CHAPTER SIX
The Bluefin Point lighthouse looked very sad, if she was being honest. Emily took in its white-brick main column, weathered to a powdery gray.
The iron balustrades were streaked with vertical runners of rust. Emily squinted up at the tower from the base of the lighthouse, one hand shading her eyes against the cloudless morning.
Unlike when she’d visited with Daniel, delighted to find out that the lighthouse in Roy’s paintings was real, there was nothing romantic about it now.
Definitely not up close: old bird droppings flecked the lip of the catwalk, the windows looked like they'd been vandalized by both salt spray and some adolescent boredom, and the chain-link fence out front was mangled enough, half-buried in sand, to make a joke of any idea of security.
Daniel was already at the base beside her, consulting a folder thick with printouts, his lips moving silently as he read. Jamie Marsh ambled over, a ring of keys swinging from his belt.
"Looks pretty solid for something the Feds haven’t touched in ten years," he said, rapping the lighthouse’s base with his knuckles. "You want me to walk you up, or do you prefer the self-guided tour?"
Daniel looked at Emily, eyebrow raised. She forced a smile, trying to project energy, even though the drive out had left her a little carsick.
"We’ll take it slow ourselves," she said. "But if you hear a crash, send a rescue party."
Jamie grinned, handing Daniel a key fob shaped like a miniature buoy. "I’ll be at the bottom, in case you need me. Watch for loose steps near the top—they get dicey after the first landing."
Emily waited for the man to vanish behind the battered City of Sunset Harbor pickup before turning to Daniel. "I’m not going to be the one to break my leg, just so we’re clear."
He set the folder under his arm and offered her a hand up the concrete lip of the entryway. "Statistically speaking, I’d go first. But then you’d have to drag and-or carry me down the stairs, and neither of us wants that."
Inside, the spiral staircase started right at the door, coiling upward in a tight, vertigo-inducing helix.
The treads were narrow, the risers uneven, and with every step, the metal flexed just enough to squeal.
There was a smell—deep, corrosive, and almost alive.
The mix of mildew and rust and something acrid she couldn’t quite place.
Emily trailed her fingers along the inner rail, feeling the texture of old paint, then bare iron, then another layer of paint over it, as if the place had been repeatedly patched over and over by the lowest bidder.
After the first dozen steps, her calves ached. After the next dozen, her thighs burned, and she paused on a landing, letting the echo of their footsteps roll out ahead of them.
Daniel halted behind her, his breath steady. "There’s no rush."
Emily wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. "If I stop, I’m afraid I won’t start again."
So, she kept climbing, each flight getting marginally steeper, the curve tighter.
The view changed with every window slit: first the parking lot, then the tidal marsh, then—at the third turn—a stretch of mud flats crowded with cormorants drying their wings.
She watched one of the birds for a few seconds, envying the open air, then pushed onward.
"Should have done more cardio," she said, managing a grin.
"We'll count it as your workout for the month." He set the folder on the stairs and reached up, not quite touching her belly, but close enough that she felt the ghost of his intent.
She moved his hand the rest of the way, pressing his palm flat against the fabric of her shirt. The gesture was intimate, more so than any kiss, and for a second, she forgot the ache in her legs.
"You’re not going to start reading aloud to the baby already, are you?" she teased.
Daniel rolled his eyes, but didn’t pull his hand away. "Not unless you want a super-genius in there. I was just… checking."
Emily put a hand on his cheek and smiled. She turned and took the next three steps slowly, and the three after that with a bit more confidence.
“So,” she huffed. “I was going to talk to Chantelle this afternoon about the Conservatory. Are we telling the maybe-baby news, or…?”
Daniel shook his head. “Let’s wait until we know for sure-sure.”
“Agreed,” Emily said.
They passed through a corridor lined with porthole windows, each rimmed in black mold, before emerging onto a small, caged platform that overlooked the harbor.
The wind up here was different, less forgiving, a slap of brine straight from the north.
She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with it.
The nausea that had followed her up the stairs faded, replaced by a strange, buoyant clarity.
Daniel set the folder on the ledge, fanned through the contents with one hand while the other hovered near her elbow.
"The town’s got blueprints, inspection records, even some old photos from the fifties." He tapped a page with his finger. "Supposedly, the last keeper left a logbook here, somewhere in the quarters."
Emily peered through the safety mesh at the stubby, glass-paned room that made up the keeper’s nest. The door hung slightly ajar, its hinges howling as the wind pressed against it.
Inside, the floor was a litterbox of dried leaves and broken glass, but a battered writing desk still hugged the far wall.
She squinted, then turned to Daniel. "You think anyone’s been up here at any regular points?"
He shook his head. "Maybe a few of the maintenance guys. The last work order was dated three years ago, and that was just for a new padlock."
She stepped inside, boots crunching over the mess, and took in the space. The walls were still striped with faded blue wallpaper. The light fixture overhead was a tangle of wires, and a pair of toppled chairs crowded the corner.
Emily ran her hand along the edge of the writing desk, flaking off a layer of dust. Her finger found a groove—someone’s initials, carved with a knife.
"It’s got character," she said, and Daniel’s laugh bounced off the walls.
He leafed through the inspection report, skimming the highlighted sections. "They’re recommending a full electrical refit, some kind of pest abatement, and there’s—" he squinted, "—concern about the catwalk railings. The bolts are corroded."
Emily looked up at the ceiling, half-expecting a chunk of plaster to fall. "Anything about ghosts? Chantelle and Bailey would love a real ghost."
Daniel grinned. "Just the rats. And possibly asbestos."
She took a lap around the room, then braced her hands on the sill and peered down.
The drop was steeper than she’d expected.
From this height, the marsh below looked soft, even inviting, but Emily knew from experience that it would suck the shoes right off you.
She rested her forehead against the glass, letting it chill her skin.
"You know," she said, her voice quieter, "when I was little, I always thought I’d live in a lighthouse someday. I’d imagined it full of books and secret doors and trapdoors. No tourists, just me and the sea."
Daniel folded the inspection report, tucking it back into the folder. "I could rig you a zipline to the base. Set up a drone drop for groceries."
"Smartass," she said, but it came out tender. "You think we could do it?" she asked. "Make it a thing again?"
He took his time answering. "We’ve done harder. But it is pretty rough. Ready to see the quarters?”
The keeper’s quarters were bigger than Emily had expected.
Decades of wind had left the wallpaper warped and puckered, ringed with stains like the cross-section of an ancient tree.
Emily trailed her hand along the walls, fingertips catching on the edges where the paper curled away in little scrolls.
The room was cold, but not unpleasantly so; more like the chill of a basement.
The windows, set in a perfect half-circle, were coated with a smoky grime.
Outside, the sky was a bright, cloudless blue, but inside the light filtered through brown and green, as if the glass were made from pressed leaves.
Emily picked her way over to the nearest pane, set the heel of her hand against it, and pressed until it gave a little under her weight.
She tried to scrape away the worst of the muck, but it only smeared, leaving ghostly arcs across the glass.
She grinned, found a scrap of curtain lining hanging by the radiator, and used it as a rag.
The first real view blinked into existence like an afterimage—acres of marsh, the glint of the harbor, and, on the far shore, the stubby rectangles of the town clustered along the water’s edge.
She stared for a long time, lost in the span of it. She could trace the whole sweep of the bay, the way the water pooled and emptied with the tide. It was easy, looking at it, to forget the rot and dust and the list of things waiting to be fixed.
Emily turned to Daniel. "Can you believe it?" she said, her voice part wonder, part disbelief. "If not for this place, I wouldn’t even exist."
"That’s why you want it so bad."
She didn’t deny it. Instead, she used both sleeves now to clear as much of the glass as she could. Each wipe revealed more of the view, the world out there impossibly bright.
Daniel joined her, standing close but not crowding. "You could open it as a museum," he said. "Or just run retreats. Let people rent it by the week, go feral."
Emily grinned, picturing herself as the eccentric innkeeper of Bluefin Point, haunting the spiral stairs with a clipboard and a headlamp.
She felt the old urge to catalog, to make a list, to plan—already, her brain had started assembling a calendar of possible events, a spreadsheet of costs and benefits.
But none of that mattered yet. For now, all she could see was the harbor and the long, impossible thread that had pulled her here.
She turned to Daniel, her hair a mess of static and wind, and said, "Let’s go to the lantern room."
He nodded, and together they stepped back into the spiral, leaving the keeper’s nest behind.
***
The last flight of stairs up to the lantern room was narrow, almost mean, the kind of climb that forced you to focus on your feet and your breath and the way the blood pounded in your ears.
Emily kept one hand pressed to the curved wall, fingertips sliding from cool brick to sun-warmed iron.
Daniel hovered just below her. She could hear the low, breathy whistle of his exhale with every third step.
They’d both pretended to be fit to shoo Jamie off from coming along, but now that they were alone, the masks were off.
The hatch at the top was stuck. Daniel braced a foot against the stair and heaved.
The trapdoor groaned, and a cloud of dust spilled down onto his head.
He laughed, wiped his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, and pushed it open the rest of the way.
Emily hoisted herself up, legs quaking, and stepped into the lantern room.
The light was shocking. Glass windows wrapped in a 360-degree arc, half of them clear, half frosted or filmed with a greenish scum, but it didn’t matter—sunlight poured in anyway, filling the space like water into a bowl.
The old beacon sat at the center, a corroded prism surrounded by a ring of shattered bulbs.
The air was dry, almost sweet, and the silence felt different here.
Emily did a slow turn, arms out for balance, the horizon swinging past in bright, unbroken strips.
The bay gleamed. A sliver of the inn was visible through a gap in the trees.
She could see the causeway, the slip of sandbar that disappeared at high tide, the entire patchwork of salt marsh pulsing under the wind.
The color was wild—a collision of blue and silver and the dull gold of last year’s reeds.
Daniel climbed up behind her and let himself sag against the brick. "I’d pay extra just for the view," he said.
She ignored him, too busy mapping the space.
The floor was barely twelve feet across, but there were ledges and alcoves built for maintenance, and a few feet above, another platform ringed the ceiling.
Emily’s brain shifted into project mode: what needed fixing, what could be salvaged, how many bodies could fit for an event without violating fire code.
She fished her notepad from her purse, flipped it open, and—kneeling on the dusty metal—began sketching.
Quick, blocky shapes: a table here, shelves there, maybe a built-in bench with storage underneath.
She wasn't an architect, but she knew how to improvise.
She labeled the floors, drew arrows for light flow, and jotted the word "studio" in three different spots.
Daniel watched, bemused, as she scrawled.
"Let me guess," he said, "meditation at dawn, book club at noon, wild parties at sunset?"
Emily shook her head, a little dizzy with the energy of it.
"Not parties—workshops. Writing retreats. Kids’ art classes.
I could run a music camp in summer, like Boston, only more accessible.
Chantelle could teach up here in the summer, and there’s enough room to do a gallery wall for the community.
It could be—" She broke off, searching for the right word. "—alive again."
“A noble plan,” Daniel said as he leaned forward, resting his head against the cool glass.
She saw his reflection there, double-exposed over the bay.
He had seemed much happier when they'd first arrived, but now, she sensed that something was troubling him.
Maybe it was her list of worries. Maybe it was the possibility of her being pregnant again.
But he didn’t say a word. He just gazed out over the sea.
She looked up, eyes hot and bright, wondering if he’d lost his nerve to take on the place. "Do you see it?"
"I see you, sweetheart, and so I’m sure I’ll see it." Daniel smiled, but there was a hitch at the edge of it.
Her own nerves eased a bit. Maybe he was reluctant now, with their baby news, but he believed in her. And Emily could work with that.