The Night Mark

by Tiffany Reisz

  “It works,” Carrick said, wincing slightly. “It’s just...ah...gas is a little unstable. There were a few accidents.”

  “Accidents? Big? Little?”

  “Well, one lighthouse exploded,” Carrick said. “But that’s not going to happen here. Hope not anyway. You want to go up and see the improvements?”

  Hartwell took a step back. “You know what, Chief? I think I’ll admire it from afar.”

  Carrick was trying to scare the shit out of Hartwell on purpose—Faye was certain of that. After all, Carrick had run gas into the keeper’s cottage, so surely it wasn’t too dangerous. Then again, powering a house in 1921 with any sort of gas sounded about as safe as powering a house with lightning. Who knew? Maybe if the house blew up and Faye died again, she’d end up back in 2015 where she belonged.

  “It’s a pretty fine setup y’all have out here,” Hartwell said, nodding at the garden and the house. “Nice view, even if you do have to live out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “We’re grateful to have the work,” Carrick said. “Lots of men don’t this year.”

  “Doesn’t look like y’all are going to starve. I see cabbage. I see corn and peas and melons and summer squash. This must have taken some doing.”

  “Our Dolly’s got a green thumb.”

  “Good to have a girl around like that. She lives here, I suppose?”

  “No. She has brothers and sisters and parents,” Carrick said evenly. “They need her at home when she’s not here.”

  “So you all are all alone out here, aren’t you? Just the two of you most of the time?”

  “Who else would we need?” Carrick asked.

  “Daddy told me the Lighthouse Bureau offered to find you an assistant keeper and you told them no. You don’t want the help?”

  “The light is automated now, so it mostly runs itself. I’m just here to wind the flash and run the foghorn. If something happens, Faith can radio the Hunting Island station. They have a keeper and two assistants, and one of them could be here in under and hour by boat.”

  “What if there’s a storm and they can’t make it over here?”

  “I’m teaching Faith how the light works. She can take over if something happens.”

  “Seems like a lot of hard work for such a young lady.” Hartwell glanced at her, a cursory glance, quick and dismissive.

  “Wives and widows and daughters have been running lights for fifty years or more, Mr. Hartwell,” Carrick said. “The keeper’s widow is running the Red Point lighthouse as we speak.”

  “But a girl as young and sweet as Miss Faith? She’d blow away in a stiff breeze.”

  “I’m twenty, not two,” she said. If there was anything she hated, it was being infantilized by a man. “I can handle the light if and when I have to.”

  “Twenty? I was under the impression you were seventeen. I must have misheard that figure.”

  Faye winced internally. She’d done it. She’d flubbed a line.

  “Faith is twenty now,” Carrick said hastily. “She was seventeen when I got out of the navy. Maybe the years got mixed up in the telling.”

  “You must have married young to have a daughter of twenty. You’re thirty-five, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Faith was five years old when I married her mother,” Carrick said. “My late wife had lost her husband when Faith was still just a baby.”

  “Oh, I see.” Hartwell smiled and put his boater back on his head. “Any plans to remarry? You’re a young man after all. About as young as me.”

  “No plans,” Carrick said. “I’m content as I am.”

  “You must have loved your wife very much.”

  “Very much,” Carrick said with real feeling. “But I can’t see myself remarrying. Not until my girl is safe and settled.”

  “Now it all makes sense,” Hartwell said, taking his hat off once more and placing it over his heart. “Let me offer my condolences on the loss of your wife and Miss Morgan’s mother. I lost my own mother at fifteen, and a finer woman there never lived. I understand when a woman is irreplaceable.”

  “Thank you,” Carrick said and said no more. Faye struggled to say silent. She wanted to ask a thousand questions, but she couldn’t risk it, especially not in front of Hartwell. She’d already screwed up by revealing Faith’s real age. Of course Carrick had told people his daughter was seventeen if he was thirty-five. They must have created a whole story to explain why a girl had shown up one day at the lighthouse and moved in with the keeper.

  “Twenty years old,” Hartwell said, interrupting her thoughts. “I guess you’ll be getting married soon enough. Then you’ll leave your poor father behind to tend the light all by himself. Or are you planning on devoting the rest of your life to your daddy?”

  “No reason I can’t do both,” Faye said. “Right? The man I marry can be the assistant keeper, and we’d all live in one house under the same roof.”

  “You paint a pretty picture,” Hartwell said. “But surely some handsome man is going to come along and sweep you off your feet. Carry you away to Beaufort or Charleston. I love living in Charleston myself. Quite a town. I think you’d like to see it, wouldn’t you? I’d be happy to show you around whenever you like.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be awfully busy out here,” Faye said.

  “Surely your father could spare you for one evening. I’d bring my boat out to fetch you and take my new Talbot tourer into town. We’d ride into Charleston in high style.”

  “Faith is right. We are awfully busy out here.”

  “Miss Morgan, tell me how are you going to find this magic man to marry who will be your father’s assistant keeper if you don’t leave the island?”

  “I don’t have to leave the island to find a husband,” she said.

  “You don’t? You think he’s going to come to you?” Hartwell asked, his voice teasing. But she didn’t feel teased—she felt threatened.

  “He already has,” Faye said. “I’m engaged.”

  12

  If it weren’t for the knot of terror lingering in the pit of Faye’s stomach, she might have laughed at the twin expressions of astonishment on Carrick’s and Hartwell’s faces. Carrick recovered first.

  “You hadn’t mentioned that to me,” he said.

  “I was waiting for the right time.” Faye tried to sound girlish and apologetic, but she wasn’t sure if she succeeded. She would never make it in a career on the stage. “I knew you wouldn’t want me marrying a sailor. You told me so many times how hard the life is.”

  “When is the blessed occasion?” Hartwell asked in a too-friendly tone.

  “We haven’t decided yet. I met him in Boston but he had to ship out again. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  “And that’s why I said I didn’t want you marrying a seaman.” Carrick fell into the role of the concerned father as if he’d been born to play it.

  “What’s your gentleman’s name?” Hartwell asked. “I’ll keep my ears open for any news of his return to you.”

  Faye spoke the first name that came to mind.

  “Pat Cahill,” she said. “Patrick Cahill.”

  “A sailor, and of good Irish stock like your father. You must really love your father,” Hartwell said, grinning that plastered-on smile again that made Faye think about shoving corncobs into dimly lit places.

  “I know the life,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “My felicitations to the happy couple.” Hartwell swept his hat down and gave her a bow. “Now, Chief, perhaps you’ll walk me to my boat. It’s a testy little critter. Then I’ll be on my way and let you get back to work.”

  “To bed,” Faye said. “He sleeps during the day and works all night.”

  “Sleeping all day and working all night doesn’t sound like much of a life to me. If I’m going to be up all night, it sure as sin ain’t going to be for work,” Hartwell said, his smile widening. He wore his grin the way other men wore a gun.

  “It suits me fine,” Carrick said
.

  “Better you than me.” Hartwell slapped Carrick on the back and the two of them set off.

  Once they disappeared from view, Faye returned to the kitchen to finish her breakfast. The eggs had gone runny and the bacon cold, but it still tasted better than anything she’d let herself eat in a long time. Lard and sugar and butter and eggs—the four food groups of traditional Southern cooking.

  Dolly had finished eating, washed her own dishes and put them away. Faye didn’t see her anywhere, so she assumed she’d gone upstairs to work or hide. Faye didn’t blame her for that. She’d hide from Hartwell next time he came to visit, too.

  Faye put her dishes in the sink and stared blankly at them. She didn’t see any dish soap anywhere. She felt guilty for taking her automatic dishwasher for granted all these years. When she got home, she’d get on her knees in the kitchen of the Church Street house and kiss Miss Lizzie’s dishwasher.

  If she ever got home.

  Outside the house, Faye heard the sound of male voices calling back and forth to each other. She heard an engine start and the sound of a boat on the water zipping away.

  Good riddance.

  Carrick came back in the house through the back door. She glanced at him over her shoulder as she ran water over her plate.

  “How hard did you hit your head last night?” Carrick demanded, coming to stand by the sink.

  “I didn’t hit my head last night,” she said. “Or if I did hit it, I don’t remember doing it. Which could be the case if I hit my head.”

  “You told Hartwell you were engaged?”

  “I don’t want him out here sniffing around Dolly or me. Did you hear what he said about her?”

  “I heard. Arrogant shit,” he said, shaking his head. “Sorry.”

  “You can swear in front of me. I am engaged to a sailor. I’ve heard salty talk before.”

  “I wish you’d told me before you told Hartwell that was your story. I looked like an ass out there with my mouth hanging open.”

  “It just came to me when he asked me to go to Charleston with him. I’d rather go swimming with sharks than out with him.”

  “He’s not that bad,” Carrick said, and she gave him the cockeyed stare she’d given Will when he claimed something “wasn’t that bad” that was, in fact, “that bad.” Like when he’d come home from a road trip with a “not that bad” bruise the side of a cantaloupe on his back courtesy of a ninety-two-miles-per-hour wild pitch.

  “All right, he’s that bad,” Carrick conceded.

  “He scares Dolly. Does she know him?”

  “No idea. You better ask her what she knows about him, then.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  Carrick gripped the ledge of the green tile of the kitchen counter and shrugged. “You know, it might be a female thing.”

  Faye rolled her eyes.

  “I’ll talk to her,” she said. “After I do the dishes. You finish your breakfast.”

  Carrick nodded and went to the table.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her plate with a wet rag. “I didn’t mean to let my real age slip out like that.”

  Carrick stabbed at his eggs with his fork.

  “Not your fault. We got nothing but lies lying around here. Easy to trip over one.”

  “I tripped,” she said. “I’ll try not to trip again.”

  She dried her dishes and put them away as Carrick finished his breakfast. When he was done he tossed his plaid napkin on the table and leaned back in his chair.

  “It was smart,” he said.

  “What was?”

  “You telling Hartwell you were engaged to a sailor. Men can be out to sea for months, for years. And Hartwell seems like the gossiping sort. Once it gets around town you’re engaged, we won’t have to worry about suitors showing up. It was smart, even if you did catch me off guard.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I heard a story about the sister of a lighthouse keeper who was engaged to a sailor. He shipped out and never came back. She waited for him all her life.”

  “Was that in a book you read?”

  Faye started to say no but then thought better of it. Last year she and Hagen had gone to Savannah on a four-day vacation. He’d wanted to cheer them both up after a failed intrauterine insemination treatment. They’d played good tourists on that trip and had taken a carriage ride around town. The tour guide had pointed out a statue of a woman, the lighthouse keeper’s sister, who’d greeted every single ship that came into port by waving a white towel at them in the hopes her beloved was on board and returning to her. By 2014 the woman was a local legend. In 1921, she was someone Faye could have tea with.

  “Yes, I read it in a book a long time ago.”

  Carrick stood up and brought his dishes to the sink. Faye tried to take them from him, and he gave her yet another confused look.

  “You’re doing dishes now?” he asked.

  “Of course, I—”

  She nearly said, “I always do dishes” but that was Faye, not Faith.

  “I only wanted to help,” Faye said.

  “You can help all you want. You just never have... I mean, I know you aren’t used to housework.”

  Another hint. Another clue. Faye looked at her hands—Faith’s hands. Smooth, no calluses, neatly trimmed nails. What sort of woman in 1921 wouldn’t have done her own housework? A rich woman, that was who. The wife of a rich man. Faith’s husband had money.

  “There are lots of things I’ve never done before that I’m probably going to start doing.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that last night.”

  “Carrick, last night... I’m sorry. I was just overwhelmed,” Faye said.

  “You weren’t the only one.” He smiled, but the smile didn’t last long. “About last night...” he began. “And the dishes. You aren’t trying to earn your keep around here, are you?”

  She found herself blushing, still humiliated by how she’d tried to seduce this man, this total stranger, simply because he looked like and sounded just like Will.

  “Because I would never ask that of you,” Carrick said. “You don’t have to pay for room and board here with your body. You don’t have to pay for it with anything at all. Not for me or Dolly. Dolly gets paid a good wage for her work, and she isn’t complaining.”

  “She doesn’t think I’m lazy?”

  “Well, she does, but she thinks that about everybody, myself included.”

  “You’re the lighthouse keeper.”

  “She sees me sleeping all day.”

  “Because you work all night.’

  “That she doesn’t see.”

  Faye laughed. She had been a pretty hard-nosed teenager herself. No one had met her impossible standards.

  “I don’t want to be lazy,” Faye said. “I don’t have much else to do. I’d rather help than sit around.”

  “I’m sure Dolly would appreciate a hand, and I appreciate what she appreciates.”

  “You’re a good man.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I threw myself at you last night, and you didn’t take advantage of me.”

  “I’m not the sort of man to take someone else’s wife to bed, even if that man doesn’t deserve to kiss her baby toe.”

  “Right. Of course you’re not,” she said. “Now you should get to bed, right?” Faye needed to end this conversation before she said anything else wrong, anything else that might give her away.

  “Going. Wake me if you need anything.”