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It is only by chance that she sees. With their father having followed Rowan south, has come up to the lighthouse to check on her brothers and help with the chores. It’s through the laundry window that she sees them approaching together from the south. She wonders what’s happened, if Rowan knows anything, and if everything will change now.

She watches them for a few moments but can’t decipher any clues from this silent walk. She’s about to turn back to the washing when she sees them stop. They are still a short distance from the lighthouse, and in discussion about something. Are they arguing, standing like that face-to-face? There is no anger in their postures. Instead there is something soft. Their outlines seem a little smudged. watches, stunned, as her dad reaches for Rowan’s face, his hand at her jaw, tilting it up so they are gazing at each other, and they are standing closer now, and he is speaking again, something murmured, and feels an explosion in her chest. It takes the space between heartbeats for her to identify this sensation as relief.

She watches them all afternoon, but they don’t look at each other or touch in the same way. And when she follows her dad up to his room, her heart already sinking with the knowing, she hears him talking to his dead wife and all her relief sputters out.

knows what she has to do. To give Dom and Rowan a chance. To give them all a chance for something new.

She waits until her dad is in the shower and then she moves quickly; there will be only a few minutes now. She fills a bag with the last of her mother’s belongings—more books, trinkets, jewelry, clothes—and then she bounds down the stairs to pull on her coat.

“Hey,” her brother says, and she whirls.

Raff is in the doorway, watching her.

“You don’t need that stuff,” he says.

“I know,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

“Whatever you’re doing, it’ll make things worse,” he warns.

“It won’t,” she promises, although maybe it will, at first. But she is thinking long game here. She’s doing this for all of them.

On the beach she has a small campfire that she tries to keep lit. To this she adds driftwood and the kelp she has been drying to make a bonfire. She gathers the items from her boathouse and lays them all out on the black sand, looking at each. She has a moment of uncertainty. The memories she has of her mother wearing these things are precious to her, and undoubtedly Dom has more of them, memories tied to every single thing here, and without the items will those memories disappear? Is that what wants?

All she knows is that her dad must be freed of his ghost. So, one by one, she starts placing her mother’s belongings on the fire.