The Language of Sand (6 page)

“What about the furnace?”

“What furnace?”

“There’s no furnace? How do you heat the house?”

“The old-fashioned way.” Lottie nodded at the fireplace, with its smoke-stained surround. Ash was heaped under the log rack.

The possibility that fire might be her sole means of heat hadn’t occurred to Abigail when she agreed to rent the cottage. Fear began to roil beneath her ribs.

“I should also mention there’s an old cistern in the basement built for underground water storage, what with the flooding we get. Oh, and you’ll have to remember to check the generator, make sure it’s running right. If the power goes out on the island, yours will be first to get cut.”

Lottie prattled on about odds and ends related to the light house and cottage, everything from how to open the chimney flue to how to prevent the pipes from freezing. The measures were as woeful as the events they intended to preclude. As the catalog of responsibilities mounted, Abigail was convoluting the do’s with the don’t’s.

“Let me stop you, Lottie. Can we start with the basics? For example, where’s the breaker box?”

“In the basement, dear.”

“Then we should probably have a look around. Finish the tour.”

“I…I…I can’t go down there.” Lottie was unconsciously backing away from the basement door. “I mean, my sciatica, it won’t let me.”

“I’ll go. Just tell me where to find the breaker box.”

“Now?”

“Why not?”

“Because we have other things to do. Tons of things. Tons. We have to go see the…the…” She scrabbled for an answer. “The shed.”

“The shed?”

“Garden hoses. Rakes. Pruning shears. These are pertinent details.”

Whatever had come over Lottie caused her face to turn crimson red. Abigail was willing to follow her anywhere if it would calm her. She gestured for Lottie to lead on, saying, “Let’s see this shed.”

“Excellent. This way, please.” Lottie patted her heart, feigning she was fixing her pendant. Abigail noticed because it was similar to what she herself had done when Denny accidentally frightened her on the ferry.

“Are you all right, Lottie? You seem spooked.”

“I’m fine, dear,” she insisted, rushing for the door. “Really, I’m fine.”

Outside, birds heralded the setting sun while the crickets broadcast the temperature, quieting as the air cooled. Though Chapel Isle was on the same seaboard as Boston, the same continent, the same hemisphere, what made the island feel a world apart was the weather or, more specifically, Abigail’s awareness of it. The wind currents were evident in how the seagulls wheeled in the sky and in the changing tides of the high grass she and Lottie were slogging through as they wended around the lighthouse.

“You must have noticed there’s no TV. The house has an antenna, though. You can call the cable company on the mainland to hook
everything up. You brought a television set, right?” Lottie asked, the grass shushing her with each step.

“No, I didn’t.”

Abigail’s life had been on mute for months, the picture and resolution grainy. The volume was finally returning, and whatever she tuned in to was, at last, coming in loud and clear, so she didn’t want a television.

Aghast, Lottie halted. “My word, Abby. Are you crazy?”

“That might be debatable.”

“I’d absolutely perish without my soaps. I thank the Lord every day for giving us TV. What about a computer? You bring one of those?”

“Nope.”

Her laptop had fallen victim to the fire too. Abigail appreciated her computer as a tool, but she could live without the Internet, email, even a cell phone, as long as she had a land line. There was a lot she could live without. There was much more she would have to learn to live without.

“I don’t care for computers much myself,” Lottie remarked. “I can play solitaire on the one my husband bought. That’s about it. To me, it’s a big paperweight. By the by, that’s the fuel house over there.” She pointed to a lean-to structure hunched at the base of the lighthouse. “That was where they stored the kerosene to run the lamp for the light. It’s empty, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

One less thing on a growing list of hundreds
, Abigail mused.

“My, my, my, Abby. What are you gonna do here by yourself without a TV or a computer?”

“I have my books.”

“Hope you brought a lot, because you’re going to need a whole mess of ’em. Me, I could read a romance novel a day. I go through them like Kleenex. You ever read those kinds? The racy stories about damsels in distress, hunky men with bulging biceps. Mercy me, they get my blood to swimming. I’ll have to lend you some.”

Abigail had no interest in Lottie’s romance novels whatsoever. She kept her reply polite. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

“It’s not a bother. Not the slightest.” Lottie had gone from a shaky wreck to her spunky self in a minute flat. “Here we are. This is the shed.”

Hand-built with wood planks and large rocks from the shoreline for the foundation, it had the feel of an oversize safe. Lottie unlatched the padlock. “There’s the firewood. And those are the kerosene lanterns. They’re a must. We have shovels, buckets, a lawn mower…”

While Lottie itemized the shed’s contents, the enormity of Abigail’s decision hit her squarely in the chest. She was officially the caretaker of a lighthouse. Whatever needed doing, she would have to do. She’d romanticized the lifestyle, coloring it up with minor chores such as cleaning the glass on the top of the tower and pulling the occasional weed. The dingy little shed filled with dirt-crusted tools and aged containers of ant spray was a hint of how much Abigail had underestimated what the job of caring for a lighthouse—make that a run-down lighthouse—would entail.

“Are you getting this, Abby?”

“Every word.”

She hadn’t heard a syllable Lottie said.

“Merle Braithwaite over at the hardware store can help you with any other questions you might have.”

“Was he the last caretaker?”

“Merle? Heavens, no. He’s an islander. A native. Been looking after the place since the last caretaker left.”

“When was that?”

“Dear me, I can’t quite recall.”

Abigail had no doubt that was a lie. She’d lost count of how many Lottie had already told.

“Takes a rare soul to care for a landmark such as this.”

If “rare soul” was a euphemism for idiot, Abigail thought, then
that was the first honest thing to come from Lottie’s mouth since they’d met.

“I should be getting back to the office, leave you to your unpacking.”

“Yeah. Sure. Okay.” Abigail trailed her to the front yard in a daze.

Lottie hoisted herself into the Suburban and tossed Abigail a set of keys for the house. “Almost forgot these.”

The key ring dropped heavily into Abigail’s hand. There were dozens more than she could account for.

“Wait. None of them is marked.”

“Whoopsies. Where is my head? I’ve had them forever, so I remember which is which. What I’ll do is make you a cheat sheet and get you some of those round rubber doohickeys to put on ’em. I adore those. They’re a miracle of science, they are,” Lottie said, starting the engine. “Remember, Abby, call me if you need anything. Or talk to Merle. He knows this place inside and out.”

With a parting toot of her car horn, she drove off, abandoning Abigail in the overgrown grass. She stood in the yard, alternating her gaze between the lighthouse looming above and the mass of unidentified keys in her palm. Abigail suddenly realized that since arriving on Chapel Isle, everything about her identity had changed. She’d gone from being a respected lexicographer to being the caretaker of a ramshackle lighthouse, from a suburbanite to a resident an island that was miles from nowhere. She’d been transformed from Abigail to
Abby
, a person with whom she was wholly unfamiliar, a stranger.

“Careful what you wish for.”

Dusk drifted down the skyline, enveloping the coast in pale gray, while Abigail doggedly unpacked her car. The air steadily grew colder, and there on the bluff, the wind was unremitting. She made trip after trip back and forth from the station wagon to the house.
Every time Abigail thought she was through, she would find more books hidden beneath the seats or tucked into crevices between the cushions. Once the car was empty, she thankfully went indoors.

The house was as dark as it was chilly. She flipped on the lights, and the brass chandelier in the center of the room flickered, brightening reluctantly. With her teeth starting to chatter, Abigail knew what she had to do. She had to light a fire.

“You can do this. You have to do this. Or you’ll freeze.”

She studied the fireplace intently, only to realize what was missing.

“No wood, no fire.”

Abigail trekked to the shed, the wind hounding her along the way. She sorted through countless keys, cursing Lottie for relatching the padlock in the first place. The eighth attempt was the winner.

“This is a giant splinter waiting to happen,” she declared, loading into her arms as much firewood as she could carry. Logs piled to her chin, Abigail slammed the shed door. Locking it with limited mobility was a feat. It took four tries.

The log rack grunted when she lumped the wood into the fireplace.

“You’re not the only one complaining. Believe me.”

Squaring off with the hearth, hands at her side gunslinger-style, Abigail said, “What’s next? Matches.”

A search of the kitchen drawers was fruitless. Most were stuck. Of those she was able to jimmy open, one held a dull set of silverware, another a tarnished eggbeater. The third was full of crumbs.

“Not too promising.”

The upper cupboards were her last hope. Mismatched plates and bowls were stacked haphazardly behind the first set of doors. The next held a motley ensemble of mugs and glasses. There was one cabinet left. From underneath a mound of dinged pots and pans protruded a box of long wooden matches. Abigail shook the box and heard a rattle of salvation.

“You’ve got matches. You’ve got wood. You can do this.”

Her hands shook as she opened the chimney flue and removed a match from the box. Right as she was about to strike it, Abigail stopped herself.

“Kindling.”

She needed paper or newsprint, neither of which she had. The idea of ripping a page from one of her books darted through her mind. It was swiftly rejected. Scouring the kitchen cabinets and drawers again would be futile. As Abigail was eyeing the living room curtains as prospects, it came to her. She ferreted through her purse for the Chapel Isle tourist brochure Lottie had sent her.

“You’re here. What do you need the brochure for?”

Kneeling in front of the fireplace, she pinched the match between her fingertips, but could not strike it. She simply couldn’t do it. Defeated, she tossed the brochure aside, curled up on the couch, and shivered. Every ounce of her was cold, yet she was incapable of lighting the fire.

Abigail had thought she was dreaming that night when she opened her eyes and saw her own home burning to the ground. Support beams buckled and brayed. Windows bellowed as they blew out, exhaling the stench of scorched metal and chemical fumes. The roof roared as it tore from its moorings. The walls crumbled in a crescendo of screams. She had seen and heard and smelled it all as she lay in the street, barely conscious, muzzled by the smoke that had burned her throat, unable to tell the firemen that her husband and their four-year-old son, Justin, were still inside. As her house collapsed before her, the air filled with a swirling storm of burning cinders, a sea of stars cascading through the clouds of smoke as if the heavens had descended to earth for a single night. Neither her husband nor her child could have survived. There were no words Abigail could think of, no words she would have spoken, even if she could have.

She awoke in the hospital to the faces of her parents, her brother, and two policemen. Her father described her injuries, gave her the prognosis. Her windpipe was damaged, but in time she
would be able to speak again. Her mother begged her not to try to talk. Her brother urged her to listen to the officers, who explained that the neighbor who called 911 had seen her husband, Paul, carry her out of the house, unconscious, her body limp. He’d laid her gently on the grass, then run back inside to get their son.