Page 97 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
Rebecca fell against the man she had once thought might love her. The man she had once allowed herself to be swept up in loving if only for shared need. The man she hoped would stay true to his promise to her and their child—if for no other reason than her child was going to live. Because of Edgar, her child would live in a world where selfish and greedy people served themselves more than others. Her child would need a father like Abel to keep it safe. It would need a man like Abel to prove that sometimes loving required giving oneself up for another. It was clear to Rebecca now that it was what Abel had done for her. Kjersti had requested her brother help save Rebecca from the abusiveness of her father. And now Rebecca would ask Abel to save her and their child one last time—for a lifetime.
SHEA
Shea scrambled down the stairs, Marnie pounding down them behind her. They spiraled toward the main floor and burst into the lightkeeper’s room, and once through it, Marnie launched toward Shea.
“Let go!” Shea’s hand shot forward, connecting with the older woman’s shoulder. Marnie fell backward on the lightkeeper’s bed. Shea stood over her, seeing the woman for the sad heap that she was. Driven by a lifetime of jealousy, a lifetime of wishing someone would be more to her than they were. She had conjured up a dream that didn’t fit reality, and Marnie had derived a conclusion that could never be even if Rebecca’s papers were found after decades of being lost.
“Marnie...” Shea started, then bit her tongue. What did she say to a woman who was so broken and so wrong when she herself had, in her own way, conjured up her own reality, her own expectations for her marriage? Instead of finding value in what she had, she found value in what shewanted. As extreme as Marnie? Certainly not. But the roots were all the same.
“Marnie,” Shea started again, gentling her voice in hopes to break through the psyche of the woman who had killed Jonathan Marks for papers that likely no longer existed. The woman who had snuck around the lighthouse and its grounds, pretending to be the ghost of the legendary Annabel. “It’s over, Marnie.” Shea’s words were not the ones she’d intended to come out.
Marnie shoved herself up on the bed. “No.” She wagged her head. “It’s not over. It will never be over.” A tear trailed down her face.
Shea softened toward the waitress. The pitiable state of the woman was truly that she had distorted life into expectations that would never be fulfilled. “I know you. You want to validate who you are, but Annabel is a ghost—literally. She’s been deadfor a century. And Rebecca, the map? That’s not something you can unbury and claim. You all have wrapped your lives around a century-oldtreasure map, and in the end you’ve lost each other!” Shea stumbled to a halt. Dreams. A person’s dreams were nothing when shared only with themselves. A person’s dreams could turn into obsession and ostracize them from love. While dreams could be beautiful and hopes very real, to live in them and to demand them to come true like one wished upon a star could alienate a person from others who could love them, because they were centered on their own personal achievement.
Herpersonal achievements. Shea had never wanted to see Pete so badly in all her life. He had stood by in the shadows as she’d pursued her own life, her own dreams, and as she’d held him with disdain for not being the romantic picture she had in her head. She had been infatuated withHoltof all people, whose part in this was involuntary and circumstantial at best, but who didn’t hold a candle to Pete’s loyal faithfulness.
What was love if it wasn’t devotion? What was love if it wasn’t steady and consistent?
Shea knew this now, as much as she knew that above all, Annabel lived. She lived in the lighthouse. She lived on the lake’s shore. She lived in the forest and in the town. She lived in the people born here. She lived in Shea’s own mind and in Shea’s very soul.
Annabel was, after all, Shea herself.
Annabel’s ghost was the epitome of what they all ran away from. She was the memories. The heartache. The abuses. The tragedies. The could-have-beens and should-have-beens. Annabel was the story that had never concluded because no one was willing to read its first pages in order to write its last.
Annabel’s ghost was the love a person put to death so the idea of it could never be lost, but instead could be hoarded.
“Marnie.” Shea reached for the woman’s hand. “Let’s put an end to Annabel’s story tonight.”
Marnie eyed Shea’s hand with teary-eyed suspicion. She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“You can,” Shea encouraged. She wanted Marnie’s dangerous state of mind to be put in a place where she could receive care and no longer hurt those around her. But to do that, she had to show the woman that she was worthy of being cared about. That history could keep its old silver map—wherever it was stashed. But that was a feat Shea didn’t know if she was capable of. She tried anyway. “Your mother—Edna—she loves you, doesn’t she?”
Marnie’s expression softened. “Mom always has.”
“Then that’s what you focus on.” Shea pushed her hand closer to Marnie. “Focus on what youdohave, not on what you don’t have. Focus on what you can give, Marnie. Focus on what you can give.”
39
SHEA
In the sepulcher there by the sea...
Annabel Lee
ANNABEL’S LIGHTHOUSE
PRESENT DAY
SHEWAS NEVER MORE GLADto see lights from a police car than the moment the red-and-blue flashed through the lighthouse kitchen. Marnie stumbled alongside Shea, holding her hand with a heartbreaking sense of need. Shea couldn’t wait to be free of the woman who only moments before had been strangling her and now trailed Shea like a hurting child.
The door slammed open, and the next few moments were a blur. Officers took custody of Marnie. Holt barreled into the room, eyes wild, until they landed on Marnie. “Marnie!” He rushed toward her, but the officer who had Marnie in custodyheld out his hand. Holt pulled up short as Marnie lifted her head and looked over her shoulder at him, a desperate apology on her face.
“I’m so sorry, Holt. So very sorry.”
Holt stared at his aunt as she was led away.
Another figure pushed through the fray in a calm manner, and Shea’s knees nearly buckled. Instead, she collected herself and pushed past Holt, stopping just short of flinging herself at Pete. His arm was still secure in its sling, yet he was wincing even as a smile touched his lips. Rain was beginning to dot their skin, the wind whipping her hair in all directions.
