Page 90 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
So now he had asked her to trust him. Just trust him.
Like someone pulling scabs from her wounded heart, Shea stilled, not following the men any farther.
Shecouldtrust Pete, she just neverwantedto. Because that meant she also accepted Pete as he was, and she’d always wanted more. And yet, in this moment, Shea realized she was catching a small glimpse of a long-existent side of Pete.
Sometimes steady was comforting.
Sometimes mundane was reliable.
Sometimes always-there was the most romantic thing anyone could ever be for someone.
The men disappeared outside and into the night, Pete following to make sure Captain Gene was situated in his car and Holt with him. It felt so anticlimactic to Shea. The long-awaited encounter with the captain had resulted in no real answers, just more questions. And Holt wanted them to leave? She couldn’t justleave. But logic told her she could, and she should. There was enough done in the name of research for her book that her editor would work with her, and they’d end up with an acceptablemanuscript. In fact, not having all the answers to the mystique around Annabel’s Lighthouse would probably make the book more appealing to readers in the long run.
But to leave meant to close the book on everything else. On Edna’s tales of Annabel’s guardian, of Captain Gene’s vanishing acts and his now sudden appearance for no apparent purpose, and of Holt’s revealing relation to the old man?
Then there was Annabel. The story of Annabel. Of Rebecca. Of the silver ore map that, if one broke it down to bare bones, had to be the impetus for it all somehow. Find the map Rebecca stole a century ago, and it would all make sense. A veritable treasure map of the U.P. It would still have to go through the courts to determine ownership, wouldn’t it? But the lure of it, the potential of a massive silver vein, in the present economy...
Shea stilled as the quietness in the lighthouse pervaded her thoughts. It was very still now with the absence of the men. And Pete. Pete hadn’t returned yet. She moved to the window that looked out to where Captain Gene had parked his vehicle. It was gone. She searched the darkness looking for Pete.
Frowning, Shea hurried to the door and opened it. The lake greeted her, its waters rolling onto shore with an even cadence. The moon had dipped behind clouds, and aside from the light emanating from behind Shea, the world outside the lighthouse was pitch-black.
“Pete?” she called, taking a step outside the door. “Pete?”
Only the waves responded. Shea made her way around the corner of the lighthouse. “Pete?” she called again, this time louder. She reassured herself that Captain Gene and Holt had taken their leave. There had been no sounds of a struggle, so Shea couldn’t imagine that Holt had suddenly turned against Pete and abducted him.
Annoyed at her imagination getting completely out of hand, Shea pivoted to return to the lighthouse. Maybe Pete had somehow slipped back in and past her as she’d been ruminating aboutlife at the wrong time. Maybe he’d gone back to bed? The idiocy of that idea wasn’t lost on Shea, but the sensation of being very much alone was creeping up and becoming more and more real.
She quickly entered the house and pushed the door shut, debating on locking it because it felt better to be locked inside. But if Pete was still outside... Shea decided to leave the door unlocked and returned to the kitchen.
A shuffling sound halted her in her tracks.
Shea looked up at the ceiling.
The lightbulb in its fixture flickered.
The hair on her arms stood at attention. Deliberate footsteps crossed the floor above her. Slow footsteps.
“Pete?” Her voice was shakier than she’d expected.
Shea tiptoed into the sitting area. The room was illuminated by a soft, yellow glow from a lamp directly beneath the painting of Annabel’s ghost on the wall. It was where Jonathan Marks had died too, and suddenly Shea caught a vision of red on the walls and the floor. A vision of what it must have looked like to whoever had discovered his body. Blood spatter. Fragments of who Jonathan Marks had once been.
The serious turn of her thoughts brought with it the gravity of all she had been delving into. The adrenaline of the night, her almost intoxicated insistence to know what had happened—to push the old captain to tell her things—no. She had pushed too hard. Her obstinacy had been insensitive, driven by the lust for the hunt, if not the treasure. She had been wrong. This wasn’t child’s play—it never had been—it was dark, and it was riddled with a story that made no sense, and its threads were tangled with every aspect of this place. Annabel. Rebecca. Silvertown. Holt. Captain Gene. Penny. Even Edna and Marnie and the man at the historical museum. The Porcupine Mountains and the lake boasted tales of hardship, of vicious winters and blistering summers. It captured the spirit of its original people while itinhabited the dreams of newcomers. It was a place of rock and earth, of greed and ambition, of nature and wanderlust.
The lake was a place of ghosts.
A chilling breath blew across the back of Shea’s neck. She could almost hear Annabel’s sigh behind her, and Shea whirled to face her. To see with her own eyes once again the woman who haunted this place and these shores. The woman that the stories all seemed to return to. The woman whose spirit held the secrets to her mystical breast and teased with her gentle memory and her vengeful recollections.
But Annabel wasn’t there.
No one was.
Very aware of her aloneness, Shea was drawn to the lightkeeper’s room. The light was still on, the room still empty. The door to the lighthouse was propped open, and Shea moved toward it, stopping to stare up into the abyss that spiraled upward.
A shadow person swept out of view as Shea’s eyes focused on the lantern room above her. A vaporous form that boasted of having lived once but now only haunted.
“Annabel?” Shea finally called out the name of the woman long since dead. Dead for more than a hundred and fifty years. She stepped onto the metal stairs, tentative and questioning her own sanity.
A clanging sound responded, staggering down toward her, pinging against the stairs like a stone having been tossed toward Shea. Only there was no stone.
