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R EBECCA

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Annabel Lee

ANNABEL’S LIGHTHOUSE SPRING, 1874

THEY STOOD SIDE BY SIDE, Edgar’s stone propped upright, his name etched as best as Abel could manage into its face.

Rebecca stood, careful to leave some space between her and Abel. Niina bent and laid a bouquet of fern and wildflowers at the base of the stone.

“To think,” she mused, “your mother lies here, and now Edgar.” Niina met Rebecca’s eyes. “He thought he kept it secret, but I know he loved her.”

Rebecca couldn’t shake the niggling feeling in her heart. The kind that still hurt and made her question everything. Her father, Hilliard, had been arrested for fraud, and supposedly they would be pressing charges against him for conspiracy to commit murder against her. Aaron would be coming to live at the lighthouse too. He would be safe, though they would have much work to do to mend what Hilliard had broken. Rebecca knew in her soul that if Hilliard had been okay in allowing Mercer to kill her on Hilliard’s behalf, it was no stretch of the imagination to picture him standing along the shore as her mother, Annabel, fought against the lake’s waves and the force that pulled her under. Had he been indifferent to her death? Had there been a storm that kept him from saving her?

But what was worse were Edgar’s words that would not leave her alone. “I saved us from him,” Edgar had said. Us. But Annabel had died. So how had they both been saved?

Niina’s hand trailed along Rebecca’s arm, and Rebecca snapped free of her thoughts to meet the woman’s eyes. “Take your time. We’re here for you, my dear.”

It was a gift, the words Niina extended to her. Niina had shown her nothing but a mother’s true love and concern, and that didn’t slip past Rebecca as she considered how she would learn to love her own child.

Niina’s footsteps sounded as she walked across sticks and leaves leading back to the lighthouse.

Abel cleared his throat and turned to Rebecca. “I’ll ... be at the lighthouse.” He was the new lightkeeper now, she the lightkeeper’s wife. Their bond of Kjersti had long since passed away with her, and now the bond of their child was a tenuous tie that kept them together.

“Abel?” Rebecca said.

He stopped in his retreat and turned back to her. “Yes?”

“You’ve been more than gracious to me.” Rebecca made sure he saw the gratefulness in her eyes. “Thank you.”

He shifted his weight, looking down at his feet before raising his gaze back to hers. “You’re my wife, Rebecca.”

“I know that.” She swallowed hard against the tears that clogged her throat. “But...”

Abel frowned and took a step back toward her. “But what?”

She shifted away from him, unable to read the tenderness and concern in his eyes as anything other than obligation. “You married me to help me escape my father, and now ... now I have. And with Edgar and my mother, I—” she paused and cast a glance back at their graves—“I don’t know...” Her words trailed; they hurt her throat. They hurt her heart .

Fingers lifted her chin as Abel gently raised her bruised face to his. There was kindness in the ice blue of his eyes. And something else. Always there was something else that she couldn’t define. It had been there that night outside of Kjersti’s room when desperation had pulled them together. When he had taken her into his arms and closed the door with his foot behind them. When he had taught her what it felt like to be a wife, to be held, to be enveloped in the concepts of security and faithfulness. Even if it was a facade, and only for a moment, she had felt it. Craved it. Wanted it. Wanted him .

Rebecca wanted to love him. She ached to love him wholly. To show him gratefulness for the gift of caring for her. To bring a smile to his eyes when she gave him his firstborn. She wanted to gift him her love, but not with the risk of her taking it back. But how did she tell him? How did she tell a man who had loved her merely by action and sacrifice? Could there be more than that? Could they love with passion and heart and soul while building a life of day-to-day care and sustainability?

Was it too much to dream that a home could really be a place where she could rest in the knowing that she was there for Abel, and Abel was there for her?

“You ask too many questions.” Abel’s breath on her skin awakened her to the realization he had drawn close. His lips brushed her cheek, and Rebecca frowned in confusion.

“I’ve not asked a question,” she argued tentatively.

“Rebecca,” Abel breathed. It was a whisper that caressed her skin, bandaged her heart, and reassured her that she was safe. “I will not leave you stranded.” He kissed the corner of her mouth, a featherlight kiss that weakened her limbs at the same time it strengthened her spirit. “I will not watch you drown.” Another kiss to the opposite corner of her mouth. “I will not treat you as anything other than my most precious treasure.”

“But I...”

“But you what?” His lips moved against hers, and his breath mingled, intoxicating and comforting all at the same time.

“I don’t know how,” she admitted. It was her worst fear.

Abel drew her closer until she fit against him where she belonged.

“Let me show you,” he whispered against her hair.

Rebecca gazed over his shoulder, the sunlight breaking through the treetops and falling on Edgar’s and Annabel’s stones. No. She didn’t know how Edgar had saved them from her father. She had an intuition that all was not as it should have been, though—how could it? A love that left broken vows in its wake? A forbidden devotion shrouded in the unrealistic hope that somehow true love could be found.

No.

Her father, Edgar, Annabel? Their love had been broken. No matter how it all unraveled. It had been woven by ambitions and passions and everything but what Abel now offered to her.

Himself.

Just himself.

Nothing less and nothing more.

Love was patient, and it was kind. It wasn’t proud. It didn’t dishonor another. It didn’t envy.

Rebecca closed her eyes against the grave markers, against her father’s map that she had buried beneath Edgar’s marker in a tin box. Instead, she breathed in the promise that emanated from Abel’s body against hers. Love protected, it trusted, it hoped.

And always, no matter the personal cost, it persevered.

A NNABEL

AND THAT IS THE WAY OF IT, I believe. All that we dreamed shall remain only that, a dream.

I feel my body settle to the rocky bottom, the sand sifting through my toes and fingers. The lake is binding itself to me, a flood of ice in my nostrils, my throat, my lungs.

Maybe one day I will be remembered. Maybe one day I will make you remember me.

My love.

Because in my death I have discovered that consuming love is nothing more than obsessive love for one’s own contentedness. This is the reason you submitted me to the lake, pushed my body into its choking embrace, held me under and refused to allow me to breathe deep of the hope of life.

No.

You wished no man to have me but you.

Your love that once encircled me now imprisons me, and you will make me conform to the visions of what you hoped we would be. With my death, our love will be frozen in place. My love will be dead, and you will take with you only what you want. A mutilated version of who we once were.

Nay!

Oh, my love!

I had dreamed of loving you with my whole being. But I was wrong. My love was in error, and my heart misled me away from him and away from my child. My selfishness cost me her happiness, and it will cost her peace and hope.

So as my shoulders collide with the rocky earth, as my body becomes one with the waters, so too do I come to realize my own regrets.

I have loved with a love that was less than love. I have loved with a love filled with myself.

As have you, dear one.

As have you, the taker of my breath.

Edgar.