Page 23 of The Lightkeeper

And some of those batches… I shook my head. Some of those batches, my dear, purple-haired grandmother claimed werePremonition Preserves.

In all the years I’d been home—more or less—I’d be spared one of those jars. Sometimes, I thought it was a kind of ridiculous proof that there wasn’t anything else left for me.No fortune to tell for a man who had no future.But apparently, I was wrong.

“Here you go, young man.” She stuck the label to the jar, the angle noticeably skewed, and plopped it in my open hand.

I looked at the label, my eyes tracing the delicate, trembling swirls of my grandmother’s handwriting. It was frilly but full of fortitude.

“Well? Spill the beans,” Frankie urged.

“It doesn’t matter.” I lowered my arm, but not fast enough before Frankie grabbed the jar from my hand.

“Of course, it matters. C’mon, it can’t be as bad as mine.” Frankie was notoriously unimpressed that her fortune label only saidChandler.A chandler was a candlemaker, which was what she was. There was no mystery. No excitement. None of the crazy things that Frankie thrived on.

“Okay.” I waved at her. “Then read it.”

Her brow scrunched. “Chasing Dawn.”

I swallowed. “Happy?” I plucked it from her fingers. “You got aFriendscharacterand I got the title to aTwilightmovie.”

“First off, that’sBreaking Dawn,” my sister corrected. “Second, what could it mean? Chasing light? Because you’re the lighthouse keeper?”

“Yeah, that’s probably it,” I grunted.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Gigi said with a smile I didn’t like, and then started humming a tune while she went back to work.

That was definitely it.

“I’m glad you’re here. Lou was just telling us the other day that there’s a lovely student doing research at the lighthouse. I didn’t know about that.” Mom adeptly changed subjects, but there was a reason we all called herCI-Ailene.If there was information to be found out, she was going to get to the bottom of it.

“Yeah. She’s collecting stuff outside, so we don’t really interact.” Except for when she touches me and I almost lose my mind and kiss her.

“Oh, that’s a shame. Lou said she’s so nice.”

“We should invite her over for dinner,” Frankie said, munching on a piece of cheese.

“That would be?—”

“No.” I practically growled at them. Aurora wasn’t coming here. She wasn’t meeting my family. She wasn’t… going to sink any deeper into my life if I could help it.

“Why not?” Mom probed, her brow arching.

And there it was.CI-Ailene.Looking for what was buried underneath my denial.

“You’re right,” I conceded with a flash of a smile. “Invite her over. Whatever you want.”I was hardly here for dinner anyway, what did it matter?

“Oh! We could invite her to our party. Then she can meet everyone,” Frankie declared, popping another piece of cheese in her mouth and darting around me for the stairs. “I’ll text Lou!”

“Looks like you’re going to have to fill in as our label placer,” Gigi said, handing me a label stuck to the tip of her finger.

I sighed and picked up a blank jar, rolling the label around it.

“I don’t have to invite her over, Kit. I just thought it would be nice. Lou said she’s here all alone for a few months?—”

“It’s fine, Mom, really. Whatever you want to do, it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve got a lot going on anyway.”So, I won’t be coming to that dinner.

“How are your paintings coming, Christopher? I haven’t seen any new ones in the window recently. Have you thought about doing something other than the sea?”

Like a sketchbook filled with sea creatures?

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