room was illuminated by a soft, yellow glow from a lamp directly beneath the painting of Annabel’s ghost on the wall. It was where Jonathan Marks had died too, and suddenly Shea caught a vision of red on the walls and the floor. A vision of what it must have looked like to whoever had discovered his body. Blood spatter. Fragments of who Jonathan Marks had once been.

The serious turn of her thoughts brought with it the gravity of all she had been delving into. The adrenaline of the night, her almost intoxicated insistence to know what had happened—to push the old captain to tell her things—no. She had pushed too hard. Her obstinacy had been insensitive, driven by the lust for the hunt, if not the treasure. She had been wrong. This wasn’t child’s play—it never had been—it was dark, and it was riddled with a story that made no sense, and its threads were tangled with every aspect of this place. Annabel. Rebecca. Silvertown. Holt. Captain Gene. Penny. Even Edna and Marnie and the man at the historical museum. The Porcupine Mountains and the lake boasted tales of hardship, of vicious winters and blistering summers. It captured the spirit of its original people while it inhabited the dreams of newcomers. It was a place of rock and earth, of greed and ambition, of nature and wanderlust.

The lake was a place of ghosts.

A chilling breath blew across the back of Shea’s neck. She could almost hear Annabel’s sigh behind her, and Shea whirled to face her. To see with her own eyes once again the woman who haunted this place and these shores. The woman that the stories all seemed to return to. The woman whose spirit held the secrets to her mystical breast and teased with her gentle memory and her vengeful recollections.

But Annabel wasn’t there.

No one was.

Very aware of her aloneness, Shea was drawn to the lightkeeper’s room. The light was still on, the room still empty. The door to the lighthouse was propped open, and Shea moved toward it, stopping to stare up into the abyss that spiraled upward.

A shadow person swept out of view as Shea’s eyes focused on the lantern room above her. A vaporous form that boasted of having lived once but now only haunted.

“Annabel?” Shea finally called out the name of the woman long since dead. Dead for more than a hundred and fifty years. She stepped onto the metal stairs, tentative and questioning her own sanity.

A clanging sound responded, staggering down toward her, pinging against the stairs like a stone having been tossed toward Shea. Only there was no stone.

She hesitated at the door that led to the attic bedrooms. It was open, the hallway dark, the rooms dark as well. “Pete?” she whispered.

No answer.

This was ridiculous. She was chasing a ghost. Literally.

Another clang from above jerked Shea’s attention back to the dark, unlit lantern. She took a few more hesitant steps before freezing, her hand gripping the railing, white-knuckled and tense.

Humming.

The melodic sound of a woman’s soft hum drifted from the lighthouse, wrapping itself around the stairwell and embracing Shea in a hypnotic hold.

“...soul my soul...” it sang, taunting and chilling Shea.

The wind outside picked up, the lighthouse moaning against the unexpected stress of the lake’s breath on its frame.

Shea knew then. She knew it was not over.

There was one more person she must face to find the answers that haunted her. The answers that had woven themselves into Shea’s soul and bound her to this place. The answers that mocked her belief of what love was and her loyalty to herself and to Pete. The answers that convinced Shea that the past would always be very much alive because the past echoed through the lives of its offspring and continued on. Curses that didn’t die when a grave was backfilled. Wrongs that weren’t concluded when the water drowned the body and sank it to its depths.

Shea had to face Annabel’s ghost.

She took another step upward into the lighthouse.

This ghost would be faced in the dark.