The Language of Sand (14 page)

All of a sudden a thump came from above, reverberating through the house’s brick walls. Abigail jumped.

It was nothing.
It was nothing.
It was nothing.

The phrase repeated in her mind, syncopated with her breathing. She tried to stand. Her legs wouldn’t budge.

“Sitting is fine. Sitting is good. I’ll stay right—”

Another thump resounded through the house, this one more distinct. It was loud and hollow. Whatever was making the noise wasn’t solid.

The oil pail.

Abigail’s thoughts corkscrewed back to that morning, to climbing the spiral staircase, entering the lamp room, and accidentally kicking the tin pail. What had Merle said as she’d left his shop? He’d told her not to move it.

Except that was ridiculous. There was no ghost.

Rational thought couldn’t thaw Abigail from her position, frozen at the desk. She deliberated whether to go up to the lamp room and investigate or to leave it for tomorrow, when she had daylight on her side.

“It’s dark. You don’t have a flashlight. One false step on those stairs and…”

She preferred not to ruminate on what could come after
and
.

If the bedroom door had a lock, Abigail would have used it. She changed into her pajamas and considered climbing into bed and hiding under the covers, but she hadn’t brushed her teeth or removed her contacts.

“Forget brushing your teeth. Being scared beats oral hygiene hands down.”

She sprinted into the bathroom and plucked out her contacts in record time. When she slammed the bedroom door behind her, it sent a gust of air coursing through the room, setting the newspaper article on the nightstand aloft. The paper came to rest under the bed. Too tired, Abigail left it there. She pulled the quilt over her
shoulders, thinking back to the nights when Justin awoke with bad dreams. She and Paul would comfort him, rub his head, kiss each cheek, and tell him that the kisses would keep the nightmares away.

He believed you.

Abigail had cherished that unconditional trust, the wholehearted faith only a child, her child, could bestow. It was an incomparable honor. And it was gone. This time, she didn’t bother stopping the tears when they came.

Amo, amare, amavi, amatus.

Oro, orare, oravi, oratus.

Wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm, Abigail hummed Latin verbs until they lulled her to sleep.

 
ha
mar
ti
a
(hä′ mäe tē′ə),
n.
See
tragic flaw.
[1890–95; < Gk: a fault, equiv. to
hamart
– (base of
hamartánein
to err) + –
ia
–
IA
]

Sunrise was different by the ocean. It came on fast and was impossible
to ignore. Abigail groped the nightstand for her glasses so she could read her watch, which said it was after six. She felt harried, as if she’d overslept, but there was nothing pressing she needed to do, nothing that awaited her. Her arms ached from her cleaning rampage and when she rubbed them, she could feel the indentations left on her skin by the bedding. Deep valleys and ravines crisscrossed the flesh, a topographical map of where her dreams had taken her during the night.

Abigail slid her sneakers on in lieu of slippers and made the bed.

“What an attractive sight you must be. Bleary-eyed in pajamas, two sweaters, and a pair of tennis shoes. Thank your stars there
isn’t
a full-length mirror here.”

As she tucked in the sheets and straightened the quilt, it struck her that she didn’t have to make the bed or look presentable. She lived alone now. There was nobody to see her. What she did need to concern herself with was the lighthouse and the slew of duties that came with it.

Two weeks after being released from the hospital, Abigail had searched out Lottie’s real estate agency and consented to lease the caretaker’s cottage before Lottie even faxed her a photo. It was easily the most impetuous act of Abigail’s life, one she was second-guessing.

She poked her head into the hall, praying that the bathroom light wouldn’t be on.

It wasn’t.

Warily, she made the rounds of the second floor, on alert for the slightest difference. Her contacts case sat beside the faucet in the bathroom, unmoved. Mounds of books lay on the desk in the study, her shelving effort cut short. She questioned whether or not she’d imagined the noise last evening.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

The trip to the lighthouse turret went faster this morning than it had the previous day. Abigail was less circumspect, though just slightly. She noted the numbers of the squeaky steps from memory.

“Sixty-seven…seventy-one…seventy-nine.”

That small practice comforted her. She preferred knowing what to expect. Upon reaching the lamp room, Abigail steeled herself for what she might see.

The oil pail appeared to be right where she’d left it.

Because she’d righted the pail after stumbling on it, Abigail couldn’t tell if it was in exactly the same spot as before. She wanted to be certain. The rim of the pail was squared with a plaque soldered onto the base of the light. Rusted over, the plaque was illegible except for the year inscribed at the bottom—1893, the date the lighthouse was erected. Abigail took a mental picture of the pail’s placement, then nudged it away from the lamp base with the toe of her tennis shoe, so the pail no longer touched any part of the plaque.

“This is merely a test, a test to see if…I’ve lost my marbles or not.”

She hoped she would pass.

Abigail wound her way down the spiral staircase. From the
bottom, she stared upward at the lamp room, the mesh ironwork a sieve for the sun’s gauzy rays. Maybe what had happened the night before was a fluke. Maybe it wouldn’t happen again. The word
maybe
meant that something was possible or probable yet uncertain. It was the uncertainty that got under her skin.

The sight of the kitchen in the bright morning light was sobering. Seeing the room in glaring clarity made her want to go back to bed. It was clean, but with the splotchy walls and slumping cupboards, it wasn’t pretty.

“Caffeine might make this more tolerable.”

She set the kettle on the stove to boil water for tea, but the burner wouldn’t light. She could hear the gas hissing. The pilot light was out.

“Great.”

Relighting a gas burner was a household chore Abigail always abhorred. Vacuuming couldn’t hurt you. Neither could scrubbing the bathtub. Or waxing the floors. Once she’d waved clear the gas that had wafted into the air, Abigail struck a match. The gas instantly snatched the flame, sending her backpedaling. She doubted she would ever become accustomed to the fright that leapt through her as the match caught fire. Yet here in the caretaker’s cottage, she would have to face that fear again and again, whether she was accustomed to it or not.

Abigail let the water come to a boil, pulling the teapot off the burner before it could whistle, a habit she’d adopted from living with Paul. For years she’d risen a half hour earlier than he did and conducted her morning routine in silence, careful not to wake him. She would shower, then make toast and tea, taking the kettle from the stove at just the right moment to prevent it from blowing. That was no longer necessary. She could allow the teapot to whistle if she pleased. Or she could leave the bed unmade or her hair unbrushed. There were a lot of things Abigail could do but ultimately wouldn’t. She hadn’t lived alone since college, but now that she was by herself,
Abigail wondered if, in time, her routines from when she was a wife and mother would disintegrate and morph into new habits. Single-person habits. Maybe they already were.

Two botched attempts at making toast in the oven made Abigail give up. Both times the bread turned coal black despite the temperature setting. As with the rest of the lighthouse, the stove had its own fussy personality, to which she’d have to acclimate.

Breakfast was a yogurt. Afterward, she busied herself by taking out the trash and tidying where she could until it was late enough to go into town to the hardware store.

“No small talk this time. No chitchat. No tall tales. Supplies and that’s it.”