Page 76 of The Lightkeeper

My head snapped to him. “What about Gigi?”

“She was devastated. She paced the house for weeks, trying to figure out how to help you. She saved dozens of articles. Cut out albums of newspaper clippings. About what happened. About the survivors.”

My chest felt like it was ripping in two, hearing about my grandmother who had always been a pillar of strength. Of happiness and mischief. All these years, I thought I’d been sparing them the pain of what happened to me.

“She couldn’t just do nothing. None of us could. But since you needed space, we decided to help who we could,” he rasped. “Every year, Gigi picks a charity started by one of the marathon survivors and donates all her income from Stonebar to it in your name. Mom and I match it, and Lou and Frankie, Max and Nox, and Uncle George chip in.” He cleared his throat. “That number is how much we’ve donated in the last eleven years.”

A number that crested over a million dollars.

My shoulders caved as emotion crashed into my chest like a charging wave, rushing over me and pulling me under. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. All these years, I thought I was sparing them the pain. I clung to thatfactlike it was my shield and sword and savior.

“We’re all healing, Kit,” he finished lowly. “Not like you are, but with you. Always with you.” He reached up and squeezed my shoulder, then moved for Violet, leaving me alone to process.

I stood almost in a vacuum, the sights and sounds of my family happening all around me but feeling like they were at a distance. I watched them congregate around Aurora, watched her arms animate to describe something about sea stars, watched the array of comical expressions on her face—unafraid to be silly, unafraid to be smart, unafraid to be strong—and in that moment, I realized I’d fallen in love with her but was too fucking scared to admit it. Too fucking scared after everything that happened to me that I’d do something to push her away. That loving her wouldn’t be enough to make up for all of… this.

“Kit.”

It wasn’t until Lou jolted my arm that I realized she was trying to get my attention—and had been for a little while from the look on her face.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

She looked nervous. Concerned. And then she looked back at Aurora, who nodded—encouraged.

“Is the… do you still want to do the gallery show?”

For all the people in the room, it suddenly went eerily silent. Quiet enough that I wondered if everyone was holding their breath.

My gaze moved from my sister’s upturned face to the warm, steady stare watching me from behind her glasses. The stare that had watched me for months. Learned. Observed. Carefullyquestioned. The stare that had held strong when I pushed back and opened herself to me in spite of every warning.

And it hit me. Like a wave against the shore. Or the sun to the horizon.

She was my lighthouse. Her glow was not a warning but a guide. A guide to safety. A guide to shore. A guide to warmth. A guide to love. And I’d chased her light until she’d led me here, led me home.

Chasing Dawn.

Loving her had made me stronger. Loving her had made me braver. And I needed to prove it to her. I needed to show her how I’d changed because of her before I asked her to change her life because of me.

“Yes,” I said and nodded slowly. “The gallery show is still on.”

Chapter Eighteen

Aurora

“Are you okay?”

I blinked twice, pulling myself from the trance of the painting and turning to Kit. I brushed a strand of hair back behind my ear and smiled up at him.

“Yeah.” I nodded and then couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Why hasn’t this one sold?”

I’d been inside Kit’s gallery at least two dozen times, most of those visits in the last two weeks as Lou asked me to help her start preparing for the show, and every time I was here, I was drawn to the painting of the lighthouse, it’s darkened tower peeking through the waves of the storm.

Kit shoved his hands in his pockets. “I can’t… bring myself to sell it.”

I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and turned. “Is this how you see the lighthouse?”Was it how he saw himself?

The cords of his neck tightened and his throat bobbed. “It… was,” he said, and then instantly shifted his weight and changed topics.“Lou wants your help arranging the last of the drawings. Something about how you would know which animals should go next to which.”

I took a moment to look at him. The strong angle of his jaw. The short stubble of his beard. The prominence of his brow. Even the way he stood—legs separated, arms crossed—he mirrored the stance of the lighthouse. Strong and stoic, but no longer solitary.

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