The Lightkeeper. Susan Wiggs
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It was as haunting as a melody, bringing back wave after wave of unwanted memories. He could see her, could hear the sound of her laughter and smell the soaps and powders she stroked across her skin.
Even after all these years, he still bled inside when he thought of her. Of them. Of the hopes and dreams he had so thoughtlessly shattered.
He brought the ax down relentlessly, over and over, trying to purge himself of all feeling. His shoulders ached and sweat ran down his face, into his eyes and over his neck and chest. By the time Magnus came out, a huge supply of freshly cut wood lay massacred around Jesse.
Magnus stared at the wood. “You had best come in now,” he said.
The house was warm, almost oppressively so. The woman’s blue dress had been added to the laundry vat on the stove. Jesse hated the thought of the stranger’s garment mingling with his own in the kettle.
Palina was bent over the bed, plumping pillows behind the woman and clucking, always clucking.
“You’re a meddlesome old biddy, Palina,” Jesse said. He was surprised. He sounded almost…normal.
“And proud of it,” she retorted.
If Jesse had been the sort of man who smiled, he would have just then. He harbored genuine liking for Magnus and Palina, who knew when to keep their distance and when to lend a hand. At the moment, he needed their help.
“Well?” Palina prodded him. “Aren’t you going to ask if your little visitor is all right?”
“Is she?”
Palina nodded, smoothing her hands down the front of her white apron. “With plenty of attention and care, she and the little one will be just fine.”
He almost flinched at the mention of the baby, but he forced himself to remain stoic, emotionless. “We can use the flatbed cart to get her to your place,” he said.
“No,” said Palina.
“Then I’ll carry her—”
“Not so fast, my friend.” Magnus held up his good hand. “The woman is not coming with us.”
“Of course she is. Where else—”
“Here,” Palina said with brisk finality. “Right here, where she can heal and grow strong in the care of the man who found her. The man for whom the gift was intended.”
“We must be practical,” Magnus added. “You have plenty of space here. We have but two cramped rooms and a loft for Erik.”
Jesse forced out a dry bark of laughter. “That’s impossible. I don’t even keep a dog, for chrissakes. I can’t keep a—a—”
“Woman,” Palina said. “A woman who is with child. Can you not even say it? Can you not even speak the truth when it is right here before you?”
Panic flickered to life inside Jesse. The Jonssons were serious. They actually expected him to keep this stranger. Not just keep her, but tend to her every need, nurture and heal her.
“She’s not staying.” He tried to keep the edge out of his voice. “If you won’t tend her, I’ll take her to town.”
Magnus spoke in Icelandic to his wife, who nodded sagely and touched her neat kerchief. “Moving her would be a terrible risk after the shock she has suffered.”
“But—” Jesse clamped his mouth shut until his jaw ached. He pinched the bridge of his nose hard as if trying to squeeze out a simple solution. If Palina was right, and something terrible befell the woman as a result of moving her, he would feel responsible.
Again. Always.
“It is the law of the sea,” Magnus said, running his weathered right hand through his bushy hair. “God has given her to you.”
They stood together on the tiled hearth in front of the massive black stove, Palina absently tugging at a thread on Magnus’s empty white sleeve. Yet her gaze never left Jesse’s, and he saw again a spark of faith, ancient and obstinate, in the depths of her eyes.
Faith.
“I don’t believe in the old sea legends,” he said. “Never have.”
“It does not matter what you believe. It is still true,” Magnus said.
Palina set her hands on her hips. “There are things that come to us from beyond eternity, things we have no right to question. This is one of them.”
Every aching fiber that made up Jesse Morgan leaped and tensed in painful denial. He would not, could not, accept this stranger into his house, into his world.
“She can’t stay.” Fear turned his voice to a whiplash of anger. “I can’t give her anything. Can’t give her help or hope or healing. There’s nothing here for her, don’t you understand that? She’d stand a better chance in hell.”
The words were out before he realized what he was saying. They came from the poisoned darkness inside him, and they rang with undeniable truth.
Magnus and Palina exchanged a glance and some low words. Then Palina tilted her head to one side. “You will do what you must for the sake of this woman. This child.” Her eyes sharpened with insight. “Twelve years ago, the sea took from you everything you held dear.” Her words dropped heavily into the silence. “Now, perhaps, it has given something back.”
The couple left the house. Jesse had no doubt that Palina was aware of what she had just done. She had breached the bounds of their association. In twelve years, no one—no one—had dared to speak to him of what had happened. That was the way he had coped—by not speaking of something that lived with him through each breath he took.
He stalked out to the porch. “Get back here, goddammit!” he yelled across the yard. He had never yelled at these people, never sworn at them. But their stubborn refusal to help him set off his temper. “Get the hell back here and help me with this—this—”
Palina turned to him as she reached the bend in the path. “Woman is the word you want, Jesse. A woman who is with child.”
“Can you believe this, D’Artagnan?” Jesse asked in annoyance. He dismounted and tethered his horse to the hitch rail in front of the Ilwaco Mercantile. “The Jonssons think I have to keep that infernal woman because of some legend of the sea. I never heard of such a damned cockamamy thing. It’s about as crazy as—”
“As talking to your horse?” asked someone on the boardwalk behind Jesse.
He turned, already feeling a scowl settle between his brows. “D’Artagnan gets skittish in town, Judson.”
Judson Espy, the harbormaster, folded his arms across his chest, rocked back on his heels and nodded solemnly. “I’d be skittish, too, if you named me after some Frenchy.”
“D’Artagnan is the hero of The Three Musketeers.”
Judson looked blank.
“It’s a novel.”
“Uh-huh. Well, if the poor nag is so damned nervous, you ought to let me take him off your hands.”
“You’ve been trying to buy this horse for ten years.”
“And you’ve been saying no for ten years.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t caught on yet.” Jesse skimmed his hand across the gelding’s muscular neck. D’Artagnan had come into his life at a low point, when he had just about decided to give up…on everything. A Chinook trader had sold him the half-wild yearling, and Jesse had raised it to be the best horse the territory had ever seen. Over the years, he’d added three more to the herd at the lighthouse station—Athos, Porthos and Aramis completed the cast of the Musketeers.
He joined Judson on the walkway. Their boots clumped as the two men passed the mercantile. As stately as a river barge, the