Box Set: The ArringtonTrilogy (61 page)

“I’m sorry, Heath. I shouldn’t have hit you.”
I was calmer, regretting what I had done.

He refused to look at me, and I turned to go,
to return to my room, and throw myself onto my bed in defeat, but
Heath seized me and pulled me against him. His actions took my
breath away and made my heart race. His eyes had turned dark and
cold; his face was troubled. Heath towered above me, squeezing my
shoulders so tight they began to hurt. I didn’t know what he
wanted, why he pulled me back. He didn’t speak, though his eyes
screamed for me to understand. But I didn’t. I was confused, my
mind spinning, not sure what he wanted from me. I was about to try
to push away and run from him, run and hide from how he was making
me feel, when he lowered his lips to mine and kissed me. It wasn’t
a kiss like Ayden had given me; it was the way a man kissed a
woman. I tried to breathe through it, but I couldn’t. And just when
I thought I was going to pass out from the terror and excitement,
he pulled away, his face full of shock. Heath had lost control, and
he regretted what he had done.

I didn’t know what to do next. A part of me
wanted him to kiss me again, and another feared it. He began to
pace back and forth, running his hands through his thick, curly
hair. Then he faced me and told me to go away. It was as if
something had snapped in him, and he blamed me for the kiss. He was
suddenly irrational and angry.

“Why don’t you just do what you are told to
do, Lillian? Why do you go out of your way to cause trouble? I was
here to help; now look what you made me do!”

I caused him to take hold of me and place his
lips on mine? Was there something in me that made him want to take
advantage of me? Did I give him a signal, a sign, anything that
told him I wanted him to love me? Was he able to read my mind? Was
it really my fault? my mind screamed.

“You’re just a little girl. Forget what
happened. I like you as a sister.” Heath came to me one last time,
grabbed my face in his hand, and made me look up at him. He was on
the verge of tears; his face was red and twisted. “Do you
understand that, kid?”

I cried out that I understood. He let go and
stormed off, and I fell to the ground and wept. I wanted to hurl
myself into the cold waters of the Atlantic, just as Momma did once
before. I felt for the first time as she must have; I had enough
despair to end my life. What did I matter any longer? Daddy only
needed Momma, Momma didn’t know who I was, and she didn’t know she
had a daughter. And she was long gone—far, far away, locked up in a
cold institution where I would never see her again. Opal and Edward
had their own family to worry about, Ayden didn’t understand what
was going on, and Elizabeth was only a baby.

Then there was Heath. He hated me; he blamed
me for making him so frustrated by my childish actions that he lost
his mind for a moment. In the heat of the moment, he probably
thought I was Clara. After all, I was close to her age when he
loved her; I was getting the same curves and filled-out bosom she
had. Heath was confused, and when he realized it was me, he was
angry. He was angry I wasn’t Clara, and he had kissed a girl who
was like a sister to him. He was disgusted with me, and I didn’t
blame him.

Everyone would be better off without me. So I
decided to do it. I walked slowly, my head lowered, until I finally
came to the same bluff where Momma had jumped to end her life. Lady
came and sat by my side, and I told her to go away, but she refused
to budge. I raised my head and looked out to the endless sea, and
thought of all the souls that were out there, lying on the bottom
of the ocean in their forever grave. That’s where I was going to
go. I wouldn’t be alone, in a way. It was a perfect last day on
Earth for me.

The breezes were soft; the sun was high
against the clear blue sky. Overhead, the seagulls hovered, and the
sight took me back to earlier days when I first came to Jasper
Island. Those were good days, the best days I had ever had. Momma
and Daddy were happy and in love; I had new friends. I went to
school for the first time, and I had been lucky enough to have
fallen in love with the most handsome boy in the world. However, it
all changed, and life had altered so significantly it wasn’t worth
living any longer.

I turned and looked back at the lighthouse
one last time and blew Daddy a kiss, and one for Elizabeth, closed
my eyes, took a step, and felt myself float down until I hit the
freezing waters of the sea. The instant pain took my breath away.
It would be a painful death; that I hadn’t truly expected. My body
tried to keep me afloat; I tried to swim the strong currents, and
my mind scrambled to find a way not to die as Lady stood on the
bluff and barked for me to come back. I wanted to yell for help,
but nothing came out. I was as mute as Elizabeth. I floated in the
waves and it wasn’t long before I grew so numb and tired from the
cold that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I had no energy left; my
will to survive was gone, and slowly I began my descent into the
watery grave that would keep me evermore.

I opened my eyes, drained and exhausted, but
my grave wasn’t dark and murky, like the bottom of the sea. I was
back on shore, lying in the cool, wet sand; the water rushed up
then retreated against my legs. I stared up at the brilliant stars
in the night, but I was not alone. Momma stood over me, encircled
in a soft glow, as beautiful as ever. Her eyes were no longer
glazed and empty, and she even called me by my name.

“Lillian, my darling,” she whispered,
reaching for my hand. I lifted my heavy arm to touch her hand, but
I could not take hold of it. She was as much of an apparition as
Victor was. Maybe I was in heaven, I thought, though when I sat up
and looked around, I could see the lighthouse.

“I came to say goodbye,” Momma said in an
angelic voice.

“Where are you going, Momma?” I asked.

“Goodbye, Lillian,” she said again, and then
she vanished into the night sky.

Shivering from the cold, I made my way back
to the house. Daddy wasn’t passed out in the chair by the fire, so
I went upstairs. He wasn’t in his bed. As soon as I could, I pulled
off my soaked dress and put on my bed clothes, then climbed into
bed. I was confused, disturbed, and wished the entire day to go
away in a dream. I closed my eyes and prayed that when I woke in
the morning I would have things back as they were. Momma would be
home and sane, Daddy would be happy, and Heath and Ayden would be
waiting for me to go to school. I could have never wished for
anything more, and as I began to sleep, I thought it was possible.
But when I was shaken out of my sleep, I knew all too well that the
merciless reality was never going to let go.

“Wake up, Lillian. You must get dressed,”
Daddy insisted. It was still dark.

“Why, Daddy?”

“Just do as I say,” he said, and he took a
dress out of the closet. I couldn’t smell any rum on his
breath.

When I didn’t move fast enough, he came to
help me dress. I began to fill with alarm. Did he know what I had
done; did he know I’d tried to kill myself? Was he going to take me
away to the asylum to be with Momma?

When he got close enough to lift my gown over
my head, I realized he had been crying. His eyes that refused to
meet mine were red and swollen.

“We have to hurry.”

When I had my dress on, he ushered me down
the stairs. It was then that I noticed he wasn’t wearing his light
keeper’s uniform. He wore a dress shirt with a gray double-breasted
vest, matching trousers, and a black slouch hat. I had never seen
him in anything but his uniform. He appeared different, almost
ordinary.

Daddy whisked me out into the night and into
a row boat. I asked him several times where we were going and why,
but he tried to stay focused, and didn’t divulge the information
until we landed on the mainland. There, after we were seated in the
stagecoach, Daddy took hold of my hand, and with tears streaming
down his pale, brokenhearted face, said, “Momma has gone to be with
God. She is finally at peace.”

Momma was dead? My vision was true, and she
was a ghost. Had she really come to say goodbye to me before she
made her way to heaven? Daddy brought me close to his side as I
cried. It was dark and cold and I didn’t know where we were going.
All I could think of was that Momma was truly gone forever. She
would never recover; she would never return to Jasper Island. She
came one last time, and that was to see me. For that, I was
grateful.

The stagecoach ride went half the night until
we reached a small railroad town. Daddy got a room for the rest of
the night and said we had to get up in a few hours. “We have a long
trip ahead of us, Lillian. Get as much rest as you can,” Daddy said
just before he blew out the lamp.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Lillian.”

“We are going to be okay, aren’t we?” I
asked.

Daddy didn’t answer.

_______________

My eyes opened at the crack of dawn to an
unfamiliar, stale, musty room and noises from the street that
reminded me nothing of a lighthouse station. At first, I couldn’t
recall the events that brought me from Jasper Island, and then, as
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I remembered. Daddy had taken me
away to tell me Momma was dead. We were in a strange town,
preparing to board a train, but I didn’t know where to.

I assumed we were traveling to Indiana, to
the asylum where Momma had died. It wasn’t until Daddy and I
arrived at the station ticket booth that I discovered we weren’t
going to Indianapolis at all.

After our tickets were purchased, we didn’t
have to wait long before the great black steam train made its way
down the track and stopped. People were scattered everywhere, some
waiting to board, others disembarking. It seemed like chaos to me.
So much noise—and everyone was in such a hurry. Daddy had only one
bag for me and carried it on after he handed the conductor our
boarding tickets. I followed Daddy until we found two seats that
appealed to him. After we were seated and the loud whistle had
blown, indicating it was time to depart, I turned to Daddy and
asked why we were traveling all the way to Savannah.

Daddy took a long breath then looked out the
window to watch the station pass by. He struggled with his answer;
it was almost too painful for him to say. Finally, he cleared his
throat, and said, “That’s where Momma is buried.”

We were going to Momma and Daddy’s home town,
the place they had left long ago and to which they’d wanted never
to return. I couldn’t imagine why Daddy wanted to lay her to rest
in Georgia and not in Maine, close to us, near the lighthouse. I
asked him, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he closed his cried-out
eyes, placed his hat over his face, leaned back, and went to sleep.
I hadn’t noticed the passengers in our car until Daddy was asleep.
There were old men and women, all dressed up in what looked like
their Sunday best—straight faced, expressionless. I was not used to
these kinds of people. I only knew fisherman, sailors, and
lighthouse keepers. Of course, there was Miss Weatherbee. That made
me wonder what everyone thought when I wasn’t there to climb into
the rowboat with Heath and Ayden for school. I hadn’t missed one
day of school. The only time I couldn’t go was when the weather
wouldn’t permit Heath to row us over to the mainland. Yesterday, I
would have never thought I would, the very next day, be on a train
for the first time in my life, traveling south to bury my beloved
Momma. It had been in my mind that my life was over, that my body
would be on the bottom of the sea. Everything changed overnight;
the life that I wanted to end had remained, turned upside down. I
was willing to accept it; I had to believe it wasn’t my time to go
and that Momma had saved me. Maybe she put herself in my place.

For years, I had wanted to travel, but I
didn’t want the first time to be attending a funeral for my mother.
I always expected to board a great ship and sail over the Atlantic
and land in England. I would have never believed my first journey
would be on steam train heading to the wounded deep South of
America. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I wasn’t happy about any
of it—not burying Momma, and not going to the horrible South that
was full of Confederates. Though Daddy had been one, I was sure he
regretted it, and believed if he could do it all over again, he
would have joined the Union Navy. Maybe he was forced to serve for
the Confederates; maybe his family insisted. I knew nothing about
why Daddy had fought in the Civil War, just that he had, and he
never, ever wanted to talk about it.

Daddy woke when he was hungry. He led me out
the door and crossed the platform into the dining car. Daddy got
each of us a cheese sandwich and milk and allowed me to sit by the
window while we ate our small lunch. The landscape hadn’t changed
much at all in the hours the train moved along the miles of track.
I had never been anywhere but on an island or in a small village on
the coast of Maine. I wasn’t sure what to expect as we passed from
one state to another. I thought maybe there would be more
interesting people, grand mansions, and beautiful scenery to look
out at along the way. It was nothing but ordinary—tall pine trees
and maples with only a hint of newly emerging buds covering hills
and snow-topped mountains—until we reached the most southern
states. Then I noticed the abundance of greenery and the
wildflowers along the tracks.

The temperature in the car rose at least
fifteen degrees; it became stuffy and uncomfortable. I was used to
cold nights and didn’t adapt well to the extreme heat as we were
tossed about in our berth. I began to grow sick. My face was hot,
my cheeks flushed, and I felt as though I was about to pass out.
One nice woman, who must have been near Opal’s age, boarded in
Richmond, walked up the narrow aisle to Daddy, and tapped him on
the shoulder. He was sleeping again, but he woke immediately.