It was different seeing a village through a camera. Each image taken became a memory of its own. A man who would have passed for an aging hippie back home sat in the sun beneath a shingle advertising his surgery. He offered her a nod and a smile before returning to the novel in his lap. A butcher skinning a lamb. A baker totting a huge basket of crusty breads into one restaurant after another, his load lightening with each stop.
Where is home, Cassidy Knowles?
She’d be damned if she knew.
Brown’s Point Lighthouse
Tacoma
First lit: 1887
Extinguished: 1963
47.3059 -122.444
Oscar Brown was the station’s first keeper in the early 1900s. He moved his wife, a horse and a cow, and a piano onto this remote point. He often rowed the three or four miles to Tacoma to attend concerts. An accomplished musician, when the roads finally reached the lighthouse, he became a noted piano teacher when he was not tending the light.
The concrete block lighthouse, though less than a hundred yards from the house, was often inaccessible when major storms flooded the swampy ground. Brown would take a rowing dory out through the mud to add oil or trim the wick.
The striking mechanism for the fog bell had to be wound every 45 minutes. Brown slept little during the long spells of dense fog that frequently plague the point. When the mechanism broke, his wife would count out the twenty-second interval between his strikes. Brown had served thirty years before the fog bell was replaced by a powered horn. The bell traveled to a church for some years but has returned to the old lighthouse, with a bowling ball for a clacker.
The keeper’s cottage is now the centerpiece of a city park. The dwelling’s gardens are filled with rare, heritage plants maintained by the local horticultural society.
NOVEMBER 1
Right back where she’d started.
Alone, huddled behind a lighthouse in a blinding rain and a roaring wind.
Better equipped, Cassidy wasn’t likely to freeze to death, but that didn’t make her any happier to be here than West Point lighthouse last January.
Damn you, Russell. Not one message. Not a single note. When she’d handed his duffle and his camera to Angelo it had been so awkward she’d had to run out of the restaurant not knowing if she would speak or cry. He’d ruined everything.
Jo and Perrin had tried to cheer her up. But neither could explain his final question. They agreed that “in your arms” was a good answer. Light and funny, yet romantic and cozy, too. It had the added benefit of being more than a little bit true. Now her condo was a foreign land. And Shilshole was out of bounds, as was Angelo’s.
Yesterday she’d finally tried to call him, but his phone was disconnected. No forwarding number. He’d gone into hiding. Well, good riddance. She didn’t want to talk to him anyway.
After tomorrow it wouldn’t matter. She’d set aside three days to drive down the coast. Professional movers would empty the condo after she left, and they’d have her house in Napa set up before she got there. A decorator would be there on day four to help her turn it into a home.
So there, Russell Morgan. My home is in the hills above St. Helena, California. In the true heart of American wine country. Is that good enough for you?
She knew it wasn’t. Some part of her knew it wasn’t, but she was at a loss over why or what to do about it.
Get it done and get out of the rain before her fingers turned to icicles.
She pulled the last two envelopes from her pocket. She wouldn’t be here for December, so she’d brought both. And chosen the closer lighthouse. Besides, she’d visited December’s lighthouse at Ediz Hook twice already, on her way to two of the others. She’d even seen it from the water with Russell when they’d sailed out to Destruction Island. Not even a lighthouse anymore, just a flasher atop the Coast Guard station.
Leaving Puget Sound was going to be a major advantage. There was no part of it that escaped his touch. No part of it that could be just hers. Napa would give her a chance to purge her soul of him. Damn porcupine!
She tore open the first letter and huddled over it to shield it from the rain. The writing was so uneven that she had to construct each word a letter at a time. Her heart clenched with sympathetic pain for the effort he’d taken to write it.
Dearest I. S.,
Too sick to even write her nickname.
I followed my destiny north. I left behind my dreams. I discovered new ones. The most important discovery, the one that made my whole life worthwhile, was the love for my dear Adrianne and for my lovely Cassie. There is ice in your veins, a cold determination to put your head down and battle it out. That you got from me.
From your mother, you got the largest, most loving, sweetest heart there ever was. Listen to that. It is your heart that will make you happy, not your head. And I now know, that is what counts.
You are the Ice and the Sweet,
Vic
“But I followed my heart. I followed it to the land you loved.” And all she felt was miserable. All those years “Ice Sweet” had more meanings and she hadn’t known. Her curse and her legacy had become her name, always wanting more and always feeling the pain.
Was there any point in even opening the last letter? She already knew the last words of a dying man.
“You would have loved Knowles Valley.” He had spoken his last words to her just minutes before he died. His one great regret and she had the chance to set it straight. For a Knowles to once again walk that land. And she would love it, with every ounce of willpower in her soul.
She turned the last letter over and over. He’d left off the GPS coordinates. Misspelled the name of the lighthouse. If they’d come this far together, she might as well finish the journey.
Dearest I.S.,
Remember, above all else. Home is neither a place or a state of mind. It is family.
Thank you for being my family. For being my home.
All my love,
Daddy
Daddy. In the end, he’d finally felt worthy to name his role in her life. And that was his final word, ever. The wonderful father he’d always been. Always believing in her, and always doubting himself.
Home was family. It couldn’t be. Had Russell been asking that of her? Had he proposed and she hadn’t even noticed?
The realization burned behind her eyes, in her head and in her heart. Like an oak barrel being charred by fire on the inside. It made the oak accessible to the wine. Mellowed and aged the wine in the process. The precious oak, used for its own flavor.
But there was a second reason they used oak. For both wine and whiskey. Steel trapped the wine, suffocated it. Even the giants of the ultra-modern Napa Valley spent time in oak. And while there, one or maybe two percent of the alcohol and other aromatics leaked out through the porous wood. They slid from the wine and disappeared. A tiny loss, but enough to alter a mediocre wine to wonderful.
Giving up so little gained so much.
Could she let go of that precious percent? And what would it be? Or was it too late? Had she missed her chance, locked up in the steel vat of her own icy stubbornness?
His words were washing off the page. His last letter. He was gone, taking his past with him. Leaving her alone to face her future. Another piece to let go of, shed one layer at a time.
She looked at the lighthouse, perched on the rock. A concrete tower surrounded by a barbed wire-topped fence. The old bell was in a small shed at the back of the park. The rowing dory, long gone, replaced with a replica that would never again leave the boat house to be dragged, pushed and prodded through the mud flats. The remote keeper’s dwelling now in the midst of a posh neighborhood, rentable by the day, and tended by the Points Horticultural Society. All of the history had escaped; no sign remained of the remote corner of Puget Sound where the first keeper had managed to land a piano in 1903. She stood alone.
The only sign of life she could see through the drenching rain was a blue-hulled sailboat with red sails.
She blinked. But it was still there slicing through the rain.
Russell, coming to their lighthouse. Coming to her.
She ran from her partial shelter behind the lighthouse and clambered up onto the rocks.
The Lady continued straight toward her for a long moment, then it jibbed abruptly, awkwardly. Shearing off to the west, away from the lighthouse. No, away from her.
She’d hurt him. Not because she’d meant to. Because she didn’t understand.
“Russell,” her voice was little more than a croak. She tried again. It was no better.
He was glancing over his shoulder, but he wasn’t turning back.
She waved her arms to no effect.
Her coat. She was wearing her red parka, for the first time in six months it was cold and wet enough.
Unable to fight her way out of the zipper with her frozen fingers, she dragged the coat off inside-out over her head.
“Russell.” She waved it against the wind and rain. “See the coat, damn you. See the coat. Red coat, Russell. Don’t leave me behind. Red Coat. Red Coat.”
The boat continued away, until it was barely a shadow in the pounding rain. She was soaked to the bone, but wasn’t willing to turn for her car. Wasn’t willing to give up, not while there was a chance. Not even after that. He had to come back.
She waved the coat once more, but knew it was too little too late. The horizon was empty.
Then off to the north, in a direction she hadn’t been watching, the Lady once again emerged out of the driving rain.
Cassidy frantically waved the coat again. He was coming back. Coming back for her. Please, let him be coming back for her.
The boat pulled close in, a few dozen yards off shore. With one single, emphatic point, he indicated the boat launch on the other side of the park.
She ran. She sprinted. She leaned into the rain and flew. She skidded as she leapt onto the wet wood and scrambled down the dock.
He was there before her. Floating a dozen feet off the end, just a little too far to jump. She considered it anyway, but knew of the bone-aching cold that waited there. The rain pounded off his incandescent yellow slicks like a parade of snare drummers gone mad.
One more time she waved the sopping red coat at him. She didn’t know what else to do.
“What?”
She didn’t know. How was she supposed to know what to say? She had no idea. His hostility was so open. It pushed her back so hard she stumbled and nearly went swimming off the other side. His angry pain lay so sharp and clear, a scar on the face that had once looked at her with such love. An ugly scar she had put there.
“Where were you? I tried calling.”
“I disconnected the damn thing.”
“Why?” As if she didn’t know. To avoid her.
“I’m leaving.”
“When?” He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Not without a goodbye. Not without…
He pointed north. He had the same calendar she did. Ediz Hook Lighthouse. The December lighthouse. One of the very last in Puget Sound on the way to the open ocean.
“Now?” She choked out the word.
He nodded without softening. He kept the boat away from the dock with practiced nudges of the controls and the tiller.
She had to think of what to say. Had to get it right. Had to let him know that…
“I’m giving up the angels’ share.”
“What’s that, some special condo deal they offered you on the beach?”
“It’s the second reason they use oak barrels in making wine. The first is flavor. The second, the angels’ share is what they call the part that escapes through the porous wood. The extra that is lost, let go of, to make the wine that remains behind even better.”
“And what have you let go of?”
How should she know? She didn’t have all the answers on tap. She was making this up as she went. She flapped her arms and let them drop to her side. Then wrapped them about herself because she was rapidly turning into a human popsicle. Maybe not sweet, but certainly icy and soaked through to the skin.
“How about this? Crazy idea.” And she’d think of it in a second. “Hear me out. Okay?”
“I won’t live in Napa.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Or Sienna.”
“Will you shut up for a second?”
“Amazing pictures by the way. You have a great eye.”
“I have two of them. Now, be quiet.”
He bit his upper lip and nodded.
He’d noticed the pictures. She’d loved taking them, loved the connection to place and time. Maybe, just maybe that was the answer. Anything was better than the bitter dregs that had chewed up her life these last three weeks.
“You’re leaving now because you can’t stand to see all of the places we were happy together.”
He didn’t speak, but she knew now. She knew how to read the pain in his eyes. The wound to his heart shot across his face and he looked away. But he didn’t hit the throttle. He didn’t leave. Russell simply hung his head against the pain.
She raised her voice, to make sure he could hear her over the rain.
“I have an offer. It’s a crazy offer. They don’t even know what they need, but I do. I haven’t told you about it yet. They don’t even know about it yet.” Neither did she, but an idea, or the idea of an idea was forming. If she could think fast enough, maybe she’d find it.
“I’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse.” Please, Russell, you made the offer once, make it again? Please.
“Who? China? India?”
“I told you to shut up.” But the words came gently from her throat. She imagined, hoped that they sounded like the caress they were.
“It’s got a lot of great sailing and great people. I know you’ll feel connection there. I know it. They need help. They need my help.”
He didn’t react.
Think, Cassidy. Think harder.
“And, uh, they need an advertising specialist, too. Not some high-end New York studio godlike grunt who doesn’t really care. They need someone who is only happy when he connects with his heart. With his really loving heart.”
He stopped fussing with the controls. The boat began to twist a bit in the protected waters along the dock. He still looked away, but she could see the shift in his shoulders, in his stance. The stark anger was gone. She had a chance. She hopped on one foot and then the other hoping to jog some words loose from her freezing body. Standing out in the November rain was colder than falling overboard.
And many times scarier than merely being dragged out to sea.
“It would give me a chance to really be involved in the whole process. Cultivation to vintnering to marketing. Not control, but involved, understanding. Like you said on our first date. And I’ll, I’ll make it a cooperative of some sort. I’m sure they’ll do it. They’re really good people. They could be world class with my help. With our help.”
There it was.
He turned to face her.
“A dozen or so wineries. Amazing potential. They just need to work together to be the next great wine region. It’s a little place, probably less total acreage than Mondavi, never mind Napa. It’s called Puget Sound. Maybe you’ve heard of it?” Maybe, just maybe you’ll remember that you proposed to me among the Italian vineyards and forget that I was too wrapped up in my own world to hear it.
The boat drifted a few feet closer to the dock.
“So I was thinking. We could, um, sail all over the Sound, up the Inside Passage to Alaska on occasion and... Then, you know, we’d…” what Cassidy?
“. . . together we’d…” What is it you really want? Help me, Daddy.
That was it. He already had.
She stood up straight, moved to the edge of the dock until her toes hung over the ocean, raised her arm, and pointed a finger at his heart now so close as the Lady drifted near.
“As long as we’re together, that’s all that matters.”
The st
ern bumped against the dock, closing the last of the gap between them, her finger actually came to rest against the center of his slicker-covered chest. He looked at her with the eyes she remembered, the ocean-deep eyes she’d gotten lost in the first time she’d seen them.
This time she knew what to say and how to say it.
“You are my home.”
END NOTES
My apologies to Brown Point Lighthouse for the addition of a dock. The original, much larger dock, installed to service the logging on the hills beyond, was removed in the 1930s.
My joy, to take a year and travel with my wife to the dozen lighthouses pictured on a calendar that she gave me for Christmas. She is my home.
AUTHOR BIO
Matthew J. Booker has been critically acclaimed for his romantic suspense fiction as M.L. Buchman. He also has published both science fiction and fantasy under the name Matthew Lieber Buchman. He is happiest, no matter how cliché it may seem, when walking on the beach holding hands with the mother of his awesome kid… or when he’s writing. In among his career as a corporate project manager, he has rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world. He is now making his living full-time as a writer, living on the Oregon Coast. Please keep up with his writing at www.matthewjbooker.com.
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