Chapter 7 Heath
Heath
Maya mentions a Gaelic phrase—amharc anama—“the gaze of the soul,” as the train crosses a bleak moor. The windows are fogged, the cold seeping through the vinyl seats. Her voice is soft and clear, directed more at the silhouette she draws on the window than at me.
"Never heard that, but it sounds nice."
She keeps looking outside. "It's knowing someone. Their pain, their story—all they hide."
I want to ask her if she sees mine—if my own secrets are as plain as the landscape outside. Instead, I say, “How do you even pronounce that?” choosing safety over vulnerability.
She half-smiles. "Probably badly. My mother told me her grandmother could read people by sight."
I imagine Maya’s mother, never quite losing her Manhattan sheen, even here in rural Scotland. I wonder if her great-grandmother would have seen my guilt and ambition, or just a tired capitalist playing at poet for a travel app. I almost laugh.
Galloway Station is made of stone and tin, almost quaint in its desolation. We’re alone getting off; the conductor ignores us. The platform crunches with last autumn’s leaves as we reach the only taxi.
The morning is gray and damp. The taxi windows are wet, and Maya’s hair clings to her jaw. She wears no hat, just a loose scarf. I almost tuck her hair behind her ear, but it feels too intimate for a third date—even out here.
“Christ,” I say. “Remind me why we didn’t just drive?”
She shrugs, shoulders collapsing. “I thought it would feel more authentic, like we’d earn the place if we worked for it.”
The driver is an old man, white-haired and gnarled, smelling of cigarillo. For the first mile, he stays silent. I’m not sure if that’s policy or just Scottish contempt for English-speaking tourists, but I’m grateful. Galloway blurs by—brambled hedgerows, yellowed pasture. No sheep, not even a crow.
Eventually, the road winds through a copse of alder, and the sea appears: black, throbbing, immense. The shape of the lighthouse stands out on its remote spit of land. It is taller than I expected, lurking on the horizon like a warning finger.
“Bleak, isn’t it?” Maya says.
“Not at all,” I reply. “I think it has…ambience.”
She gives me a sidelong glance, then turns back to the window. For a moment, her posture tenses, and she looks less like a woman traveling and more like a woman on the run. I blink and look away, reaching for my bag as I force the thought aside.
There’s one street in the village, lined with worn stone cottages. The only life is the yellow glow of a café window. As we enter, I notice a faint, reedy sound—like a wind-chime in the distance.
Inside, the café is cheerful: blue walls, mismatched chairs, and cakes under glass. Maya orders a flat white, trying out her accent. I ask for black coffee and get a pitying smile.
We find a seat near the window. Her scarf is almost the color of blood now, the dye leaching in the damp. Our knees touch under the table, and for a second, she lets them.
“So,” she says, “what’s the plan, Heath?”
I almost admit to her that I haven’t thought past the next hour, but want to appear in control.
“We walk,” I say, “and then we see what the hell is so special about this lighthouse. You write your piece, I get my promo pictures, we invent a spiritual connection with the land, and then I take you to a real dinner in Edinburgh.”
She laughs, not quite genuine. “Smooth.”
The coffees arrive. Hers is dusted with cocoa, mine is so strong it makes my teeth ache. I glance at a poster taped to the wall above us: a faded photograph of the lighthouse, beneath which reads: The Last Beacon, since 1803.
"First visit?" I ask.
She shakes her head. “Yes, but I know the story. Sort of.” She glances up at the poster, then back at me, geranium-blue eyes suddenly serious. “You do know it’s haunted, right?”
“Of course,” I say. “They all are.”
But she’s not joking. She leans in, hands curved protectively around her mug.
“The last keeper was a girl—Moira Blythe. She lived alone in the cottage her whole life, keeping the light every night until she died. They say she still keeps it. There are people who swear they’ve seen her, even now, walking the catwalk upstairs.
Sometimes she’s got a lamp, other times she’s just standing, looking out at the sea like she’s waiting for something. ”
“Someone, you mean.”
“Someone,” Maya echoes. “But no one ever says the name.”
Something inside me prickles. I glance at the clock over the register, half expecting the hands to be stuck, some perfunctory bit of folklore. But they’re moving, lazy, and indifferent. I flex my jaw and swallow the rest of my coffee, which tastes like the last rites.
"Go?" Maya asks, seeing my unease.
Outside, the air is raw, thick with ocean. The main road soon narrows to a wind-eaten path, Galloway shrinking behind us. Lichen covers every surface; the stone fences are uneven and moss-covered. My mood matches the spare landscape.
We walk in silence, the village replaced by the sea’s drone and our boots on gravel. Maya watches the horizon with reverence. The lighthouse grows closer: white and black, crowned with shattered glass.
As we reach the last rise, a squall blows in with sideways rain, bone-cold and immediate.
She yelps half-heartedly, and before I can stop myself, I take off my coat and throw it over her shoulders, ignoring her protest. The air between us feels charged.
She stares at me as if I’ve just changed something important between us.
For a long minute, we just stand there, teeth chattering, squinting into the wind.
“You ever get the feeling you’re not supposed to be somewhere?” she says at last.
“All the time,” I say, truthfully.
She smiles, but she looks afraid.
The last hundred yards are open to wind and sky. The path turns sandy and kelp-streaked, and outbuildings crouch around the tower. An iron gate blocks the entrance, latched but not locked.
I gesture at the sign that reads PRIVATE PROPERTY, NO TRESPASSING and raise an eyebrow. “Felony selfie?”
She squares her shoulders and ducks under the bar. “Wouldn’t be the first.”
I follow, nerves buzzing. Inside, the wind quiets. Maya trails her fingers over the wall. The tower door swings open ahead, creaking in the wind.
We step in. The air is warmer, filled with smoke and mold, but not unpleasant. Spiral stairs climb the wall, and a wooden bench sits under a faded placard: Keep Watch. Every Visitor Counts.
“Would you mind?” Maya says.
I sit next to her, the bench creaking under my weight. Our thighs touch, more intentional this time.
She stares up at the spiraling dark. “I met a man who worked as a keeper in Nova Scotia. Different world, but same idea. He told me the tower was alive. That if you listened hard enough, you’d know what it wanted from you.”
“What does this one want?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Maybe just company. Or forgiveness.”
She turns to me, hair clinging to her cheeks, and for a moment I catch something behind her eyes—a flicker, like a trapped moth. My chest tightens, and though I want to touch her hand, I flex my own and rest it on my thigh, focusing on the worn wood beneath my palm.
Suddenly, she leans her head on my shoulder, almost shyly, as if asking permission for something neither of us could name.
“You want to go to the top?” I say, voice steadier than I feel.
She nods, and we begin the climb.
The spiral stairs are tight; outside vanishes after a few turns. Only our breathing and the struts’ groans remain. Halfway up, I stop to catch my breath. Maya is steady, her hand brushing the rail as if tracing runes.
At the landing, the door sticks, but Maya shoves it open. We blink at the sudden light; the storm has passed. Below, the coastline unfolds, alive with spray and salt.
“God,” she says, “look at all of it.”
I try, but mostly I’m looking at her: the way her hair whips across her face, the flush in her cheeks, the way her body seems more at ease the closer she gets to the edge.
The room smells not of oil or metal, but of ozone and far-off flowers.
It occurs to me that she belongs here, somehow, with her pale profile and sea-witch laugh, and that I am simply a trespasser granted a single afternoon’s amnesty.
She circles the walkway, pausing at the leeward side to peer across the water. I join her. The sun, low and weak, lays a scattered path of gold over the waves. We stand shoulder to shoulder, both of us holding our breaths.
“You know Moira used to walk up here every night,” she says, finally. “They say she could see all the way to England with the right telescope. But she never left. Even when the light was automated. She just stayed.”
“Some people can’t leave where they hurt the most.”
She nods, then shudders, as if shedding a coat of memory. “So…what do you think? Soulful enough for your brand?”
I want to tell her I don’t give a damn about the brand.
That if it were up to me, I’d ditch my phone in the sea and stay here, just to see what it feels like to exist without an agenda.
But I don’t say it, because it would sound like a line.
Instead, I say: “I think it’s the kind of place you dream about, but when you wake up, you think it’s too much, even for dreams.”
She laughs, less sea-witch than girl again. I want to remember the way her throat moves as she swallows the air. “Very poetic,” she says, but there’s a catch in it, and I sense an invitation, or maybe just a dare.
For a while, we don’t talk. The wind claws at us through the gaps in the glass, but Maya stands still, eyes fixed on the endless sky and water. She puts her hand up, palm outward, as if asking the sea for something it cannot give.
I try my selfie. I hold the phone high and frame us both against the blue sky.
Maya leans on me just enough to make it look real.
For a moment, I let myself believe it could be.
My arm is around her shoulder, her cheek pressed cold against mine, the photo capturing not the lighthouse or the bay, but the almost, the sense of something that feels like arrival.
She looks at the photo and makes a face. “You look somber,” she says.
“I always look somber.”
She cocks her head. “What would it take to make you look otherwise?”
You, I want to say. You, you, you, you. But my mouth fills with the ghosts of other moments, other women I failed to keep, and hunger turns to ache.
Instead, I nudge her towards the camera. “Smile for the brand,” I say.
She grins, but just as the shutter goes, her expression changes. She looks open, less prepared, all her shields down. For a second, I see something I don’t have a word for. Not happiness, exactly, but the possibility of it.