Page 38

38

R EBECCA

...my life and my bride...

Annabel Lee

ANNABEL’S LIGHTHOUSE SPRING, 1874

LEAVING THE SHACK, Rebecca left the dead men—including Edgar—behind. Once again she stumbled through the woods, this time fully aware of who she was and who she fled from.

Before long she found the shore, the lake, with the expanse of the Porcupine Mountains rising as blue-green mounds in the far distance. The smell of smoke, light but putrid, muddied the air. Smoke from the stamp mill that had burned for whatever reason and ruined the immediate growth of Hilliard’s plans. She would face him, her father. Edgar had denied parentage, so it remained that Hilliard was truly her father—though he assumed an illicit affair between Annabel with Edgar.

Instead, they had indeed loved each other, but Annabel had apparently kept her body true to her vows, even if her heart did not. That meant that Rebecca was Hilliard’s. As she should have been. That meant that Annabel had gone back to Hilliard—or never truly left him. Edgar’s words haunted her. If Annabel had remained with Hilliard, how had Edgar saved her from him?

With no answers, Rebecca fought through the sand as she veered back toward the lighthouse. She looked into the woods in the direction of Annabel’s grave. Her mother’s grave.

A dry sob racked her chest. Edgar was gone. She had killed Mercer. Her father was a greed-filled man who would find his own ruin, especially once this was all exposed. She would never— never— tell where she’d hidden the papers. They caused too much pain and symbolized a world she wanted no part of. And she had Aaron to think of. Aaron to care for. He would carry on a Hilliard legacy too. His children and his children’s children would carry the Hilliard blood.

“Rebecca!” A shout in the distance jerked her attention up.

A group of men came toward her, Abel leading the charge.

Rebecca succumbed to exhaustion and grief. She sank to the shore, the wet sand soaking through her skirt, her chemise bodice pressing against her abdomen in the wind and revealing evidence of their babe.

Abel sprinted up the shore and, moments later, fell to his knees in front of her, his hands light on her shoulders, searching her face with his eyes. “What happened? Are you all right?”

“Edgar—” Rebecca gasped.

“What about Edgar?” A miner came up behind them and demanded to know, concern on his face.

Rebecca looked over her shoulder. “Mercer and Bear are dead.” She would never breathe a word that she’d shot Mercer. Let them all believe Edgar to be her hero. “Edgar saved me.”

The miner shouted and waved his arm toward the others behind him. “Is Edgar hurt?” he asked Rebecca, even as Abel’s hands roved her hair and gently turned her face to assess the wounds left behind by Mercer’s hand.

“He’s...” Rebecca met Abel’s eyes. “Edgar is gone.” Her breath caught as shock ratcheted across Abel’s face.

“He’s what?”

“I’m so sorry.” Rebecca’s cry was muffled as Abel drew her close against his shoulder, careful not to hurt her with his action. She heard him bark at the men.

“Go find Edgar.”

“You got it,” a man responded.

Footsteps thudded in the sand.

A hand briefly touched the top of Rebecca’s head in recognition. She lifted her eyes to the miner who had taken the lead now in the wake of Abel’s preoccupation with her. “We’re just glad you’re all right, Mrs. Koski.”

Mrs. Koski . Abel’s wife.

Rebecca fell against the man she had once thought might love her. The man she had once allowed herself to be swept up in loving if only for shared need. The man she hoped would stay true to his promise to her and their child—if for no other reason than her child was going to live. Because of Edgar, her child would live in a world where selfish and greedy people served themselves more than others. Her child would need a father like Abel to keep it safe. It would need a man like Abel to prove that sometimes loving required giving oneself up for another. It was clear to Rebecca now that it was what Abel had done for her. Kjersti had requested her brother help save Rebecca from the abusiveness of her father. And now Rebecca would ask Abel to save her and their child one last time—for a lifetime.

S HEA

Shea scrambled down the stairs, Marnie pounding down them behind her. They spiraled toward the main floor and burst into the lightkeeper’s room, and once through it, Marnie launched toward Shea.

“Let go!” Shea’s hand shot forward, connecting with the older woman’s shoulder. Marnie fell backward on the lightkeeper’s bed. Shea stood over her, seeing the woman for the sad heap that she was. Driven by a lifetime of jealousy, a lifetime of wishing someone would be more to her than they were. She had conjured up a dream that didn’t fit reality, and Marnie had derived a conclusion that could never be even if Rebecca’s papers were found after decades of being lost.

“Marnie...” Shea started, then bit her tongue. What did she say to a woman who was so broken and so wrong when she herself had, in her own way, conjured up her own reality, her own expectations for her marriage? Instead of finding value in what she had, she found value in what she wanted . As extreme as Marnie? Certainly not. But the roots were all the same.

“Marnie,” Shea started again, gentling her voice in hopes to break through the psyche of the woman who had killed Jonathan Marks for papers that likely no longer existed. The woman who had snuck around the lighthouse and its grounds, pretending to be the ghost of the legendary Annabel. “It’s over, Marnie.” Shea’s words were not the ones she’d intended to come out.

Marnie shoved herself up on the bed. “No.” She wagged her head. “It’s not over. It will never be over.” A tear trailed down her face.

Shea softened toward the waitress. The pitiable state of the woman was truly that she had distorted life into expectations that would never be fulfilled. “I know you. You want to validate who you are, but Annabel is a ghost—literally. She’s been dead for a century. And Rebecca, the map? That’s not something you can unbury and claim. You all have wrapped your lives around a century-old treasure map , and in the end you’ve lost each other!” Shea stumbled to a halt. Dreams. A person’s dreams were nothing when shared only with themselves. A person’s dreams could turn into obsession and ostracize them from love. While dreams could be beautiful and hopes very real, to live in them and to demand them to come true like one wished upon a star could alienate a person from others who could love them, because they were centered on their own personal achievement.

Her personal achievements. Shea had never wanted to see Pete so badly in all her life. He had stood by in the shadows as she’d pursued her own life, her own dreams, and as she’d held him with disdain for not being the romantic picture she had in her head. She had been infatuated with Holt of all people, whose part in this was involuntary and circumstantial at best, but who didn’t hold a candle to Pete’s loyal faithfulness.

What was love if it wasn’t devotion? What was love if it wasn’t steady and consistent?

Shea knew this now, as much as she knew that above all, Annabel lived. She lived in the lighthouse. She lived on the lake’s shore. She lived in the forest and in the town. She lived in the people born here. She lived in Shea’s own mind and in Shea’s very soul.

Annabel was, after all, Shea herself.

Annabel’s ghost was the epitome of what they all ran away from. She was the memories. The heartache. The abuses. The tragedies. The could-have-beens and should-have-beens. Annabel was the story that had never concluded because no one was willing to read its first pages in order to write its last.

Annabel’s ghost was the love a person put to death so the idea of it could never be lost, but instead could be hoarded.

“Marnie.” Shea reached for the woman’s hand. “Let’s put an end to Annabel’s story tonight.”

Marnie eyed Shea’s hand with teary-eyed suspicion. She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“You can,” Shea encouraged. She wanted Marnie’s dangerous state of mind to be put in a place where she could receive care and no longer hurt those around her. But to do that, she had to show the woman that she was worthy of being cared about. That history could keep its old silver map—wherever it was stashed. But that was a feat Shea didn’t know if she was capable of. She tried anyway. “Your mother—Edna—she loves you, doesn’t she?”

Marnie’s expression softened. “Mom always has.”

“Then that’s what you focus on.” Shea pushed her hand closer to Marnie. “Focus on what you do have, not on what you don’t have. Focus on what you can give, Marnie. Focus on what you can give.”