Page 11 of The Lightkeeper

“Her?”

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Jason didn’t exactly give me a heads-up, so I’m adjusting.”

I’d dialed Jason’s number as soon as I got in my truck yesterday, smoke practically blowing out my ears. I didn’t even make it to the first ring before I’d ended the call. I had no place to be angry. The lighthouse wasn’t mine—not to control who was allowed there.Not even to live there.

Technically, I’d never been given permission to live at the keep, but neither had I been forbidden; I’d just never asked. Yeah, there were times I was sure Jason knew. That the olddon’t ask, don’t tellpolicy extended to my living situation. But I didn’t want to risk it, so I swallowed down my irritation about Miss Cross, afraid it would invite more questions I didn’t want to answer.

“So, this is more than one night?”

“A few weeks.” I climbed down the ladder.

“Weeks?” His brows lifted. “Why don’t you stay with Mom?”

I answered him with a look. I’d stayed with Mom… after everything. I thought being there with her and Gigi, Lou and Frankie would be easiest. So many reminders that I was home.Safe. Instead, they’d been a litmus test for my trauma, showing me just how crippled my life was—would always be.

“It’s only a few weeks.” I tugged my hat securely over my head and offered him a tight smile.

His hand anchored onto my shoulder as I tried to walk around him.“Kit…”

I stopped but didn’t look back. It killed me that he couldn’t help me just as much as it killed him wanting to.

“You can’t hide forever.”

Slowly, I met my brother’s gaze. “You can’t protect me from everything.”

I knew it was his nature, just like it was mine. And when he’d stepped in to take care of the family, leaving no room for me to do the same, I enlisted instead. If he was going to protect our family, then I was going to protect our country. But fate had other plans.

“Not trying to protect you from everything, Kit. Just from yourself.”

I felt myself tense, but before I lashed out when he was only trying to help, I said instead, “Tell Violet I said hi,” and shrugged off his hold.

“You coming to Mom’s for the twins’ birthday?” he called as I approached the door.

I breathed out slowly.April first.Frankie and Lou’s day. After all these years, I didn’t know if it was better or worse that their birthday fell on the day I was released from Walter Reed. A day that should’ve been a celebration from every angle, but it wasalways a celebration shadowed by what happened two weeks later.

“I don’t think so.” I hated myself for the answer, but only a fool would agree to something that was beyond my limits. Their party would be full of friends and family. Full of smiles and laughter and loud noises. Full of all the things that crippled me. So, I would do the smart thing and stay away. Just like I always did.

The last thing their celebration needed was the presence of a dead man walking.

Dawn stretched its fingers over Friendship’s main street, catching on the details of the buildings and bringing them to light. Postcards of Maine—of New England were less picturesque than the main drag in my hometown. The small shops and wrought-iron lampposts romanticized the coastal town image that was cozy and quaint even on a dreary day in that muddy season in March where it was too cold to be spring but too wet to still be winter.

Water sloshed under the tires and rain tapped on the windshield, remnants of yesterday’s storm still dragging their feet. Part of me was tempted to stop at the Maine Squeeze and pick up a coffee on my way to the lighthouse, but I couldn’t risk Lou’s sympathetic look two days in a row. Especially if Jamie had mentioned to anyone that I’d stayed at the barn last night.

The sympathy killed me. The pity. The pain. I wanted to get better—to be better. But I just fucking couldn’t. After what happened… coming home… I couldn’t adapt. I couldn’t find a way to be around anyone, even my family, for long periods of time. I couldn’t stop the nightmares. The panic. I couldn’t change what had become of me… and so I did the only thing I could: I tried to protect my family from having to see it.

My blood began to pump as I turned onto the road to the lighthouse, the wooden sign faded and weather-worn to the point where theFriendship Lighthouseengraving was hardly visible.

Two miles of gravel path led to the secluded keep, lined the whole way by evergreen sentries on the left and boulders barricading the sea on the right.In the winter, snow could make the drive so treacherous that the only safe way to access the lighthouse was via snowmobile.

I scanned the perimeter, waves still chopping at the rocky base as the drizzle of rain ushered out last night’s storm. The off-white house and tower appeared a dreary gray, coated with rain and clouds, but the red roof was still bright. Undimmable. Kind of like the determination in Aurora—Miss Cross’sgaze.

Goddamn,I needed to stop thinking about her.

I pulled all the way down the narrow lane, exhaling in rough relief when there was no sign of a soul, and parked in front of the house.

Salt air hit my nose like a dose of disinfectant. The kind of scent that went right to the very core of a person and purged anything that wasn’t meant to be there. Except memories. Those, I’d learned, weren’t strong enough to erase.

I hustled inside, stopping short at how starkly the interior of the cottage changed in less than a day.Because of her.Miss Cross’s things littered through the rooms like algae on the seafloor, pervasive yet as though it all belonged.

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