by Jody Hedlund
Chapter 28
SEVEN MONTHS LATER
MAY 1866
Caroline leaned against the gallery railing, peered out over the glistening water of Lake St. Clair, and drew in a breath of spring air. The monarchs had returned from Mexico. Clusters of them hovered along the lakeshore, one of the many stops in their migration north.
She caught the aroma of the peonies she’d planted around the base of the tower. It was her favorite time of year, when the flowers were in full bloom after the long winter. Of course, she didn’t have quite as many blooms as in years past, for Arnie had razed most of them last fall. But with the bulbs Monsieur Poupard had planted, her flower garden was given a new start.
Monsieur Poupard came over earlier in the month with cuttings of lilies and daffodils. And now with all of them growing, the aroma mingled with the thawed lake water and brought contentment to her soul.
“God is good,” she whispered into the bright morning, even as her attention strayed to a fresh mound of dirt in the small cemetery at the edge of the marsh.
Sarah, after holding on through the winter, died peacefully in her sleep in April. Caroline wasn’t sure what had kept Sarah alive all winter, but she had a feeling it had to do with Monsieur Poupard’s visits.
The old trapper sat with Sarah on many dark days, holding her hand and speaking to her in his strong French accent. And although Sarah had declined so that she lost her ability to speak, her eyes still shone with love, especially when Monsieur Poupard was in the room.
Caroline learned that the Frenchman had once had a little girl of his own, but that he’d been gone for long portions of the year trapping and had missed out on much of his daughter’s life. He was out in the wilderness when his daughter had contracted consumption. By the time he received the news and made it back home, she’d passed away.
One stormy winter night, Monsieur Poupard had relayed the story to Caroline, and she’d understood then his need to be with Sarah and make her life as happy as possible before she died.
Caroline looked away from the grave marked by a simple cross and adorned with as many flowers as Caroline could manage to plant in the vicinity. She drew in another deep breath and moved back into the lantern room. She’d already extinguished the light, but there was something about being outside on the gallery in the early morning that nourished her.
A quick survey of the room told her everything was in order for the day. She smiled with a measure of pride in a job well done.
She’d done an excellent job—those were the exact words of the new lighthouse inspector who’d come for a visit yesterday. Excellent job. Her smile widened as she made her way down the winding stairway.
Last fall she’d learned that Mr. Finick had been fired, that someone had gone to the Board and reported the old inspector for taking bribes from locals. She had the suspicion that Ryan had been the one to do the reporting, not long after he’d left, although she couldn’t be certain.
Someone had also filed reports about Mr. Simmons’s illegal smuggling. He hadn’t been caught at it, but now that the authorities had gotten involved, Caroline noticed a decline in Simmons’s clandestine activities. Or at the very least, he’d moved to a different area of the lake to engage in his smuggling.
Whatever the case, she was grateful Ryan had sought justice before moving on. She guessed he’d made his reports in an effort to protect her from further harassment.
With the arrival of the new inspector, and his glowing words of praise, she felt pleased to be paving the way for women who would come after her. If she could do a job considered only suitable for men and do it equally well, then why couldn’t other women do what they loved too?
At the bottom of the tower, she stepped into the restored passageway. Before the winter set in, the Lighthouse Board had sent out a crew to rebuild the connecting room. She was grateful for their swift attention and help.
With her logbooks stacked neatly on a new table and a jar of fresh-cut peonies next to them, she thought back to that fateful day when Mr. Finick had visited last fall, when he’d been disgusted with her flowers and had ordered her to leave the light. The day Ryan first arrived . . .
A quick blade of pain sliced her heart.
She crossed the small room and pushed open the door leading into the cottage, trying to just as easily push aside the pain that remembrances of Ryan elicited, even seven months after he’d left. It had gotten a little easier to stop thinking about him constantly, and it was a little less painful when she did. But not by much.
She missed him every day, every hour. She prayed that wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, that he’d finally found peace and healing.
“Is that you, Caroline?” came Tessa’s voice from the kitchen.
Caroline passed by her bedroom door, wanting nothing more than to fall into her bed and sleep. She’d stayed up in the tower too long that morning to take in the fragrances and bright colors of spring.
She poked her head into the kitchen, to the sight of Tessa at the table dressing a muskrat. Her arms were covered in dark blood from the carcass lying in the roasting pan in front of her.
Caroline wrinkled her nose. “I see Monsieur Poupard has delivered another of his gifts this morning.”
Tessa nodded. “He’s a godsend. If not for him, our bellies would be rumbling much more often than they do now.”
“True.” It hadn’t taken Caroline long to figure out that Monsieur Poupard was the one leaving muskrat on their doorstep all along. She’d once thought it was Arnie. But when the secret deliveries continued even after Arnie had been hauled away to prison for arson and kidnapping, they’d finally set up a lookout. One early morning, Tessa and Sarah spied Monsieur Poupard sneaking out of the woods and toward the cottage with a skinned muskrat across his shoulder.
They hadn’t told Monsieur Poupard they knew he was the one leaving the gifts. But they always invited him for dinner on the evenings Tessa roasted the meat.
“He’s coming for dinner tonight.” Tessa winked at Caroline. She and Tessa laughed together often over the fact that now Monsieur Poupard gave them muskrat even more regularly.
“Good,” Caroline said with a return wink. “I’ll warn the boys to be on their best behavior.”
Of course, the twins still caused Monsieur Poupard all kinds of grief. But underneath his gruff exterior, she could tell he cared about them too.
Caroline smothered a yawn and turned to retreat to her bedroom.
“I’ve already pulled the curtains for you,” Tessa said in a rush.
Caroline stopped at the strange statement.
“I was in there tidying up,” Tessa explained, “and so I went ahead and got the room ready for you.”
“Thank you.” Caroline couldn’t make sense of the tiny note of excitement in Tessa’s voice, except that it was finally May and summer was just around the corner. And with the coming of summer she’d promised Tessa she would investigate a school for teacher’s training, so that perhaps Tessa could leave the community behind her.
It had been a long, hard year for Tessa. She was shunned by most in the area, though Caroline had done her best to spread the news about what had really happened. Still, people stared at Tessa whenever she went to town, whispering behind their hands about her.
The whole experience had helped to mature Tessa, which was at least one blessing that had come out of it. But Caroline understood her sister’s desire to get away from the rumors and blemishes on her reputation. And Tessa still wanted to move away from the lighthouse. While she’d allowed Caroline to teach her a few basics about the lantern, she insisted she never wanted to live in a lighthouse again.
Caroline plodded down the hallway, then paused to look into Sarah’s old room. The empty bed, the smooth coverlet, the overall barrenness of the room opened the fresh wound in her heart.
She’d lost people she held dear over the past year, and she didn’t want to lose Tessa too. But she had to admit that Tessa was growing up and fi
nally ready to get married. She could only pray that one day the right man would overlook Tessa’s past mistake and love her regardless.
Caroline turned to her bedroom door and opened it. Weariness drooped over her, and she shuffled inside, closing the door behind her.
Blackness surrounded her, and for a moment she was tempted to go back out into the light and skip sleeping for the day. It was this time of the morning, when she was overly tired, that she thought about Ryan the most and missed him. There were still too many mornings when she cried herself to sleep, even though she tried not to anymore.
Blindly she crossed the room until she bumped into the bed. Her fingers made contact with the warm cotton nightgown Tessa had laid there. She’d even pulled back the covers, so that Caroline’s hand brushed against the coolness of the sheet.
With a sigh she sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed her ankle over her knee. She unlaced her boot and slipped it off, letting it fall to the floor. Then she shed the other and dropped it to the floor as well.
She dug her fingers into the knot at the back of her neck and fished for the hairpins, holding each one between pursed lips as she found them.
In the stillness of the room, she heard the faint swoosh of someone releasing a breath of air. She froze with half a dozen pins pressed between her lips, her hands deep in her hair.
Was someone in the room with her, or had she only imagined the sound?
After a moment of listening to absolute silence, she shook off the chills and resumed fishing out the remainder of the pins. She tossed her head, and her hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back.
The bed squeaked and shifted behind her. Caroline jumped up with a scream. It was a muted scream, as she tried not to lose her hold on the pins in her mouth.
At a muttering from the opposite side of the bed, Caroline groped for her pillow. She let the hairpins drop, no longer concerned about losing them. Not when there was an intruder in her bedroom.
She lifted the pillow and brought it down with a thwack.
The intruder muttered again.
Caroline didn’t stop to think. She needed to defend herself. So she brought the pillow down again, and then a third time.
A burst of laughter from the bed stopped her in mid-swing. Something about the laughter sent her pulse racing but not with fear.
“Caroline?” the one laughing said. “Are you trying to kill me again?”
“Ryan?”
“Aye.”
She had to stifle a real scream this time by pressing the pillow over her mouth.
The bed squeaked again under his weight. His feet dropped to the floor and thudded as he moved away from the bed. He threw open the curtain and flooded the room with light.
Holding up a hand to shield his eyes, he gave her a full view of his injury—the puckered skin, the scars, the stumps that remained where his fingers had once been.
It really was him.
A grin lit up his face, which was covered with whiskers similar to the first time she’d seen him. His hair was long and in need of a cut. She half expected to see him in his underclothes, but thankfully he was fully attired, except for his bare feet.
She couldn’t keep from drinking him in, from taking in his warm brown eyes and handsome face. His arms were thicker, his muscles bulging against his sleeves. He’d clearly filled out over the past months.
“When you’re done staring,” he said, his smile inching higher, “maybe you can explain why you were beating me up.”
“Oh, sure.” She smiled back. “And then maybe you can explain why you were in my bed.”
“Unlike you, I have an excuse,” he teased. “I was tired. I rode for two days almost nonstop to get here. When I arrived early this morning, Tessa told me I could sleep here, that she’d wake me when you came down.”
“Looks like she woke you, all right,” Caroline said wryly. She could almost see Tessa in the kitchen, giggling at the reunion she’d orchestrated.
Ryan tilted his head, and slowly he let his gaze travel over her, from the top of her head to the tips of her stockinged feet showing beneath her hem.
There was something slightly dangerous in his eyes that burned into her and twisted her belly with pleasure.
When finished, he retraced his path back to her hair and lingered there. “You’re more beautiful than I remembered,” he whispered, his smile fading.
She was still holding the pillow in front of her. She tossed it back onto the bed that stood between them. “I wasn’t sure if you remembered me at all after so many months.”
“I thought about you all the time. Every second of every day.”
His admission added fuel to the fire building inside her. But the pain of the past months without him came swirling back and urged her to use caution. She didn’t know why he was back and what he wanted from her. She couldn’t let herself love him again if he was only going to leave her once more.
Besides, if he’d missed her so much, why hadn’t he come back sooner?
“I worked laying railroad track all winter,” he said, as if she’d spoken her question aloud. “I earned good money. And once I’d saved up enough earnings, I quit and rode east to Virginia.”
He stood straight, without hiding his injured hand in his pocket. Had he made peace with his injury? She tried to keep her hope in check and not barrage him with a hundred questions and instead let him tell her what he wanted in his own time.
“I went back to the farm in Virginia, to the place of the murder,” he said somberly. “The mother and her three other children still live there. But her husband hadn’t made it out of the war alive. He was killed at Vicksburg.”
She expected Ryan’s shoulders to slump, for the horror of the event to weigh him down. But his eyes remained bright. “I apologized for not doing anything to try to save her son from getting shot—for being a coward that night with my comrades.”
The light streaming in from the window accentuated a peace and a confidence in his demeanor she’d never noticed before, making her realize that as hard as their separation had been, it had taken him more courage and strength to leave than it would have to stay with her.
“She forgave me. And when I gave them everything I’d earned from working on the railroad, they accepted it with gratitude.”
“You really surprised them, then.”
He nodded. “It was the last thing they expected. Yet it was the thing they needed the most.”
“I’m so glad, Ryan,” she said with a joyful leap in her chest. She could see that he was better off for having done it. It was as if he’d thrown off the shackles that had bound him and was now free.
He took another step toward her but halted at the bed. He looked at her then with a forthrightness that tugged at her heart. “I’ve been free of drink and opium since I left here.”
The joy within her expanded. “I’m proud of you.”
“Not one drink in all these months. And, Lord willing, I’ll not have another sip for the rest of my life.”
“I knew you could do it.”
“Not in my own strength, or in yours,” he said gently, “but by learning to cry out my need for God every day, every hour.”
She nodded, marveling at the new man before her. Maybe he was still maimed physically, but God had indeed healed his heart and mind.
“And I may have found a surgeon who’s willing to take another look and see if he can remove the remaining shrapnel.”
“That would be wonderful,” she said.
“Even if he can’t, the months of labor have strengthened my arm and hand.” He flexed his arm playfully. The slight wince told her that maybe he’d never be completely free of pain, but he was learning to live with his wounds.
He dropped his arm and shook his head. “I can’t believe how much I missed you. I thought I would die if I had to wait another day to see you.”
She gave a soft laugh of delight at his admission.
“I’m serious.” He grinned. “I
about killed my poor horse on the trip back.”
“I missed you too.”
“Then I guess that means you won’t object when I tell you I have a new job here.”
“A job?”
“Aye.” He started to walk slowly around the bed toward her. “Before I rode to Virginia, I met with the Lighthouse Board. I explained the mix-up with Tessa. And then I petitioned the Board to create another position here at Windmill Point.”
She started in surprise.
“Don’t worry,” he said, drawing nearer. “They had nothing but the highest praise for you.”
“I’ve worked hard. The inspector told me yesterday that I’ve done an excellent job.”
“And you have. It was good for them to see you working independently these past months, to know you’re just as capable as any man.”
She nodded in agreement. If Ryan hadn’t left, she wasn’t sure the Board would have truly seen her capability like they did now. As hard as the separation from Ryan had been, it was clear that God had known it was exactly what each of them needed at the time.
“Even so, Windmill Point is a big job for one person.” Ryan continued around the bed and didn’t stop until he was standing directly before her. She was comforted by the strength of his presence.
“It may be a big job, but I’ve managed,” she said, hardly able to think clearly now.
He leaned closer, lifted his hand, and stroked a strand of her hair. “Would you object to having an assistant?” he asked softly.
Again she started. “Do you want to be my assistant?”
“Would you mind?” He fingered her hair again.
“Could you be happy working under a woman head keeper?”
“Of course I could be happy. You’d be the best boss a man could ever ask for.” He grinned. “And the prettiest.”
“Are you sure?” She almost couldn’t believe he’d be staying, that he wanted to work here alongside her. It seemed too good to be true.
