CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO #2
At the final landing, the stairs gave way to a metal ladder, bolted into the wall and crowned by a battered, circular hatch. Chantelle was already there, hands and toes on the lowest rungs, looking down with a dare in her eyes.
“Can I go up first?” she asked.
Emily nodded. “Careful with the latch. It sticks.”
Chantelle scrambled up, grunted at the stubborn hinge, and pushed with both arms. The hatch opened, and a flood of moonlight spilled down, dust motes swirling like snow.
She was gone in a flash, footsteps ringing on the floor above.
Daniel followed, then Emily, with Patricia, the Cassie behind them, and Roy coming up last.
At the top, the lantern room was just as she remembered—small, round, ringed by glass on all sides.
The brass fixtures were dulled by time, the floor gritty with decades of neglect, despite the best efforts of the Magic Elves cleaning crew.
But the view was undiminished. The whole world could be seen from here, harbor to horizon, every rock outcropping and ocean ripple and curve of land laid bare.
The wind battered the glass, and the air had a clean, raw edge to it.
Chantelle pressed her face to the window, breath fogging the pane. Daniel set Charlotte on the floor, where she curled into a ball and immediately resumed snoring.
Emily stepped to the center, slow and deliberate. She turned in a circle, tracing the line of the horizon, letting the ache in her legs root her to the floor.
She looked at her family—clustered, tired, alive—and for a moment, she saw every version of herself standing here: daughter, mother, wife, even the scared, small girl, hidden inside the young woman who’d once tried to run from everything that mattered.
All those shadows pressed in, but the room was too full of real people to let the past win.
Tomorrow, there would be work to do, repairs to make, plans to sort and fights to referee between workers. But tonight, there was only this: the world below, the family above, and the thread that pulled them all together, no matter how far they wandered.
Emily turned, arms folded, and watched the others take in the view.
Daniel’s hand found hers, warm and callused, and squeezed.
Cassie was on his other side, rapt. Chantelle tapped the window, counting the lights on the far shore.
Roy and Patricia stood together, silent but joined at the elbow.
For a long while, the lantern room belonged only to them.
The six of them—seven, counting the small thump of the baby—spread out across the round chamber, every footstep drawing a gritty shuffle sound from the floor.
The air was bracing; even with the windows sealed, a ghost of wind found its way in, slithering between the panes, bearing salt and the cold promise of another clear night.
Chantelle stared up, tracing invisible lines between the stars. “There’s Orion,” she said, though Emily couldn’t see it herself, and then, “Do you think you can see Boston from here?”
Emily considered. “On a really clear night, maybe. With binoculars.”
Chantelle smirked. “Or a telescope. We should get one. You could do star parties.” She turned, propping her chin on her knees, and regarded the rest of the family as if she were the tour guide and they the visitors.
“Hey, Mom—when you fix up this place, can I teach guitar lessons here at the top? I bet the echo is amazing.”
The question caught Emily off guard, but only for a heartbeat. “You can do anything you want,” she said. “We’ll even put in a permanent stage where Roman’s portable one is, if you want.”
Chantelle’s eyes glinted. “Just a stool and a mic stand. Like the real pros. And some craft services.” She said it as if she’d already mapped out the set list and the snack table.
On the far side of the room, Roy and Patricia stood together, hands clasped.
For all the miles he’d walked in his life, Roy now leaned on Patricia for support—not because he needed to, but because he wanted to.
Their silhouettes, framed in the harsh rim of moonlight, reminded Emily of old postcards—those faded, hand-tinted photos of keepers and their families, immortalized in time at the tops of these towers.
She wondered if they had ever felt as lucky as this, even back when they had first met here.
“She’s going to be a force of nature,” Daniel said, putting his hand on Emily’s belly.
Emily laughed, surprised at how light it sounded. “You sure it’s a girl?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “But they all are.”
Chantelle, bored with the view, wandered over and plopped onto the floor beside them. “What are you talking about?” she asked, voice sly.
Emily looked down at her, then at Charlotte, then back at Daniel. “The future,” she said, and let it hang there.
Chantelle rolled her eyes, but she smiled. “It’s cold up here,” she said, burrowing into Daniel’s side.
“Let’s take one more look, then head back down,” Emily said, pushing herself upright.
Together, they crowded the window—Emily, Daniel, Charlotte, and Chantelle, with Roy and Patricia and Cassie just behind.
The glass was smudged with fingerprints from the night’s visitors and scraped and scratched with the grime of a hundred storms, but the view was unspoiled.
The harbor glowed, the lighthouse’s own lens reflected the moon back onto the sea.
For a moment, the world outside felt very far away—every deadline, every uncertainty, every argument that had ever threatened to break them apart. In the lantern room, there was only the six of them, breathing together in the bright, thin air.
She wasn’t na?ve. The emails would pile up; Charlotte would wake at three in the morning demanding milk.
Daniel and Roy would probably argue about ironwork or the best brand of paint.
She knew that at some point, someone would get sick, that someone might even leave.
She knew that love didn’t insulate you from grief, or disappointment, or the slow erosion of time.
Emily leaned against the cold glass, watching the moon paint a stripe across the water, and thought: This is still it. This is the beginning and the end and every story in between.
She closed her eyes and listened—to the wind, the sea.
There would be other nights, other climbs, other fights, other celebrations, and maybe even other losses too big to name.
But right now, in the heart of the lighthouse, she felt only the surge of hope, as luminescent and abiding as the lens that had once swept the whole bay.
The story, she thought, isn’t ending. It’s starting over, every day.
And she couldn’t wait to write the next chapter.