Chapter 6 #3
It was true. She could see them in every crack of the lobby paint at WWJD, in the grooves worn into the rug where generations of listeners had shuffled in with their donation checks, casseroles, and a few complaints.
Her parents’ presence had hummed in the building and felt necessary to keep the lights on.
She stepped onto the path that led toward the Napanee River, her chorus gathering like a storm.
“Who rises when the lighthouse keepers
Vanish far from earthly sight?”
Up ahead, Mr. Patel sat on a wooden crate by the back door to his restaurant, taking a break. He raised his coffee cup toward her in a little salute and said quietly, “You do.”
“Who finds a pathway in the dark
Until her courage sets a match alight?”
She thought of the empty bedroom where she’d been sleeping with the lamp on. Of waking up to phantom engine sounds, thinking her parents’ Chrysler 300 had finally pulled into the driveway, safely delivering them home.
“I wasn’t born to play it safe,
I feel their hands upon my back.”
That line surprised her. She’d always thought of herself as the safe one–the rule follower, the steady hand on the wheel. But there it was, her truth slipping into rhyme.
“If storms keep coming, I’ll face them
Guiding strangers through the black.
They built the tower.
Now it’s my turn,
To keep the signal intact.”
The last phrase rang out as she stepped onto the small footbridge over the river.
The planks creaked beneath her heels; wood weathered to a greenish-grey and carved with decades of hearts protecting initials, sums of promises kept and others broken.
Love locks rusted from the rain and snow hung heavy with the whispered secrets of new and time-tested lovers and the weight of knowing they’d never be freed from the torture of holding on, having tossed aside reason and rationale in the form of a key into the river below–all in exchange for hope.
Emma-Lou stopped halfway across the bridge and the Napanee River glided past underneath, bluish-green and glinting, catching slices of the sky in its slow, Dedalian dance downstream.
On its surface, sunlight glittered like a million tiny notes of encouragement.
Somewhere upriver, a chorus of kids were at play–skipping stones or pretending they knew how to smoke a stolen cigarette.
Emma-Lou curled her fingers tighter around the manilla folder and looked down at the water as the bridge of the song rose up from its depths to meet her,
“There’s a promise pressed inside me
Like a secret wrapped with care.
Just why was I left alone here?
When they are now, nowhere?”
Her voice thinned on nowhere, and the word stretched out over the river like something fragile, like a line cast into the deep.
“But maybe loss is its own gospel,
And maybe love demands we try,
To turn the silence into truth,
To raise the fallen one more time.”
The bridge plank beneath her right foot had a nail sticking up, polished by countless shoes.
Her mother would have called the town office to complain and then laid hands on the bridge and prayed for more municipal funding.
Her father would’ve tripped on it three separate times and declared each one a test from God.
Emma-Lou knelt, took off her heel and hammered the errant nail flush back into place.
The wind shifted, carrying a distant church bell and the faint staticky bleed of a car radio from the other side of the river.
Somewhere, someone had their dial tuned to WWJD.
The thought steadied her. She inhaled, filling her lungs as much as she could as she stood up and reached for the railing for the final chorus.
The town lay before her in miniature–church steeples, radio tower, the faded brick squares of the station itself. Her station.
“Who rises when the lighthouse keepers
Leave without a final word?”
Somewhere behind her, a flock of starlings came out of hiding from a tree and swirled into the air, wingbeats jittering like applause.
“The girl they thought stayed small forever,
She’s waking now, she’s being stirred.”
She thought of herself at twelve, doing mock weather reports into a hairbrush in the mirror. Of her father laughing and then saying, “Careful, Lou-Lou. You keep that up, we’ll have to give you a timeslot.”
“Not by certainty or safety,
Not by knowing how to lead,
But by the echo of their calling
And the town’s unspoken need.”
Her chest hurt. Her eyes burned. But the note held and grew.
“I will stand where they once stood,
With trembling hands and open eyes.
They built the tower.
And through my sorrow,
I’ve finally realized–”
She closed her eyes as the last lines rose.
For a heartbeat, she saw her parents–not as they’d left, in vacation wear and duty-free sunglasses but as they’d been in the studio.
She imagined them with their headphones on now, laughing into the microphones, picking out their favorite hymns to put on eternal rotation and gently pressing the ON AIR button.
“The waves they tended
Still roll through me.
A daughter of the lighthouse
Learning how to rise.”
She softened the last word into the wind, and the river carried it away. For a moment, there was silence. Just her, the water, and the call and answer of the starlings high above.
Emma-Lou opened her eyes. The manilla folder stamped with Declaration of Death: Lost at Sea still weighed down her arms. Her feet still hurt in the cheap black pumps. Her parents were still gone and nothing it seemed would change that.
But the wild, reorienting thing was this–underneath all that grief, something else had started stubbornly, to burn. Not relief. Not yet.
Resolve.
She straightened her mother’s blazer, rolled her shoulders back, took one last look at her reflection in the water–small, dark, a little smudged, but still standing–and turned back toward her town.
There was a funeral to get ready for. And after that, a radio station that needed to keep the lights on. And after that? Well. Maybe God and the Bermuda Triangle weren’t done with her yet.
LISTEN to LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS’ DAUGHTER
Emma-Lou wasn’t sure how she’d survived that meeting with Stanford Weinus, but now, standing in the receiving line at her parents’ funeral, she wondered if this wasn’t an even greater test.
The air in the funeral home was thick with the scent of lilies, mingled with the soft murmurs of mourners offering their condolences.
The soft notes of Nearer My God to Thee floated through the chapel, though it was hard to call them soft with Rebekkah and Japheth performing it.
Both singers were locked in a fierce competition of vocal runs, embellishing the hymn as if they were auditioning for a solo in the church choir, or a solo in heaven itself.
If Rebekkah’s large pink fur and feather hat didn’t draw attention, their matching bedazzled denim outfits certainly did, adding to the surrealness of it all as they swayed in time to their singing, refracting the fluorescent overhead lights like disco balls.
If Rebekkah’s shot at stardom could happen at this funeral, she wouldn’t have the moment immortalized by the paparazzi with her wearing a simple shirt dress and hair scrunchie.
Emma-Lou stood stiffly at the head of the receiving line; her hands clasped in front of her as a long procession of mourners offered their condolences.
To her left was Suwarna, the glue of WWJD’s staff and voice of reason, petite in stature but full of quiet confidence.
Suwarna’s dark hair was pulled back in a neat bun, and her ever-observant eyes scanned the room with the alertness of the President’s chief of staff; ready to discreetly whisper the name of the next guest in line along with the exact dessert square they’d brought and a promise to return the green glassware it was delivered on; to her exhausted, no longer interim now that her parents were about to be interred, new CEO.
On Emma-Lou’s right was Carrington, the office fashionista.
Today, Carrington had traded in their usual avant-garde looks for something more subtle, despite sporting an asymmetrical haircut sharp enough to cut glass.
The Gucci was vintage but still managed to scream, ‘look at me’.
Carrington stood with their arms folded, sharp eyes flicking between guests, taking in every detail.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Emma-Lou,” an elderly funeral guest purred, gripping Emma-Lou’s hand. “It’s just… heartbreaking and a loss for all of us.”
“Thank you so much for coming,” Emma-Lou replied automatically, her smile tight and practiced. “Big Daddy always said you made the very best Christmas fruit cake. Don’t be a stranger now.”
As the guest moved on, Carrington leaned in with a raised brow, “You’re holding up well, Emma-Lou.”
“I’m not going to fall apart at the seams,” Emma-Lou said, straightening her spine, though it was clear she was holding herself together by sheer willpower. “Even if that’s exactly what I feel like doing. I can’t. All these people came to honour Big Daddy and Mamma and…”
“And you’re making them proud right now,” Suwarna cut in, her voice gentle but firm. “They might be stamping their hooves and galloping across a field of poppies or wiggling their tadpole tails for the very first time right now.”
Carrington and Emma-Lou’s brows furrowed in confusion.
“Do Christians believe in reincarnation?” Suwarna asked to clarify.
“I don’t think so, Suwarna.” Emma-Lou gave her a sidelong glance, “We’ve got our fingers crossed for heaven.”
Carrington smirked, tossing their hair, “Your parents are most likely in the VIP line at the pearly gates. St. Peter is probably looking at their names on the guest list right now.”
“Thank you, Carrington,” Emma-Lou replied, giving their arm a squeeze.
Carrington sniffed the air, their nose wrinkling slightly, “Speaking of VIPs, I can smell Rino Ferrari’s cologne. It’s like a wall of Italian marble pushing the air out of the room.”