DEDICATION:
To all women seeking a safe place
to live and a life free of abuse.
Published 2009 by Medallion Press, Inc.
The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO
is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”
Copyright © 2009 by Tekla Dennison Miller
Cover Illustration by Adam Mock
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 9781934755013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
It takes the help of many people to bring about a finished novel. I am especially grateful to Jeff Gamble and his partners, Linda Gamble and John Gale, for giving their permission to me to use the Big Bay Point Lighthouse as a major focus in this story. Unlike the lighthouse in the novel, the actual Big Bay Point Lighthouse is a fully functioning lighthouse and a wonderful bed-and-breakfast, www.bigbaylighthouse.com, nestled on the cliffs of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Thank you also to Dana DeMay, the owner of the historic Thunder Bay Inn, www.thunderbayinn.com, which is a Big Bay bed-and-breakfast located in the small village of Big Bay.
My gratitude also goes to Elizabeth Testa, Joyce Alexander and Joan Green. I could do little without their continued support, humor, and guidance. And of course I thank my husband, Chet, for his encouragement and for standing by me in both good times and bad.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
PROLOGUE
CHAD WILBANKS PACED HIS cell. He’d long since measured the distance from the rear wall to the door, and as he placed one booted foot in front of the other, he followed his usual routine: he ticked off the names of one of his victims. One name per step. Very satisfying. Eight was Susan. Nine was Pilar. In the past it had irked him to take the last, unnamed step before arriving at the turning point. Today, though, he hesitated only a fraction of a moment, then stepped down squarely, with all his weight.
“Ten,” he said, and pivoted, just like squashing a cockroach. A wicked smile played across his face. It was time.
His heartbeat picked up the pace at the thought of the journey ahead. The time for his next adventure was nearing. The plan, which he had painstakingly put together over the past six months, was in place. Nothing would stop him. He would not fail.
A surge of voices filled the cell block. The other prisoners were returning from chow. He despised their intrusion into the only peaceful time in the day he had.
He faced the stainless steel desk bolted to the wall at the opposite end of the cell. Several letters were stacked perfectly square to the edge of the desk, each letter written to a desperate woman he’d found on PrisonPal.com. They all wanted to be his lover, his savior, his wife. They all had gladly sent money to his prison account, as a guarantee for what they foolishly believed would be a future with him. Of course each woman thought there was no other besides her. Each one trusted his carefully written pleas for a partner. Some had forgiven his crimes, but most simply believed him—that he had been wrongfully convicted of serial murder.
Stupid, stupid women. They all qualified to be his next victim.
Chad wasn’t about to waste his time on the easy ones like his pen pals, however. He had a mission. A score to settle. He’d waited four years and now it was time for him to take the next step—the tenth one.
He picked up the letters and fanned them, admiring the addresses from around the country, laughing at the needy women who dared think they could ever be good enough for him.
He checked the calendar hanging on the wall. “I only have to hold on for a few more days. Then”—he tapped the date—“your turn.”
Chapter One
THE LIGHTHOUSE
SLEET BEAT AGAINST THE windows with such force it sounded like hundreds of stones assaulting the pane. Celeste believed the glass would surely break. For nearly a year she’d lived in the Big Bay Point Light-house—a solid, two-story brick structure topped by a sixty-foot tower and carrying the credibility of a century of uninterrupted duty. Yet she questioned whether she would ever get used to the sudden and often fierce storms that occurred over Lake Superior—storms that churned the water into such monstrous seething gray waves they could take down mighty freighters like the Edmund Fitzgerald in a November gale like the one howling outside. Fortunately, no ships had been lost in the nearby waters since 1985.
Today, Big Bay Point Lighthouse served as a “harbor” of another sort: a refuge for victims of domestic violence. Celeste sighed. If that was the only way Celeste Brookstone’s name would be known to posterity, so be it. It was an honorable way.
Still, Celeste gazed at the wild whitecaps with trepidation. The lighthouse sat thirty feet above the water. Could those waves ever rise over the rocky cliff? It was only the second week in November—too early for such a storm. She wrapped her arms around her chest to ward off a sudden chill. Celeste sensed something worse lay ahead and it had nothing to do with the weather. Silly.
A child’s cry interrupted Celeste’s thoughts. She turned away from the enraged lake and focused on the three women, mostly in their mid-to late-twenties, and their children. Adrian sat in the rocker huddled close to the formidable, natural brick fireplace. Although the living room had plenty of space, the others crowded onto one of two arts-and-crafts-style sofas. The women and children only found comfort from each other. Even the two wingback chairs on either side of the fireplace, Celeste’s own personal favorites, stood like a pair of lonely sentries. Although the women should have been consoled by the flames that seemed to dance to the fire’s crackling, their eyes held the fear Celeste could only assume they had also revealed when their partners had assaulted them.
Celeste lifted Matthew, the crying two-year-old boy, whose left arm was in a cast, and rocked him gently in her arms. “Quiet, little one. The nasty wind and rain won’t come inside.” She wondered if those sounds awakened horrible memories even for one so young.
She faced the women. “You don’t have to be afraid of this storm.”
The women hunched over further as the wind increased and whistled and roared around the house an
d through the woods behind. The bare tree branches twisting in the gale sounded like wild beasts scratching the sky. The women didn’t speak. Each time a gust growled outside, they held their collective breath and stared at the window facing the lake. Clearly the women expected to be swept away by the storm’s energy and violence.
“This lighthouse,” Celeste continued, “has withstood far more dreadful weather than this for over a hundred years. You have to admit, you can hardly hear a creak even though the building is being lashed by the wind. Such strength has to tell us something. Right?”
No one responded. No one moved. The women’s eyes stayed focused on the windows. Although the toasty fire warmed the cozy living room, the women and children shivered as though they had been tossed out into the freezing storm.
“The worse that can happen is”—Celeste still tried to ease their fears—“we’ll lose both the electrical power and telephone service. But we have flashlights, kerosene lamps, and my cell phone for such occasions.” She handed the quieted boy to his mother.
The closest the women had been to any wilderness was a city park. “The lighthouse,” she reassured them, “has proven to be a formidable shelter over the years and I doubt it will let us down tonight.”
Celeste understood why such rational thinking wouldn’t calm these women—they had to erase years of horror from their memories before they ignored Mother Nature’s every creak and snap. Surely Celeste would react the same way if she were in their shoes.
Celeste allowed herself to think about the first time she saw the lighthouse. Max Whitefeather, the warden then at nearby Hawk Haven Prison outside Marquette, brought her to Big Bay Point after they enjoyed a brunch at the Thunder Bay Inn, a few miles away. On that first visit to the lighthouse, it reminded her of a medieval castle, stalwart and impregnable.
“It’s on the National Historic Record,” Max boasted as though he owned the place.
Max had wanted to give Celeste a break from a quest that was all but consuming her: answers to her daughter’s murder. Pilar had been a doctor at Hawk Haven when she became entangled in a crazy escape scheme devised by a serial killer, Chad Wilbanks. Celeste had blamed herself at the time for her daughter’s tragic destiny, and even now, four years later, she couldn’t let go of the guilt she’d harbored since the day of Pilar’s death—July 17, 2003. If she had left Marcus, her prominent, wealthy, and abusive husband, when Pilar was a child, Celeste believed her daughter would still be alive.
Celeste surveyed the families in her care. Had she pushed her own luck and perhaps theirs by relocating close to the prison where Chad was still locked away? Nonsense. He couldn’t be a threat to her. Chad was safely secured—Hawk Haven was a maximum-security prison. He couldn’t possibly harm her or anyone else, at least not outside the institution.
Besides, Chad couldn’t hurt Celeste any more than he had already. The pain still stabbed her heart when she thought about Pilar’s love for him. Pilar had to have been terribly lonely to have given in to his manipulation. Celeste had been so caught up in her own unhappy situation then, she was blind to Pilar’s need for a father’s love. In fact, Celeste had been in no better shape at that time than the women who now shared her life.
Still the guilt lingered. Yet Celeste had realized the only way to survive the loss of her daughter—her only child—was to face her guilt and her grief head-on. Buying the lighthouse was part of the plan she’d prayed would eventually free her. One day, when she had the strength, she also planned to confront Chad Wilbanks again.
The image of Pilar—half her face blown away—lying on a table in the morgue flashed into Celeste’s mind, as it often did. Pilar would have been thirty- two now. Perhaps she would have been a mother and Celeste a grandmother. A lump as big as a fist filled Celeste’s throat and she forced the image from her thoughts. She knew she’d have to settle for caring for other women’s children, like the ones clustered on the couch. She knew she also shared their pain.
Celeste studied her adopted family huddled around the fireplace. The lighthouse had become a safe house for abused women and their children. It was a small shelter. Yet it was the right size for Celeste to handle with mostly volunteers and a few employees, and without asking for too much outside funding. She couldn’t even comprehend that there were about fifteen thousand women in shelters in Michigan alone. What kind of cultural statement did those numbers make in a country that boasted about the progress women had made? After that discovery she believed the one positive thing Marcus had done for her was to leave her with enough money to be financially independent and, ironically, help women who were much like she herself had been years ago.
Celeste watched two children summon enough courage to forget the storm and leave the couch, although they stayed at their mothers’s feet. They spread a set of colorful LEGOs over the fading braided rug and began constructing a building. They said it would be a lighthouse.
While Celeste gazed at them, she reminded herself that the safe house filled another need—it was a way she could honor her daughter. Plus, the lighthouse was as far as she could get from Marcus’s shallow and deceptive world in southeast Michigan.
A slight smile formed on Celeste’s aging face as she watched the tension ease from the two children. She could feel the creases forming when her mouth moved. When Celeste had anguished over her aging, Max told her, “You are still as beautiful as a model.” He always seemed to say the right thing.
Celeste touched the side of her mouth. Max. Incredible to have become so close to him. What would Pilar think of their relationship? She wished Max were here tonight in case anything went wrong. She still wasn’t used to being totally self-sufficient. Again she had the premonition something unpleasant was about to happen. She shook her head. “Silly.”
“What?” Adrian asked.
Celeste’s stomach growled. The thought of food and Adrian’s question brought Celeste back to the present. “Time for dinner, don’t you think?” she asked.
A chorus of both women and children’s voices sounded. “Yes.”
“Whose turn is it to help in the kitchen?” Celeste asked.
Marcy, the twenty-five-year-old mother of the crying child, stood. “Me. Those books”—she pointed to the bookshelf filled with the history of the lighthouse, the sea, and shipwrecks—“haven’t helped me feel any safer tonight. It’ll be good to get my mind off the weather.”
Also, Celeste thought, maybe Marcy wouldn’t feel the pain from the blood-encrusted stitches over her right eye, which was still nearly swollen closed. Marcy had been at the lighthouse only one week and already Celeste feared she would have a tough time getting enough of a handle on her life to succeed on her own. Her transition could take longer than the customary three months. Though Celeste had never forced any woman to leave if she wasn’t truly ready, which was a benefit of not relying on outside funding.
Still, she had to keep telling herself that the women needed to become independent as soon as humanly possible if they were to make it on their own. She had realized that herself when she left Marcus. Even so, Celeste often found it difficult to let the women go. Most became like her family, especially Adrian, who often managed the house in Celeste’s absence. Had she become too dependent on all of them, secretly wanting them to fill the void left by Pilar’s death?
All eyes were on her. “Great. Let’s get dinner started. I’m starving,” Celeste said and went into the small but cheerful kitchen painted in a pale pink that reminded Celeste of a baby rose. The windows faced the road and normally ushered in rays of early morning sun. Though the room was not a gourmet setting, its hominess made it a welcoming workplace.
Celeste wrapped an apron over her jeans and sweater, far more practical clothes than the silks and linens she had once worn without a thought. She tossed an apron to Marcy, who pulled the blue flower print, bibbed and ruffled apron over her head and tied it on.
“You look like a flower,” Celeste said cheerfully.
“I look like my gr
andmother,” Marcy shot back with a chuckle. She lifted the sack of potatoes from a bin under the counter. “Mashed tonight, right?” she asked when she checked the day’s menu tacked to a bulletin board near the refrigerator.
“Right,” Celeste answered. “It’s one thing your boy eats without a fuss.”
Marcy laughed. “He does have a stubborn streak.” She grimaced. “His father does, too.” She took a deep, shivering breath.
Celeste noted Marcy’s sudden melancholy and quickly got her attention off her past. “I won’t feel bad, either, when Matt won’t eat the outstanding meat loaf and peas that I’m making tonight. He can have some homemade applesauce instead. He likes that, I know.”
Marcy’s eyes were misty, but she forced another smile. “Yes, he sure does like applesauce.” She had a slight Southern accent. She swiped a tear from her cheek and began peeling potatoes.
Celeste choked up, too. Would Marcy ever get over her fear of the man she had run from—or of any man, for that matter?
Celeste turned to Adrian and said, “Why don’t you make sure all the flashlights work and the lanterns are filled with oil?”
“We need more than those leftover jack-o'-lanterns.” Adrian laughed and pointed at the collection still arranged on a long, narrow table near the bookshelves.
Celeste rolled her eyes. Although Halloween was long past, the children had persuaded Celeste and their mothers to let them keep the pumpkins for a while longer. Celeste told them it would be okay, until they started to rot. Since they had begun to lean and fold inward, the time had drawn near.
Adrian, an attractive twenty-nine-year-old, gathered up the flashlights and lanterns. She had been an ER nurse before arriving at the safe house and was the oldest of the women. She’d brought along her three children—twin ten-year-old girls, McKenna and Logan, and an eight-year-old boy, Trey. She was slightly shorter than Celeste but just as slender. She wore her light brown hair in a short, modern shag, which was the best way to describe it. Her oval-shaped eyes and almond complexion gave her an Asian beauty.
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