Page 38 of The Glass Dolphin

“Of course,” Alice said easily. “I hope we can reach the outcome everyone wants.”

Clara cut a look over to Kristen. “She hasn’t even told Reuben.”

“But she will,” Alice assured her. “I actually advised her to tell you and Scott, as well as Jean and Reuben first, before this luncheon.” She glanced over to the older woman too. She’d put cream in her coffee and now stood with Robin, who hadn’t said she was leaving yet. “But she does what she wants.”

She smiled at Clara and Jean, hugged them in a three-way embrace and let Maddy and Julia precede her out of the cottage.

Outside, the sky had turned darker, like it might actually thunder and lightning and rain. Alice didn’t mind the chilled wind as she paused and tilted her head back, her eyes squinting though the light was only gray and not that bright.

She breathed, and for the first time since she’d arrived here at the lighthouse, it felt like oxygen entered her lungs. She wasn’t sure how a body could live without oxygen, she only knew she’d grown more and more tired the longer she stayed inside the cottage.

The sound of a car door slamming met her ears, and that was when Alice realized she hadn’t moved. She made to follow Julia and Maddy and found the second door closing behind Julia in the RideShare vehicle that had pulled up.

Alice managed to put another smile on her face and lift her hand in a universal sign of good-bye before the other two women left. Then she got behind the wheel of her car, got it started, and rolled down the windows. It wasn’t too hot inside, but she simply wanted the extra air. She craved the cool breeze as it kissed across her cheeks and entered her nostrils.

She had work to do at home—Kristen’s wasn’t her only case—but Alice sighed and leaned the seat back so she could just lay down and relax for a moment before making the drive across the island.

The winter wind had such interesting things to say, and Alice thought of how the trees had become barren as they shed the heavy load of last season’s leaves. Yet they stood tall and stalwart against the wind, the winter, the world.

As she lay there, she definitely felt like winter was a pause. A fresh of breath air between two vibrant seasons. A time to rest before the awakening of spring.

“…I’m just saying,” AJ said. “You should find out what you can and tell Alice.”

Alice’s eyes opened, but she didn’t move.

“The Coalition surely wouldn’t stand to profit from owning the lighthouse,” Robin said. “What would we gain? What would Duke gain?”

“I don’t know,” AJ said. “But that’s why you should find out. The lighthouse is a symbol of community and power. That alone might be worth something.”

“I can’t imagine what,” Robin said. “But I’ll talk to Duke.”

“You guys, what about Jean and Reuben?” Kelli’s voice sounded unsure, hesitant.

No one said anything, and Alice had had more time with all of these questions, all of this uncertainty, than the others. She’d wondered if Robin would benefit if the Fisherman’s Coalition owned the lighthouse. She’d wondered how it had become a private enterprise in the first place. Usually, the keepers at a lighthouse worked for a federal agency—the US Lighthouse Services. In some areas, lighthouses had been privately funded, or they were run by state organizations.

With Five Island Cove being the easternmost land mass in the United States—technically part of the state of Massachusetts—Alice had assumed that the lighthouse here had fallen under county jurisdiction. Namely, the Cove County which only comprised of the five islands in Five Island Cove. They were a cityanda county, all governed by the state, and then the federal government.

Something new to look into, she told herself, and she listened as Robin, AJ, and Kelli all got in Robin’s car and left the parking lot. If they’d found it odd that Alice’s car was still there when she’d left before them, none of them had commented on it.

She raised her seat and took her phone out of her pocket. Arthur worked as a counselor at the high school, and Alice allowed a small dose of nostalgia to flow through her as she remembered meeting him in his office for the first time.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said brightly after he’d answered. “What are you thinking for dinner?”

Alice had just eaten lunch, but she honestly couldn’t remember what she’d eaten. “Can we get those really cheap chicken sandwiches from Gardenia’s and then go sit on the rocks at Rocky Ridge?”

Arthur heard so much more than that, and he paused to absorb it all. “Rough lunch?” he asked.

“I just don’t want to think about anything for a while,” she said.

“I can finish up here and be home in twenty minutes,” he said almost under his breath.

Alice smiled, so grateful and glad to have a safe place to retreat to when one part of her life turned tricky. “Thanks, babe,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”

She hung up and left the lighthouse as well, watching it in her rearview mirror. She’d done so in the past, usually with a sense of angry-longing to stay. But now, the symbol that had once been so comforting for Alice only held uncertainty.

“I’ll find what I need,” she vowed once more. “One way or the other.”

ChapterFifteen

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