Page 52 of The Lightkeeper

“Is that why you don’t want to go to the twins’ party?”

He shrugged off the question. “They won’t even notice if I’m not there.”

“Kit.” I caught his arm as he strode toward the door. “They notice every time you’re not there.” It was striking that night after dinner—coming back up from the basement to find Kit gone; the look on everyone’s faces was somber.

The muscle in his jaw flexed, but before he could say anything else, the door swung open and Lou appeared.

“Kit!” she exclaimed, a wide smile breaking over her face when she saw him—and then it grew when she noticed me. “Aurora.”

She came to me first, wrapping me in a giant hug.

“Hi.” I squeezed her back.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” she saidas he pulled her close and kissed her head. Another thing I’d noticed about Kit Kinkade… for aman who didn’t like to let anyone in, if you did make it into his atmosphere, the way he held you close rivaled the pull of gravity.

“I had another drawing to drop off. It’s on the desk,” he said.

“It’s a green sea urchin,” I chimed in excitedly. “You should see how he captured the spines.”

“Oh, I can’t wait.” Literally. She rushed over to the desk.

“We should?—”

“Did Kit tell you about the other drawings?”

“What about them?” My eyes flicked to him, catching the tick of annoyance in his jaw.

“Well, I put them up the first day without any prices. I wanted to gauge interest before deciding how to value them. Anyway, there were so many people who came in that afternoon, there was a line—a line,Aurora. In an art gallery.”

“That’s amazing. Kit didn’t tell me any of that,” I said, my narrow stare scolding his reserve as I walked toward Lou, wanting to hear more of whatever she had to say.

“Of course, he didn’t.”

“Wasn’t important,” he grumbled from behind us.

“Kit…” Lou let out a loud gasp followed by a long pause of admiration, her fingers pinning the paper open on opposite corners while she examined the drawing.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” I couldn’t count the number of times I’d found myself forgetting about my own work in favor of watching raptly the way Kit brought the urchin to life on the paper. “Thespines are so delicate, so you have to be very careful when you capture or harvest them.”

“Harvest?”

“Urchin roe is a delicacy in Japan and Europe, so there’s a huge fishing market for these guys in Maine because of their population here. I actually had to apply for a hand-fishing license to be able to take one of them by hand even though I’m going to put him back.”

“Wow. I had no idea.”

“If you damage a spine, it leaks sea water into the urchin and can affect the quality of the roe,” Kit said, his voice reverberating behind us.

We both looked over our shoulders to find he’d moved closer.

“You’ve learned about them, too?”

“Everyone should,” he grunted. “Their grazing habits are the reason there’s a low number of algae and kelp along the coast.”

Lou turned her focus to me, the look in her eyes making me feel like I was unknowingly responsible for some kind of miracle. “I’ll have Jamie make a frame for it like the rest,” she murmured, unable to contain her smile as she carefully rolled the drawing back up. “This is going to be amazing, Aurora. Thank you.”

“Me?” I laughed. I hadn’t created the drawings—or any of this; it was all Kit. “I didn’t?—”

“Because of the interest,” she forged on, continuing her story from earlier. “I decided that the new collection will only be available for sale at the gallery show, really funnel all of the interest into one afternoon.”

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