My footsteps falter and my hope falls when I see Trip securing the deadbolt and shaking the rain from his hair.
“Don’t look so disappointed to see me, Lucy girl,” Trip mutters.
I rush over to him and give him a quick hug. “I’m sorry, I thought you might be Fisher. I’ve been trying to call him for the last hour, but he’s not picking up.”
Taking Trip’s coat from him, I shake off some of the water and hang it on the coat rack next to the door. I glance out into the driveway and notice Trip’s SUV parked there.
“It must be getting really bad out there if you drove. You never drive,” I comment.
“It’s really kicking up. I wanted to stop over and make sure you were doing okay here. Haven’t seen Fisher since first thing this morning,” Trip tells me. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
Trip doesn’t sound convinced, and it doesn’t make me feel any better. Fisher always answers his phone no matter what he’s doing, and I hope he’s just avoiding my calls. I don’t like the idea of him being out in this storm. I don’t like the idea of Trip being out in it, either, even though it was really sweet of him to check on me.
“You shouldn’t have gone out in this, you could have just called,” I tell him as I watch him rub his left shoulder and wince. “What’s wrong with your arm?”
He shakes it out and gives me a smile. “Eh, I just bumped it on the car door when I got out and the wind took hold of it, it’s nothing.”
I watch him with concern for a few minutes, noticing that his face is flushed and he doesn’t look like he feels well. He shoos me away when I try to help him walk as I lead him into the library and introduce him to Seth and Mary Beth.
They shake hands and everyone but me takes a seat. I can’t sit still, not until I know Fisher is somewhere safe and dry.
“Figured it would be better to wait out the storm here in a much bigger place. With that wind, my little house sounded like it was about ready to be blown off into the ocean,” Trip says with a laugh. “What’s the news saying so far?”
“They still aren’t categorizing it as a hurricane, but that wind is really getting bad,” I tell him.
There’s a loud knock at the front door and Trip and I share a hopeful look before I run back out to the front room. When I see Fisher’s mother hovering on the other side of the door, shielding her face from the wind and rain, I quickly unlock the door and have to brace myself against it as I hold it open for her to enter. Water and leaves come flying into the house, covering the floor as she rushes inside. I slam the door behind her and put the deadbolt back on.
“Grace, what are you doing here?” I ask as she wraps me in a wet hug before handing me a large basket.
“Running around to as many residential homes as I can, passing out supplies. Being the head of the Storm Emergency Committee means my work is never done,” she says with a laugh. “Thank goodness this was my last stop. You don’t mind if I stay here for a little while, do you?”
I peek inside the basket to find bottled water, batteries, flashlights and some snacks.
“Of course not! This is wonderful, Grace, thank you so much. Come on into the library, everyone else is in there right now,” I tell her, leading the way.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I grabbed your mail on the way in. The mailbox door was blown open and I was afraid you might lose some things,” she tells me, handing me a stack of letters and bills that are slightly damp.
I take them from her, handing the basket over to Trip as she sits next to him on the couch. Trip and Seth begin assembling the flashlights while Mary Beth and Grace make their introductions.
Pacing around the room, I flip through the stack of mail to give myself something to do. When I come to a large, white envelope with Fisher’s handwriting on the front, my heart plummets to my feet. There is no return address and no postage, so he didn’t mail the envelope. It looks like he just stuck it in my mailbox at some point after I got the mail yesterday. It looks so much like the envelope that the divorce papers came in that I’m afraid to open it. Had I finally pushed him too far? Is he tired of waiting around for me to get my shit together? I move away from everyone else while they are busy chatting about the storm and force myself to tear open the envelope and pull out the single sheet of paper inside.
Dear Lucy –
I’m sorry for so many things. I don’t even know why I’m saying it to you again, because saying the words isn’t the same as showing you. Right now, I’m showing you how sorry I am. I’m sorry for never sending you a letter before now. You deserve a thousand letters telling you a thousand different ways how much I love you and how much you mean to me. I know you’re afraid and I know you’re worried, but everything will be okay. We were meant to be together. We were meant to fall in love on this island and to spend the rest of our lives together… it was fate. The photo inside proves that.
There’s a light that guides all of us to where we’re meant to be. You’re meant to be with me, Lucy. Please… be with me.
I love you. Always.
Fisher
My eyes fill and I’m honestly surprised that I have tears left in me to shed at this point. Reaching back inside the envelope, I pull out the photo he mentioned. My hand flies to my mouth and I gasp, the letter and the envelope falling from my hand. Staring at the photo in my hand, I almost can’t believe what I’m looking at.
Both Trip and Grace walk over to me when they realize I’m crying. Trip pats me on the back and Grace wraps her arm around me, looking over my shoulder to see what has gotten me so upset.
“I was wondering if he’d give that to you,” she tells me softly. “I found it in one of my photo albums a few months ago.”
Trip looks over my opposite shoulder and chuckles.
“Well, Goddamn, would you look at that? I forgot all about that. Wasn’t that the year of the big hurricane?” he asks Grace.
Grace nods. “It was. You took Fisher with you that day to make sure none of the residents needed help with their storm shutters. I was worried sick when you guys never came back.”
“Got way too bad out there for us to try and make it back to your end of the island,” Trip muses. “We ended up stopping right here at the inn and hunkering down with everyone else.”
I finally find my voice and tear my gaze away from the photo.
“What the hell is this? Will someone please explain this to me?” I ask in a shaky voice, waving the photo back and forth in front of them.
Trip guides me over to the couch and I sit between him and Grace. He takes the photo from my hand and stares at it for a few seconds before handing it back to me.
“Fisher was eleven the year of that hurricane, so that would have put you around nine, right?” he asks.
I nod silently, urging him to continue.
“It was the last year you came to visit your grandparents here at the inn. As soon as we pulled into the driveway, that huge weeping willow uprooted and fell right behind my truck. By that time, the drainage system was overloaded and the water in the street was about shin-deep, so Fisher and I ran up to the porch and your grandparents ushered us inside and brought us right in here to this library,” he explains.
I stare down at the picture in my hand and trace my fingers over the two children sitting in front of the fire with big smiles on their faces. Me and Fisher, ages nine and eleven. It’s almost too hard to believe. I don’t remember this picture being taken and I barely remember being here during that hurricane.
“The electricity went out shortly after we got here. Your grandparents kept the adults occupied by stuffing them full of food and passing out board games. You were upset and scared about the storm and no one could get you to calm down,” Trip tells me. He pauses to cough and runs his hand over his chest. His forehead is dotted with sweat and I don’t like the look on his face.
“Trip? Are you okay?”
He bats my hand away when I try to press it to his forehead to see if he has a fever.
“Stop fussing over me, Lucy girl, and let me finish this story,” he complains. “Where was I? Oh, right, so Fisher had this piece of wood he was carrying everywhere with him at the time, trying to carve something out of it. I had my toolbox with me in case anyone had any problems, so he took out what he needed, grabbed your hand and sat the two of you down over there in the corner by the fireplace with that big piece of wood.”
Trip points over to the corner and we both stare for a few seconds in silence as I try to remember before Trip continues.
“Fisher started whittling away at that wood and you calmed right down. You curled up next to him and watched him work for hours. He explained everything he was doing like you were his student and he was teaching you how to whittle. Your grandmother even fetched him some paint and he let you help him paint it when he was finished.”
I sniffle and wipe the tears from my eyes as Trip speaks and a quick flash of a memory from that day skates through my mind. I remember being sad because I was leaving the island the next day and I wanted the boy to make me something I could take home with me.
“All in all, we were probably stuck here for about eight or ten hours. When the storm finally passed, you started crying when Fisher and I got ready to leave. Fisher gave you what he’d carved and your face lit up like a Christmas tree,” Trip says with a laugh. “I wish I could remember what the hell it was he made.”
Another memory hits me and I gasp. I see him handing me the finished product. It’s red and white and beautiful and I’m so happy that I helped him make something so amazing.
Snatching up a flashlight and turning it on, I get up from the couch without a word and race to the stairs. I take them two at a time until I get to the top, running down the long hallway until I reach the door to the Fisher’s Lighthouse room, throwing it open and bursting through the doorway. I stop right inside the room, my heart pounding so hard that I’m certain it might pop right out of my chest. The wind and the rain beat against the side of the house as I slowly walk over to the windows in the middle of the wall on the far side of the room.
With a tentative hand, I reach out and run my palm down the side of the red and white wooden lighthouse that I’ve been drawn to since I found it in the attic when my parents and I first moved here. I dusted it off and stuck it right here in this room that very first day when I was sixteen years old. I would come in here almost every afternoon and sit in front of it, staring at it, touching it and loving it for reasons I never understood.
Another memory assaults me and I remember my parents telling me that I couldn’t take the lighthouse home with me because it was too big and wouldn’t fit in our suitcases. I cried almost the entire way home from the island.
Dropping down to my knees, I lift the two-foot tall wooden lighthouse from the floor. I see another flash of a memory in my mind and I have to know if it’s real. Tipping the lighthouse upside down, my face crumbles and I sob, seeing that it was, indeed, real. In the same block script that he writes in now, just a little larger and a little messier, are carved words that make my thundering heart ache.
I hope someday you find your way back here.
If you do, I’ll meet you at the lighthouse.
I cradle the lighthouse to my chest and rock back and forth. How can this be happening right now? The promise he always made me about finding his way back to me and the words we said to each other on our wedding day when we spoke of renewing our vows and how we’d meet each other at the lighthouse… he carved those same words to me into a wooden lighthouse when he was eleven years old. It doesn’t seem possible, and yet, it is. I have the proof and the photo and the story from Trip and Grace and my little snippets of memories to reassure me that it’s all true and it really happened.
“I found my soul mate when I was a child and she will always be the love of my life, no matter how many years go by.”
“We were meant to fall in love on this island.”
“You were meant to be with me.”
The words Trip spoke when he told us how much he loved his wife and the words that Fisher wrote to me in his note swirl through my head faster than the wind and the rain outside.
Placing the lighthouse on the floor, I jump up and race out the door and down the stairs. Reaching into Trip’s coat pocket, I grab the keys to his SUV and I’m already racing out the door and into the harsh, biting wind and rain just as everyone comes into the front room and starts screaming at me to come back.
Chapter 41
Lucy
Present Day
I try calling Fisher again as I slowly make my way through the flooded streets in town, but all I get is a voice recording telling me that all systems are down. Tossing my phone across the seat angrily, I flip the wipers from low to high and lean forward against the steering wheel, trying to see better.
I drive past every business on Main Street, I drive by Barney’s, I drive by the beach and I drive by Trip’s house, but I don’t see Fisher’s truck anywhere. The storefronts were boarded up as soon as the storm started picking up earlier this afternoon, and I’m the only idiot out on the streets right now.
A trip to Bobby’s house produces the same results, but when I get to Ellie’s, I see both her and Bobby’s cars parked in the driveway. Her house is on a hill right in the middle of the fork in the road that splits Main Street into two separate streets and one of the few houses that doesn’t sit directly on the beach. Aside from the inn, which is a huge structure, and the evacuation center, Ellie’s house is one of the safer places to be right now since it’s further inland than anywhere else, and I’m glad that she and Bobby are holed up in here instead of his beachfront cottage.
I pull the SUV up behind their vehicles and make a mad dash up to the house, noticing that Ellie’s hurricane shutters are wide open and smacking against the siding. Finding the front door unlocked, I start shouting their names as I move through the house, but I don’t get an answer. The faint sound of snoring comes from the finished basement that she uses as an extra living room, so I quickly make my way down the carpeted stairs.
I find Bobby and Ellie curled up together on the couch, fast asleep. While I’d normally find the sight in front of me so sweet that I’d immediately want to snap a picture of it with my cell phone, I don’t have time for that now.
Saying both of their names softly so I don’t scare them, I rush over to the couch and shake Ellie’s shoulder. She jerks awake and stares up at me in confusion, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“What’s going on? What time is it?” she asks in a raspy, sleep-filled voice.
Bobby yawns and stretches behind her, blinking his eyes open and staring up at me with the same confused look as Ellie.
“Have you guys seen or heard from Fisher today?” I ask them frantically as they both swing their legs down the front of the couch and sit up.
“What time is it? Jesus, what day is it? Why the hell are you sopping wet?” Bobby asks with another yawn as he stares at my wet clothes, which are dripping all over the floor.
I’m about ready to shake the shit out of them both if they don’t get with the program.
“What is WITH you two?” I ask in irritation.
“Sorry, I was up every hour last night throwing up. Every. Hour. From nine last night until nine this morning,” Ellie explains. “We moved down here on the couch this morning to watch a movie once it finally passed. We must have fallen asleep.”
Bobby looks down at his watch. “Shit. We’ve been asleep for like seven hours.”
He starts to joke with Ellie and I lose it.
“PAY ATTENTION! HAVE EITHER OF YOU SEEN OR HEARD FROM FISHER TODAY?!”
They stop laughing and look at me in shock.
“Uh, he stopped by here this morning, right before we fell asleep on the couch. Jesus, Lucy, what’s the big deal? You’ve been ignoring him for a week, what’s another day?” Bobby asks sarcastically.
Ellie punches him in the arm and tells him to shut up and he immediately apologizes
.
“The big deal is that we’re in the middle of a hurricane and I can’t get ahold of Fisher!” I yell.
Bobby jumps up from the couch. “Are you fucking kidding me? We’ve been sleeping through a hurricane?”
He races up the stairs, Ellie and I right behind him.
“Jesus Christ!” he shouts as soon as he gets to the top of the stairs and looks out the windows in the kitchen. “Did I completely miss the news that we were getting a hurricane?”
Ellie comes up behind him and slides her hands around his waist, standing up on her toes to look over his shoulder at the rain and wind beating against the window.
“I guess now we know my basement is soundproof,” she mutters. “Dammit, there goes my hydrangea bush.”
We all watch as the bush in question flies right by the window.
“SHIT!” Bobby suddenly shouts, moving out of Ellie’s arms and reaching for his cell phone on the counter.
“The phone lines are down,” I tell him. “What’s wrong?”
Bobby ignores me, trying to use the phone, cursing again when it doesn’t work.
“Shit, motherfucking shit!” he yells, tossing the phone on the counter. “No one else has heard from Fisher, either?”
Panic overwhelms me as he rushes to the hall closet, throwing the door open and quickly digging through a collection of scuba equipment. Bobby has slowly been moving his things into Ellie’s home since they got engaged. Her house is larger than his cottage and there’s plenty of room here for a new baby as opposed to his tiny bachelor pad cottage.