The Night Mark

  “Carrick?”

  She nodded.

  “He’s not Will,” Pat said. “You know he’s not Will.”

  “I don’t know what I know anymore. But I think...I think I know this... Carrick told me about the night mark. You know what that is?”

  “It’s the name for the lighthouse’s particular light pattern.”

  “That’s right. Carrick said the night mark is the heart of a lighthouse. And Carrick and Will have the same night mark, Pat. They shine the same light.”

  “Oh, Faye, love.” Pat looked at her and shook his head in pity and affection.

  “I’ve been in the dark too long. I can’t go back to living without that light. I can’t. I just can’t...” She swiped tears off her face until she gave up and let them fall.

  “You go, then,” he said. “And you walk in the light, any light you can find.”

  “You can come, too,” she said, smiling at him through her tears. “You said you’ve already been there. Come back with me.”

  “Oh, no. I’m too old for that nonsense.”

  “You said you felt like a young man again in 1921. Why not come be a young man again? Take a second chance at your life. You lived one entire life as a priest who painted on the side. Now you could do it again and this time devote your life to painting.”

  “Nice fantasy,” he said.

  “You could get married.”

  Pat laughed. “Never been a top priority for me.”

  “What about helping people? You said you came here the first time because you wanted to help people. Imagine how much you could help them if you knew the future.”

  He shook his head, laughed. “Knowing the future and changing the future are two different things. I know the future already—my tremor will get worse. I have maybe two years of painting left. I will slowly succumb to heart disease like normal people do, and I’ll die in a nursing home just like my father did. No way I can change the future. Knowledge isn’t always power.”

  “You don’t want to go back and try to assassinate Hitler?” she said. It seemed like the sort of thing a young and passionate do-gooder priest would want to do.

  “Hitler’s own men couldn’t kill him, and many of them tried. I don’t speak a word of German, but I’ve always wanted to get hanged or shot by a firing squad, so I might as well give it a go, right?”

  “We could try to warn people what was coming.”

  “If a girl walked up to us right now and said unless we assassinate the prime minister of Britain, World War III will break out in ten years, would you believe her?”

  “No,” Faye said.

  “How’s this? I’ll go back and try to kill Hitler. You go back and warn people of the Great Depression and the Third Reich. I’ll end up in a hangman’s noose and you’ll end up in an asylum. And there’ll be no one to get you out this time. One person can’t change the world.”

  “We could change a tiny corner of it. Isn’t that enough reason to go back? To save even one life?”

  “Whose life are you saving by going back? Carrick Morgan and Dolly Rivers Holt both lived into old age.”

  Faye leaned forward and kissed Pat on the cheek. She had a feeling she would never see him again.

  “Mine,” she said.

  She squeezed his hand one last time and started toward her car. Pat called out after her.

  “Be safe, Faye. Please. I’d like to think I’ll meet you again.”

  “You think you’ll come back?”

  “No, but I think if you live long enough, I’ll see you in 1965. I’ll be the baby-face priest who’s scared shitless of his own congregation.”

  “And I’ll be an old lady. You won’t even recognize me.”

  “I’d know those Elizabeth Taylor eyes anywhere.”

  Faye smiled and blew him a kiss. She got back into her car and drove back to the Church Street house. She sat at her desk, at Dolly’s sewing table. She had paper, she had a pen, but she had no one to write to. Her father was dead, and her mother hardly knew her anymore. If she did die tonight or disappear or whatever happened when she left this time, who would miss her? She’d drifted away from her friends after Will’s death, and she’d remarried Hagen so suddenly...

  “Dear Hagen,” she wrote on her stationery.

  What was there to say to him that she hadn’t already said?

  “You were wrong. I can live in the past.”

  She signed it, and as she did she knew no one would ever read this. No one had noticed when she’d left the first time. No one would notice this time. Did it bother her that time and the universe would cover up her disappearance like dirt over an unmarked grave? No. It didn’t bother her. Maybe it should have, but she already felt like a ghost in 2015. She might as well haunt the past as the present.

  Faye stood up and took a quick breath. Time to go. She only needed one more thing. The first time she’d dropped Will’s ring into the water by accident and the water had carried it away, drawing her in like a fish on a hook. Pat had dropped Carrick’s rosary and the same thing had happened to him. She needed an object, something from Will or Carrick, something to act as a key or an offering or a sacrifice. Faye dug through her luggage and found a small velvet box. She opened it and there they were—her wedding band and Will’s. She’d worn hers up until the minute before her courthouse wedding to Hagen. Will had worn his from the moment they said, “I do” until the moment they’d slipped it off his finger before his cremation. She couldn’t bring herself to sacrifice Will’s band, so she took her own wedding band and hoped it would be enough.

  When she made it back to Bride Island, she parked in the bare patch between the trees behind the lighthouse again. She walked to the beach again. She took off her shoes again. She waded into the water again.

  Faye looked up at the lighthouse, at the white tower so silent and so somber, at the lantern room dark and growing darker as the sun disappeared. From her pocket, Faye took out her wedding band. She slipped it onto her ring finger.

  “Will, honey, tell me if I’m doing the wrong thing. Tell me if I’m crazy.”

  You called me honey. That’s cute. Is this a Southern thing you picked up down here?

  “God, I miss you.”

  That’s not a good reason to go tossing yourself into the ocean, Bunny.

  “I miss me. How’s that for a reason?”

  You miss you? You’re standing right there. I can see you. Your tits look great in that shirt, by the way.

  She sighed and the sigh became a laugh.

  “You know this isn’t me. You know I haven’t been me since you died. But back there, back with Carrick and Dolly, I feel like me again.”

  You love them?

  “Like family.”

  Family is worth taking big risks for. And it’s hard to be without family in this world. We aren’t made for it, are we?

  “Very hard. And I don’t feel alone with them. I feel like I belong.”

  He takes care of you, right?

  “He killed an alligator with an ax to protect me.”

  Well, I killed that spider in our bathroom that day. You remember that? Thing was as big as a baseball. Fucking tarantula.

  “My hero.”

  I should have used an ax. That would have been way more badass than swatting it with Sports Illustrated.

  “You’re only saying that because you got spider guts all over the swimsuit edition.”

  Yeah, and we probably wouldn’t have gotten our security deposit back if I’d stuck an ax in the wall.

  “Will?”

  Yes, babe?

  “I want to love him like I loved you. Is that okay?”

  Babe...

  “Please, just tell me how you feel about that—yes or no?”

  Faye, it’s okay. I swear. I want you to love him as much as I want him to love you.

  “You do? Why?”

  Because I’m the goddamned greatest dead husband who ever lived.

  She burst into laughter. “You are that
. No argument from me.”

  Faye took a breath.

  “Will, love? Is this you?” she whispered. “Are you doing this? Are you pulling these strings for me?”

  Didn’t I promise to take care of you until the day you died?

  “Yes, you did, Will. And you’re doing a very good job of it.”

  And with that, she tossed her wedding band into the water.

  She waited.

  The lighthouse beacon flashed once and went dark.

  Faye counted.

  One.

  The water started running high. It lapped at her legs, at her waist...

  Two. Three. Four. Five.

  Faye heard the water rushing toward her, rumbling like an iron train on iron tracks.

  “See you on the other side, my love.”

  Six.

  A wave hit her with the force of that runaway train.

  Seven.

  Light.

  20

  Faye broke the surface with a cry, and a force even stronger than the ocean ripped her from the water and carried her to dry land. She couldn’t see who it was for the salt and blowing sand in her eyes. She struck out with her arms, seeking warm bodies, and caught hold of the first one she found.

  “What year is it?” she yelled. She had to scream over the screaming of the wind.

  “What?” The word sounded like it had been ripped from his mouth and tossed away.

  “What year?” she yelled louder.

  She swiped at her face and blinked her way back to sight.

  “It’s the year you learn how to swim, love.” Carrick knelt at her side, smiling like he’d won the grand prize in the carnival of life. He grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her roughly against him. She clung to his arm, never wanting to let go of him again.

  Dolly, still soaking wet, threw herself on the ground and wrapped her arms around Faye’s stomach. Faye grabbed her, held her. Thank God or whoever was running this show, she was home.

  “How long was I under?” Faye asked.

  “Too fucking long,” Carrick said. “I thought I’d lost you for sure this time.”

  “You swear like a sailor, Chief Morgan.”

  “I am a sailor. Now get into the goddamn lighthouse.”

  “Aye, Chief.”

  Carrick glanced at the ocean stampeding the beach like a herd of wild horses.

  “Get Dolly,” he said. “Hold her hand and you hold mine. Stay low to the ground. Ready?”

  Faye took Dolly’s hand, and they scrambled to their feet.

  “Ready.”

  “Don’t let me go,” he said. “Now run.”

  He took off, her wrist tight in his hand and Dolly’s hand tight in Faye’s. The wind surged, turning the air into a sandstorm. Halfway down the beach the rain started, slamming into them like a thousand tiny bullets. She remembered riding a roller coaster in the rain once and having to cover her face from the pain of hitting the water so much faster than the water hit her. Now the water hit back. Dolly slipped and took Faye down with her. Carrick turned and grabbed them both by the hands.

  Tripping and sliding, the three of them ran into the wind and through the whirling sand. Faye imagined they must have looked like a mad family on the maddest beach outing, a parody of a picture postcard.

  Faye knew she should be terrified. One broken flying branch, one storm surge, one more fall and that could be the end of any one of them. But she couldn’t be afraid, not when she was so relieved to be back. Elated. As soon as she could, she would kiss Carrick and keep kissing him until neither of them knew nor cared what year it was.

  The wind blew hard north, picked up speed as it whipped around the stone seawall and slammed against the lighthouse. Carrick could barely get the door to crack open against the wind. Faye had to slide in through the gap and push it open with her back against the wood. Carrick pushed Dolly through and followed her in, right as a gust of wind caught the door like a sail and pulled it loose from the hinges. Carrick jammed the door into the frame the best he could, but there was nothing for it. The next gust blew the door in and onto the floor. Wind gushed into the tower, cold and wet and angry, and ran circles around the three of them. The lighthouse whistled and howled like a whole orchestra of off-key oboes.

  “Watch room,” Carrick screamed over the wind. “We can shut the hatch.”

  Faye took Dolly’s hand again and coaxed her toward the spiral staircase. Carrick hadn’t been kidding about Dolly’s fear of heights. Dolly took two steps, shook her head and dug in her heels.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” Faye said, taking Dolly’s face in her hands. “Please,” she mouthed over and over, but there was no budging Dolly. She pulled back from Faye and tried to make a break for the open doorway. Carrick caught her around the waist and hoisted her up in his arms.

  “I got her,” he said as Dolly struggled, then went still, not out of surrender but in fear-filled paralysis.

  “That’s one hundred and ten steps?” Faye asked. “That’s impossible.”

  “Follow me close. Whatever you do, don’t let me drop her.”

  Faye followed but she knew they’d never make it. Dolly wasn’t a child of six but a young woman of seventeen. While slender, she was tall and had to weigh at least a hundred pounds, especially in her wet clothes. Dolly let out a low moan of true terror. Faye took her hand. It was ice-cold. Faye locked eyes with her, smiled and squeezed her hand over and over as Carrick began the long, arduous journey up the lighthouse stairs.

  Three sounds competed with one another for dominance in that tower as they wended their slow, torturous way up the lighthouse’s spiral staircase—the wind, Dolly’s moans and whimpers and Carrick’s labored breathing. Faye could barely breathe herself as she kept pace behind them, one hand on Carrick’s lower back for support and her other hand in Dolly’s iron grasp. Although Dolly couldn’t hear her, Faye whispered to her the entire way up, promising her they would be fine, it was okay, they were safe and they would be safe all night, they were almost there, getting closer, so close... She spoke as much for Carrick’s benefit as Dolly’s. She hoped to distract him, give him comfort, give him something. She wouldn’t be able to walk up these steps carrying a gallon of milk in her hands, and here he was, climbing them at a steady rate with the equivalent of twelve of them.

  Two-thirds of the way up, Carrick stumbled. He leaned against the wall, straining to catch his breath.

  “Put her over your shoulders,” Faye said. “Fireman carry.”

  “She’s a girl,” he said between hard breaths, “not a bag of oats.”

  “You can carry her easier.”

  “I can’t put her down. She might bolt.”

  He spoke slowly, gulping air between words. Faye wished she could help him, but she could do nothing but stay close. Dolly had stopped whimpering, but the fear was unmistakable in her eyes, which were as round as silver dollars and bright with tears. She’d dug her fingernails so tightly into the back of Carrick’s shirt she’d torn the fabric and cut the skin.

  Faye looked up. “Maybe thirty steps to go,” she said.