Winnie went very still. She studied the canvas in complete silence while Emily counted her own heartbeats. Five. Ten. Twenty.
Then Emily saw the tears.
They formed slowly in Winnie’s eyes and spilled over without drama. Winnie didn’t brush them away. She simply let them fall as she continued examining every detail of the painting.
“You painted my grandfather’s study. I haven’t seen this room since I was a child. After my grandfather died, my father couldn’t really bear to go into the study. He eventually knocked down a wall and made the family room larger, and all remnants of the study disappeared. He said the study had served its purpose.” Her voice was thick with emotion.
“I didn’t know. I just followed the journal entries and some sketches in the journal and tried to imagine what the space might have looked like based on the details he mentioned. The lamp, the charts, the?—”
“The chair.” Winnie pointed with a trembling hand. “That chair faced the windows at exactly that angle. He could watch the harbor and see the lighthouse beacon both. He said a keeper should never fully relax. Should always maintain awareness.”
Winnie stepped closer to the canvas. “He was writing to my grandmother the night I was born. I found that letter years later in her things. He wrote about duty and love and the choices we make to protect the people who depend on us. You’ve captured the true reality here, Emily. Not just what the room looked like, but what it felt like to be him. To carry those responsibilities.”
“I kept thinking about a safe harbor while I painted.” Emily slowly let out a long breath. “About what it means to be the keeper of something larger than yourself. To maintain a light that guides others while maybe feeling lost yourself.”
“Yes. That’s exactly right. The lighthouse was always both refuge and burden. My great-grandfather understood that. Then my grandfather and my father. I understand it now.”
Winnie turned to face Emily directly. Her expression held complicated layers of grief and recognition. “You have a gift, Emily. Not just technical skill, though you clearly have that. But the ability to see beneath surfaces. To understand what people were feeling, not just what they were doing.”
Emily felt her own eyes sting. Praise felt dangerous after so many months of accusation. But Winnie’s words didn’t feel like flattery. They felt like real admiration.
“I lost that for a while,” she admitted. “Or maybe I never fully trusted it before. I was always trying to paint the right way. To demonstrate my understanding of artistic tradition and historical context. To prove I belonged in rooms where people discussed art seriously.”
“And now?”
She looked back at the canvas. The lighthouse keeper’s study gazed back at her with all its accumulated secrets. “Now I’m just trying to see what’s true. To paint what I actually feel instead of what I think I should feel.” She paused and turned to Winnie. “It’s terrifying.”
Winnie smiled and wiped away the last of her tears. “Yes. The truth usually is. But it’s also the only thing worth painting. Or living, for that matter.”
They stood in silence for a few moments, just looking at the canvas. Finally, Winnie said, “Thank you for seeing my grandfather clearly. For honoring what he was trying to do. This painting captures what I’ve been trying to explain to people for years. The lighthouse was never just about navigation. It was about creating a sanctuary, a safe haven. About being the steady force when everything else felt uncertain.”
She nodded. She couldn’t trust her voice yet.
Winnie moved toward the door but paused on the threshold. “I hope you’ll consider showing this work, Emily. Not to prove anything to the people who judged you. But because this is the kind of truth that deserves to be seen.”
Emily stood alone with the painting. The morning light had shifted during Winnie’s visit. The canvas looked different now. More complete somehow. More real.
But she wasn’t ready to show her work. Not now. Probably not ever.
She picked up her brush again. But instead of continuing the detail work, she simply added her initials in the lower right corner.
E.B. Simple and hers.
Chapter15
Grant hadn’t seen Emily in days, even though he’d faithfully taken a morning walk past the lighthouse each day. Today, he spotted Emily on the beach before she noticed him. She stood at her easel with her back to the path, her attention completely absorbed by the canvas. The morning light caught in her auburn hair as the wind pulled strands loose from her bun.
He should keep walking. His route took him past this stretch of beach most mornings, but he could easily cut inland through the dunes. Give her the space she clearly wanted. That would be the smart choice.
His feet kept moving toward her anyway.
She’d made adjustments since their last encounter. The easel had sandbags weighted at the base, and she’d angled it to use the wind rather than fight against it. A beach umbrella stood planted nearby, positioned to diffuse the harsh morning sun without blocking her view. She wore a wide-brimmed hat and loose layers that could be shed or added as the temperature shifted.
Someone who was planning to paint here regularly. Not a tourist chasing a single sunrise.
The observation unsettled him more than it should have.
“Mind if I look?”
