GEORGE EMMERSON SITS in the church for a long time, watching sunlight stream through the stained glass windows. He turns a piece of indigo sea glass over in his hands, wishing, with all his heart, that he could hold the hand that gave it to him. The treasure of the sea, she called it. “I’ve always found it fascinating that an ordinary medicine bottle can become something so beautiful over time. Don’t you agree, Mr. Emmerson?” He recalls his reply. “I suppose, in time, anything can become treasure to someone, Miss Darling.” He pictures her slender face, the slight compression of her lip, the wreath of sunny brown curls on her head, the slight frown across her brow as if she couldn’t quite grasp the measure of him and needed to concentrate harder to do so.
Grace Darling. Her name still conjures a smile, despite the ache in his heart.
As the generous autumn sun reflects a rainbow of color at his feet, he thinks about the short years in which he had the joy of Miss Darling’s acquaintance. He wonders many things in those silent hours, but mostly he wonders if things might have been different if he had said everything he wanted to say, if he’d spoken aloud the words in his letter. If he’d had the courage to follow his heart, might she sit beside him now?
From the first time he met her among the sand dunes at Dunstanburgh, he sensed in Miss Darling a spirit that would not bend and bow to convention. She was a woman of her own mind, so that even after Eliza’s death, he knew it would not be right to ask for her hand in marriage. It would have placed her in an impossible position, forced her to make an impossible decision. It must be enough then to have spent time with her, to have fallen quietly in love with her without the promise of anything more. Like sea-foam against the sand, promises can quickly dissipate. His feelings for Miss Darling transcend anything so impermanent.
What he feels for her is captured in the portrait he sketched of her that breezy day among the rocks where she so loved to be. It is imperfect, incomplete, but it is the truest likeness of her he ever saw. The questions in her eyes. The fluttering of her bonnet ribbons, as if she might fly away if she cared to. Like the seabirds chasing the wind, she would not be captured or pinned down. And he would not be the one to try.
Darkness falls across the church until the only light is that of a crescent moon and the distant flicker of the light from Longstone; a beacon of remembrance for a young woman who did so much for so many, and who never once considered herself to be anything other than a humble lighthouse keeper’s daughter. It is that for which George admires her the most. Not for the courage she showed in saving his sister and the others, but for the courage she showed in the months and years that followed; the courage to remain true to herself and all that she valued in life. As he leaves the church, he pauses at her grave, knowing that life will always be that bit darker now without her in it.
He walks then. Somewhere. Anywhere. He takes a creamy white conch shell from his coat pocket and presses it to his ear. Within it, he hears the gentle sigh of the sea and the whispered words of a woman he loved with all his heart. In her memory he will live his best and most courageous life. He will live a life not of quiet breezes, but of the wildest storms.
That is his final promise to her.