Chapter 3
Chapter Three
The next day at work, as the sun shines brightly through the large windows of Pleasant Coffee, I relay to Priya what happened yesterday afternoon. I tell her all about the lighthouse I found and how I initially thought it was abandoned.
“And then I go inside, right?” I tell her as I make my second attempt to steam milk for a bone-dry cappuccino.
“And there was an extremely grumpy—and rude—lighthouse keeper who was clearly very bothered by my existence.” She tilts her head and stares at me as I shrug.
“He was also ridiculously attractive.” I think back to his impending storm warning, despite the sunny weather, and add, “I don’t think he was very good at his job,” mostly out of spite.
I stare at all the people drinking coffee at the wooden tables, lost in their own conversations, and sigh.
“No, it seemed like he worked there. He was on the phone and had a clipboard in one of his hands. It was somewhere along the south shore, near a point, I think. Only about thirty minutes away from here.” Remembering the open ocean all around, I say, “And there was a fishing village nearby.” I pull my phone out of my sky-blue apron and look up the area, zooming in to where I think the lighthouse is.
“Oh, there it is! It was Killick Point, right by… Killick Bay,” I exclaim, shoving my phone into her concerned and amused face.
She cocks an eyebrow and then looks back at me. “I don’t think that’s right. It must have been another lighthouse. That one’s abandoned, and the door is boarded up. See, look.” She points to the image I’m showing her, and yes, you can see the door I supposedly entered yesterday, all boarded up.
“Umm, I don’t think it is?” I say with an inflection in my tone, because now I’m second-guessing myself.
“Yeah. Killick Point has been abandoned since, like, 1993,” she says as she lovingly shoves me aside after my third attempt at this foam or steam or whatever it is you want to call it.
She pours a fresh cup and steams it, expertly holding both the wand handle and the handle on the cup while she talks.
“There was a bad storm one afternoon. Really bad. The lighthouse keeper got knocked off the rocks or something, saving two brothers, and was swept out into the ocean. They never found his body and never used the lighthouse again. Locals from Killick Bay say the lighthouse is haunted because his spirit could never make it to its final resting place. He definitely died a hero, though. The kids lived.” She finishes the cappuccino and slides it across the counter to the very impatient man waiting on the other side.
“You’re definitely thinking of another lighthouse. ”
We go back to work in silence after that, the late-morning rush beginning.
Pleasant Coffee is the only coffee shop in town, and people here are very serious about their morning brew.
They are also very particular, as we just saw with “bone-dry cappuccino” guy.
I can pour beans and press brew on the coffee machines quite easily, but all these other drinks are taking me forever to learn.
I’ve never had to worry about how to make a drink before this.
I’ve either pressed a button on my own very smart espresso machine or ordered it from the local Equator cafe near my parents’ house.
I’m distracted by my thoughts, causing me to spill a newly opened bag of decaf beans all over the floor.
They stand out along the white-tiled floor beneath my feet, a sea of brown everywhere.
I duck down as our supervisor, Sarah James, walks past, hoping I can both hide and clean up this mess before she sees it.
“Lucy,” I hear as her footsteps get closer. “What did you do this time?” Light green eyes stare into mine. Her long auburn hair is back in a tight bun today, showing off more of her face and the disapproving look it’s sporting.
“Sorry, Sarah,” I apologize. “Slipped. I’ll get this cleaned up right away.” I walk over to the back room and grab a broom and a dustpan to sweep it up.
“You’re lucky this doesn’t come out of your paycheque. This is the second time you’ve spilled something back here.”
Ouch. She’s not wrong. Last week, I spilled a freshly made batch of cold brew all over the counter, which poured over the side where customers gather to wait for their drinks.
She was working that day and was not happy about my accident, seeing as cold brew takes a full day to make.
She angrily slapped an “Out of Stock” sticker over the menu board and didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.
Every day that we work together, I think she is a little more convinced that I don’t belong here, that Priya was wrong to vouch for me.
Pri went out on a limb to get me this job, and though I show up with a positive attitude and try my best, it’s taking me longer to get the hang of it than I think any of us realized.
That’s what happens when you work your first real job at twenty-five, I guess.
All the mistakes I should have made as a young and dumb teenager, I’m making now.
I bite the inside of my cheeks to stop myself from going head to head with Sarah. She can be so rude, and it’s like she forgets I’m a person. Letting my temper get the best of me will not help me out right now, though.
I need this job, or else I’m screwed.
“I’ll get another bag from the back, Sarah.
That was an older bag anyway.” Priya’s chipper voice attempts to defuse the situation and calm our supervisor down.
Also, to save me from going off on her. “Can you check on that pastry order we’re supposed to get today?
” Ah, yes, distraction usually works for Sarah, who is both a workaholic and an overachiever.
“Just see that it doesn’t happen again,” she snaps as she grabs a clipboard and walks into the office off to the side, slamming the door behind her.
“Sorry, Pri,” I whisper as she walks out with another bag. “I’m off my game today. I think I’m just tired.” Tired from a poor sleep on a lumpy mattress, or tired from the memory of a pair of deep green eyes staring into mine? The jury’s out on that one.
“No problem. It happens.” She cuts open the bag with scissors and pours the beans into the grinder. “Can you help the customer who just walked in?”
Closing the door to my little studio apartment has never felt quite as satisfying as it does today.
Goodbye, world. Goodbye, obnoxious and hard-to-make coffee orders.
Goodbye, Sarah. I take my white New Balance sneakers off and place them on the small black mat to the left of my front door in the closet.
Then I look out into my open, minimally decorated space.
The old, scratched, and stained oak floors creak beneath my feet as I walk into the kitchen on the left side of the apartment, passing the bathroom door to my right.
My “bedroom area” is a small platform on the right with the head of my white bed frame against the back wall.
It’s nice because it feels separate, and I get to look out the three rectangular windows that overlook the street and shops below me.
I live above a convenience store, about a ten-minute walk from Pleasant Coffee.
The owner of the store, Mrs. Kim, knows me all too well at this point.
She also knows my obsession with Buldak ramen. The pink bag, specifically.
When I get into the kitchen, which is just some cabinets and appliances along the left wall of the apartment, I open the fridge and grab an unopened bottle of Riesling I bought last Friday.
Feels like the perfect evening to indulge, as today was a day.
I pour the chilled wine into a glass jar that once held strawberry jam and walk over to where my couch and coffee table are.
Placing the makeshift wineglass on the black rectangular IKEA coffee table I scored on Marketplace, I pick up my laptop. I’ve got some research to do tonight.
It’s cool in the apartment this evening, and I reach for the checkered quilt that hangs off the back of the couch.
I wrap it around my crossed legs, then place the computer on my lap.
Opening Google, I research Killick Point and its history.
I find the Wikipedia page and take in everything that happened on October 23, 1993.
According to the website, Dylan Hart was the lighthouse keeper at the time, and he was only thirty-two years old when he died.
There aren’t any close-up pictures of him, only faraway shots taken on a point-and-shoot camera where he’s standing in front of the freshly painted, striped lighthouse.
The red door attached to the entrance vestibule looks brand new in the photos, a bright red, the same colour as a stop sign.
In the photo, Dylan is wearing a dark green toque that shadows most of his face, and his lips are pulled tight in a line. Guess he wasn’t a fan of smiling.
The last photo is from a news article written by the Chronicle Herald and published the day after the accident. It describes the storm as
a powerful nor’easter that battered Nova Scotia’s South Shore that afternoon, bringing wind gusts over 100 km/h, heavy rain, and dangerous seas that pounded the coastline for hours.
The photo in the article shows the empty lighthouse sitting on the edge of a cliff, surrounded by jagged rocks.
Out in the background is the open sea. To the naked eye, it’s just a lighthouse.
But to me, it looks like death. A life that once lived there, gone.
Washed out to sea. Never seen again. He probably fell off one of those rocks, and the merciless ocean took him away.
There’re no images or names given because of privacy concerns, but the article states there was a family staying at an inn nearby in Killick Bay.
Their two sons, four and twelve, wandered off from the yard.
Mom was inside, unpacking for their stay.
They made it to the lighthouse and out on the rocks, and when the police interviewed them, the older boy said they got too close to the edge and fell off the cliff.
Dylan went in after them and got them out and back onto the shore.
The article says that he probably spotted the kids from one of the windows in the lighthouse, and after helping them, he somehow fell again, not having the strength to get himself up once more.
The boys saw and ran for help. He was gone by the time the police arrived.
Social media wasn’t a thing back then, so I don’t have much of a sense of who the lighthouse keeper was or what he looked like.
Just that he was originally from that same village, Killick Bay.
He had a younger sister, who died when she was eight, so not only did his parents lose one child, but they lost both.
His dad was a lighthouse keeper previously, and Dylan took over for him when he was twenty-nine.
His parents stayed in the village until 2001, when they passed away.
The article ends by saying that because of the high winds and heavy rain, there was very little chance he could have survived the fall.
The rocks surrounding the lighthouse would have been too wet and slippery to climb back up.
Harsh waves would have taken him out fast. I think of how cold the water would have been and shudder.
It’s believed his death was either from drowning or landing on the sharp rocks after his fall.
I close my laptop, having found all the info I can on the lighthouse and its keeper. Because of how he died, the family and the town didn’t want it turned into any sort of museum or tourist attraction. It has sat empty and abandoned since.
If that’s the case, who’s living there now?