The windows, set in a perfect half-circle, were coated with a smoky grime. Outside, the sky was a bright, cloudless blue, but inside the light filtered through brown and green, as if the glass were made from pressed leaves. Emily picked her way over to the nearest pane, set the heel of her hand against it, and pressed until it gave a little under her weight.
She tried to scrape away the worst of the muck, but it only smeared, leaving ghostly arcs across the glass. She grinned, found a scrap of curtain lining hanging by the radiator, and used it as a rag. The first real view blinked into existence like an afterimage—acres of marsh, the glint of the harbor, and, on the far shore, the stubby rectangles of the town clustered along the water’s edge.
She stared for a long time, lost in the span of it. She could trace the whole sweep of the bay, the way the water pooled and emptied with the tide. It was easy, looking at it, to forget the rot and dust and the list of things waiting to be fixed.
Emily turned to Daniel. "Can you believe it?" she said, her voice part wonder, part disbelief. "If not for this place, I wouldn’t even exist."
"That’s why you want it so bad."
She didn’t deny it. Instead, she used both sleeves now to clear as much of the glass as she could. Each wipe revealed more of the view, the world out there impossibly bright.
Daniel joined her, standing close but not crowding. "You could open it as a museum," he said. "Or just run retreats. Let people rent it by the week, go feral."
Emily grinned, picturing herself as the eccentric innkeeper of Bluefin Point, haunting the spiral stairs with a clipboard and a headlamp. She felt the old urge to catalog, to make a list, to plan—already, her brain had started assembling a calendar of possible events, a spreadsheet of costs and benefits. But none of that mattered yet. For now, all she could see was the harbor and the long, impossible thread that had pulled her here.
She turned to Daniel, her hair a mess of static and wind, and said, "Let’s go to the lantern room."
He nodded, and together they stepped back into the spiral, leaving the keeper’s nest behind.
***
The last flight of stairs up to the lantern room was narrow, almost mean, the kind of climb that forced you to focus on your feet and your breath and the way the blood pounded in your ears. Emily kept one hand pressed to the curved wall, fingertips sliding from cool brick to sun-warmed iron. Daniel hovered just below her. She could hear the low, breathy whistle of his exhale with every third step. They’d both pretended to be fit to shoo Jamie off from coming along, but now that they were alone, the masks were off.
The hatch at the top was stuck. Daniel braced a foot against the stair and heaved. The trapdoor groaned, and a cloud of dust spilled down onto his head. He laughed, wiped his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, and pushed it open the rest of the way. Emily hoisted herself up, legs quaking, and stepped into the lantern room.
The light was shocking. Glass windows wrapped in a 360-degree arc, half of them clear, half frosted or filmed with a greenish scum, but it didn’t matter—sunlight poured in anyway, filling the space like water into a bowl. The old beacon sat at the center, a corroded prism surrounded by a ring of shattered bulbs. The air was dry, almost sweet, and the silence felt different here.
Emily did a slow turn, arms out for balance, the horizon swinging past in bright, unbroken strips. The bay gleamed. A sliver of the inn was visible through a gap in the trees. She could see the causeway, the slip of sandbar that disappeared at high tide, the entire patchwork of salt marsh pulsing under the wind. The color was wild—a collision of blue and silver and the dull gold of last year’s reeds.
Daniel climbed up behind her and let himself sag against the brick. "I’d pay extra just for the view," he said.
She ignored him, too busy mapping the space. The floor was barely twelve feet across, but there were ledges and alcoves built for maintenance, and a few feet above, another platform ringed the ceiling. Emily’s brain shifted into project mode: what needed fixing, what could be salvaged, how many bodies could fit for an event without violating fire code.
She fished her notepad from her purse, flipped it open, and—kneeling on the dusty metal—began sketching. Quick, blocky shapes: a table here, shelves there, maybe a built-in bench with storage underneath. She wasn't an architect, but she knew howto improvise. She labeled the floors, drew arrows for light flow, and jotted the word "studio" in three different spots.
Daniel watched, bemused, as she scrawled.
"Let me guess," he said, "meditation at dawn, book club at noon, wild parties at sunset?"
Emily shook her head, a little dizzy with the energy of it. "Not parties—workshops. Writing retreats. Kids’ art classes. I could run a music camp in summer, like Boston, only more accessible. Chantelle could teach up here in the summer, and there’s enough room to do a gallery wall for the community. It could be—" She broke off, searching for the right word. "—alive again."
“A noble plan,” Daniel said as he leaned forward, resting his head against the cool glass. She saw his reflection there, double-exposed over the bay. He had seemed much happier when they'd first arrived, but now, she sensed that something was troubling him. Maybe it was her list of worries. Maybe it was the possibility of her being pregnant again.
But he didn’t say a word. He just gazed out over the sea.
She looked up, eyes hot and bright, wondering if he’d lost his nerve to take on the place. "Do you see it?"
"I see you, sweetheart, and so I’m sure I’ll see it." Daniel smiled, but there was a hitch at the edge of it.
Her own nerves eased a bit. Maybe hewasreluctant now, with their baby news, but he believed in her. And Emily could work with that.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Emily liked to schedule difficult conversations for the midafternoon. She considered it the best time for a talk, especially with children; there was enough left of the day not to have to go to bed with tough feelings, and enough activity that a person could duck out, if needed, under the pretext of laundry or a wayward guest.
The sunroom was empty, for once. Emily set out a plate of almond cookies, a pitcher of lemonade, then rearranged the coffee table twice before placing the Boston Youth Music Conservatory brochure dead center.
Chantelle arrived without fanfare, trailing the faintest whiff of pencil shavings and the sharp tang of sweat that followed her from the school's playground. She wore jeans with paint-flecked knees and a men’s T-shirt she’d rescued from Daniel’s rag bag, the neck so wide it slipped off one shoulder. She clocked the cookies first, then the lemonade, and finally the brochure, which she eyed as if it might bite.
