All of my writing, so far, has been about me, or Ava, or Henry. About us, about my life—events, memories, and images; vignettes of my life, remembered without context. Today, however, I feel like I need…a break. A brief respite from constantly thinking about myself and Ava and everything.

And so, I’m going to write something different. What it means, I don’t know. What relevance it has, I don’t know. I just know that there’s significance to what pours out of me, this time. I feel it inside me, this story. Words. Ideas, images, themes. Not directly about me, but still about me in some indirect way.

I don’t know.

So I let it out. Let it emerge.

Sitting in my usual place on the veranda, in my chair, notebook balanced on my knees, I write:

[From a handwritten notebook; date unknown]

---

It is a barren, windswept island. A few scrub pines grow on it here and there, some tall, sharp-bladed grass. The entirety of the island is hilly, rising and falling, curving around and carving in, full of divots and caves and hidden folds in the granite. It looks and feels like what it is—an outcropping of rock protruding from the angry, wine-dark sea.

It is a place of importance to sailors; it marks a channel, alerting ships to the presence of nearby rocks. There is a lighthouse upon it. A residence. A barn. An acre or so of grass fenced in for a cow and her calf and a few goats. Some chickens cluck in scattered clumps around the house, and a path of uneven stone flags mark the way from the residence to the lighthouse. A small fenced-off garden grows behind the house with vegetables growing in neat rows.

The sky above is almost always clear blue, except when storms blow in, and when those storms come, they rage with all the fury of the gods.

Connor Yates is the lighthouse keeper. He is a sullen, terse, unhappy man. Prone to bouts of heavy drinking—there was a war, and the memories of it haunt him, driving him to drink in an attempt to drown them out. It doesn’t work, and he will give up the bottle for a time, only to go right back to it when the nightmares and waking moments of memory become too strong.

He has been alone on the island, tending the lighthouse, for too long—years. So long he has forgotten how to speak, he sometimes thinks. The shipping company which owns the lighthouse sends a ship twice a year, laden with supplies—haunches of dried beef, sacks of potatoes, canned fruits and vegetables, bags of corn and flour and sugar, pouches of smoking tobacco, cases of whiskey, months’ and months’ worth of newspapers bundled together in heavy squares and tied with twine, books, casks of ale, sides of mutton, tins of coffee and tea, bales of hay, barrels of oats and grain and seed for the animals, bullets for his rifle and pistol which he only uses for target practice as a means of passing the long boring hours, a myriad of other sundries necessary to support a man alone on an island in the middle of the ocean.

Connor is lonely, but mostly content in his solitude.

The solitude is the only balm he has found for the ragged wounds to his soul; he came away from the war unwounded in body, and this too is a source of unending guilt for him. He likes the isolation—when he wakes screaming from a nightmare, there is no one he will awaken or frighten, no one to ask him what’s wrong, no one to try and wake him and perhaps be accidentally wounded, for he can become quite violent when roused from a nightmare. Which, long ago, is something Connor discovered the unhappy way, and is the reason for his self-imposed exile to this distant, desolate place: he doesn’t trust himself around other people.

For all of its desolation, for all that it is far, far from anything like humanity, it is a beautiful place, wild and brutally lovely. Connor can see hundreds of miles in every direction from the tiny rim of a balcony encircling the glass of the lighthouse, which is a hundred feet tall and built upon the very highest promontory of rock on the island, another two hundred feet above sea level.

Connor finds the greatest peace—the only peace—standing on that narrow, ledge gripping the brass railing and staring out at the rippling marble field of the sea, veined with streaks of silver and jade and azure, twinkling with diamond glints on sunny days and hard and leaden on gray, stormy days. He stands facing east to watch the dawn, and returns at sundown to face west, watching the sun drown itself beneath the horizon. He is capable of standing there, forearms on the brass tube of the railing with the wind in his beard, for hours on end. The wind is always blowing, up there, hard enough to howl past his ears, hard enough to sometimes require him to grip the railing to keep from being blown off balance.

Sometimes, he thinks he could bound up onto the railing, crouch there a moment, then spread his arms like wings, leap into the sky and catch the wind and be carried away. Sometimes, he has gone so far as to grip the railing and tense his legs and prepare to leap, but then he remembers the ships, and that without him, the light would go out and the ships would crash, and more lives would be laid at his feet. More blood would coat his hands. And he then forces his hands to unclench and forces himself to relax against the rail and watch the sun, to close his eyes and feel the wind in his hair.

Time is a fickle mistress. The days and weeks and months pass unevenly. Sometimes an entire month will pass and he’ll only realize it with a start, and wonder where the time went, and then he will think surely half a year has passed already, and he’ll consult the calendar affixed to the wall in the kitchen, and realize only a week has passed. Time plays the same game on him with hours and minutes. Units of time are interchangeable, to Connor, in some ways.

The only way he has of marking the passage of time at all, really, is the arrival of the ship with his supplies in spring and fall, reminding him of the existence of the world beyond his little island.

The ship, in the years Connor has lived on the island tending the lighthouse, has always been captained by the same man—Elijah McKenna, a hard, swarthy man with a black beard long since gone mostly silver, skin like old leather, eyes like chips of granite, a man almost as tersely uncommunicative as Connor himself. Elijah pilots the lighter from the ship to the tiny dock himself, and helps Connor unload the supplies and then helps him haul them up to the residence. Once the work is done, the men will tamp their pipes and tipple some whiskey and sit and smoke on the porch of the residence, and Connor might remark on recent storms, and Elijah might remark on events from wider world, but on the whole, both men are content to sit and smoke and drink. They may play cards, or they may pass back and forth the pages of the most recent newspaper—many weeks and months old by this time, usually. Elijah is the only person Connor has had any contact with at all in at least three years; if there is anyone in the whole world whom Connor might call a friend, it would be Elijah.

Then, one spring, the ship arrives, and the lighter scuds up against the dock. Connor is there to accept the line and tie it off; he does so slowly, his movements listless and fumbling. His attention is not on the rope, nor the pylon to which he is tying it, but on the lighter. Instead of Elijah—stout and leathery and solid and silent, clad as always in faded dungarees and a thick wool sweater and heavy boots and an old slouch cap—there are two people; neither of them is Elijah.

One is a man on the older side of middle age, but trim and tough looking, with broad shoulders and fierce eyes, smartly dressed in a suit, with an unmistakable air of a man used to command. The other is a woman. Young. Soft. Hesitant of movement as she climbs out of the lighter onto the dock, but with confidence in her gaze, which lands on Connor and remains there, unwavering, openly curious; she is more than just pretty, or lovely; she is, truly, the most beautiful woman Connor has ever seen, and he knew many women before the war, when he was an eager young man in a sharp uniform, when the world held only possibility. She is fair of skin—her skin looks to him like cream just before it is poured into a mug of coffee. Her hair is dark, twisted into an effortlessly elegant knot behind her head. Her dress is pale green, accentuating her creamy skin and dark hair. It is not the gown of a high-born lady, but a sturdy, sensible thing, allowing her easy movement. But yet, for all that, she carries herself with an air of elegance and sophistication, which makes Connor feel uneasy and dirty and hesitant.

Once both the man and the woman—obviously his daughter, for they have the same eyes and a similar cast of feature and similar bearing—have climbed from ship’s boat to the dock, Connor only stands there, staring, silent.

“Well?” the man says, his tone hard and impatient. “Best get the supplies unloaded. I’m Captain Robert Kinross, and this is my daughter, Tess. You are Connor Yates?”

Connor only grunts an affirmative, at first, then remembers his manners in the presence of a lady. “I mean, yeah. Yes. I’m Connor.” He reaches down into the lighter and hauls out a bag of potatoes, one in each hand. “Where’s Elijah?”

Captain Kinross checks his pocket watch, and offers no assistance. “He took ill a few months ago. He is retired, now.”

“Took ill?”

“Something to do with his heart.”

“Oh.” Connor stacks bags of wheat and corn. “Good man.”

This is more than he’s spoken all at once since the previous fall, and his voice feels rusty, the use of words an unfamiliar taste in his mouth.

The lighter is full of supplies, sagging low in the water, and even with Elijah helping it usually took the two of them half a day to unload and haul all the supplies up the island to the residence; if Captain Kinross is disinclined to help, it will take Connor the entire day and then some.

Still, he says nothing of this, only moves with slow and methodical and tireless economy, stacking all the goods on the dock and taking inventory as he does so; Captain Kinross has withdrawn a small notebook from his breast pocket and is taking notes of some kind, and Tess has found a seat on a bag of potatoes. She too has a book in hand, but hers is larger, a sketchbook, and she is busily sketching the scene. As he works, Connor takes note of her sketches—she is very good. She draws the growing stack of goods, the house up on the hill, the lighthouse high up on its perch. She draws the lighter, rocking emptily now against the dock. The ship away in the distance, sails reefed, masts and spars thin dark lines against the pale blue sky.

She even draws him. In the sketch, he is turned partially away from her with a barrel of whiskey on his shoulder and a sack of nails in his other hand. She captures in a few quick strokes the line of his jaw and the scruff of his unkempt beard, the breadth of his shoulders and the dark hollows of his deep-set eyes.

She notices his attention, and turns the book so he can see the sketch properly. “It isn’t a very wonderful likeness, of course, only a hastily done sketch.” She shrugs modestly. “I could do a proper portrait, if you like.”

Connor only stares, unsure of a response.

“No time for that, I’m afraid,” Captain Kinross says, not looking up from his writing. “We must be away soon. Time and tide wait for no man.”

“But Papa, we’ve only just arrived,” Tess says. “I should like even a short break from the ship, and besides, I want to see the lighthouse. Could Mr. Yates show me, once the supplies are in?”

“We really must be away, soon, Tess.”

“Then why don’t you help poor Mr. Yates with the supplies? It would be done in half the time, wouldn’t it?”

Captain Kinross’s eyes narrow over the top of his notebook, and then flick from Connor to Tess and back. And then, moving slowly and reluctantly, he pockets his notebook and the stub of pencil, and begins helping Connor.

Together, the work progresses apace, and soon the supplies are stacked on the dock. Connor has been doing this long enough to have a system in place: he always unloads the items from the lighter first, and in so doing takes inventory of the incoming supplies, and compares it against the inventory of what he currently has in stock on the island—this running tally is kept in a small thick ledger wedged in his back pocket, which he hauls out and consults now and again, marking a note on this item or that, making sure nothing has been forgotten. When he is sure all the supplies brought in match his needs, he writes down on a separate sheet of paper the items he will need on the next ship in, and how much.

The first trip up the stairs from dock to residence, Tess follows the men up and makes herself at home on the porch. She takes a seat in a rocking chair and immediately opens her sketchbook and sets to work sketching the new vista—the island beneath them, the dock and the lighter, the stairs, the ship like a toy in the distance.

Several hours and many trips later, the supplies are all in and put away. Connor isn’t winded at all and is barely damp with sweat, but Captain Kinross is huffing and dripping, and it is he who suggests, now the work is done, that a brief respite and refreshments would not go amiss.

And so Connor finds himself clumsily attempting to make sandwiches and coffee. He has made rather a mess of the sandwiches and the coffee has been percolating and bubbling, and it is just then, as he is beginning to feel flustered and overwhelmed at the unfamiliar task of preparing food for more than merely himself, that Tess appears in the doorway.

“Your coffee is burning, I believe,” she remarks.

Connor just grunts—an alternative to the curse he wishes to let loose—and snags the coffee off the top of the wood-burning stove. He burns his fingers, only just managing to not drop the pot, but in so doing knocks the sandwiches to the floor.

Shaking his hand, he snarls a curse, and then blushes with a glance at Tess. “Apologies, ma’am.”

Tess only laughs. “Don’t be silly. I live onboard a ship, surrounded by sailors. There’s nothing you could say that would shock me.” She surveys the mess he’s made. “Would you like some help, Mr. Yates?”

“Ain’t no mister. Just call me Connor,” he grumbles. “Guests aren’t supposed to see to their own refreshments.”

Tess laughs again. “Yes, well, I don’t mind.” She makes quick work of sweeping and binning the mess on the floor, and then sets to remaking the sandwiches. “I am hungry, and this is work I’m rather more suited to than you, it would seem.”

Connor watches as she accomplishes in moments what it took him minutes to do. “Don’t get people round here often,” he says by way of explanation.

“Twice a year, as Father explains it. From what I understand, you’ve only had Captain Elijah to visit twice a year for the last several years.”

Connor manages a noise of affirmation.

“Don’t you get lonely?” Tess asks.

He lifts a shoulder. “Some.”

She arranges the sandwiches onto a plate, but doesn’t move to carry them out to the porch yet. “I should think I would be dreadfully lonely here, all by myself for months on end.”

“Used to it,” he murmurs, rinsing out coffee mugs so long unused that they’re dirty with dust. “Ain’t really much for company anyhow.”

She looks at him with an odd light in her eyes. “I don’t think I’d mind it here at all, so long as I had one other person to talk to.”

He catches something in her voice, some potential for hidden meaning. “Ain’t no place for a lady, Miss Kinross. This place barely counts as livable, except for a solitary fella like myself.”

“I think I’m rather capable of determining for myself what is and is not livable to me.” She smiles at him. “Most would say a ship full of coarse men out on the open sea for months at a time is also no place for a lady, yet such is where I have lived the last ten years of my life.”

“Ain’t got no kin? Nowhere more decent to live?”

She frowns. “I’ve a very distant aunt or cousin or some such, living in Suffolk, or somewhere like that. I’d rather be with Papa. I like the sea, and I like the open places. I feel confined and constricted when we visit cities.”

He wonders about her mother, but doesn’t dare ask. “Last time I was in a city, I damn near stopped breathing ’til I got clear of it. Too many folks and not enough air.” He winces, and rubs the back of his neck. “I shouldn’t curse. Hard habit to break.”

This is more than he’s said all at once since the end of the war.

The strange conversation ends then, when Captain Kinross calls out a query regarding refreshments. By the time the coffee has been drunk and the sandwiches eaten, it is dark. Elijah never cared much about having to row back to the ship in the dark, but Captain Kinross is a different sort of man entirely, and to expect a woman to make such a trip is unthinkable. There is one extra bedroom, which Tess takes, and Captain Kinross takes Connor’s bed; Connor tries unsuccessfully to sleep on a chair in the sitting room. He knew the moment he closed his eyes that he would suffer from the dreams again, and with company in the house didn’t dare risk waking them up with his screams; he abandons all pretense of sleep. Instead, he puts on a pot of coffee, pours himself a mug, and carries it with him up to the lighthouse.

He settles into his usual place, leaning against the railing, watching the moon arc across the sky.

He hears a noise behind him, but dismisses it as the settling of the building, so unused is he to company. Thus, when a hand alights on his shoulders, he is badly startled, cursing viciously as he whirls and steps away, spilling coffee as he draws a knife from a sheath on his belt, his teeth bared.

Tess, candle in one hand, backs away, frightened. “I’m—I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Embarrassed, he turns away. “I’m the one to apologize, Miss Kinross. Told you, I ain’t much used to havin’ folks around.”

She tiptoes cautiously onto the balcony, moving slowly, clinging to the railing with her free hand, peering over the edge nervously. “We’re very high up.”

“Some four hundred feet above the sea, where we’re standing. Thereabouts, leastways. Less directly to the ground, though.”

“Don’t you get frightened? The wind is so strong. I’m afraid it’ll just pluck me up and carry me away.”

Indeed, the wind is very strong. It whips her hair behind her in a straight black line, and plasters her nightdress against her body. Connor notices this, tries not to stare and is only partially successful.

“Sometimes, I think I could just fly away,” Connor hears himself say. “Just…let the wind take me wherever it is the wind goes.”

“If I wasn’t so scared of falling, I’d think that was a lovely sentiment indeed.” A rough gust of flattering wind pushes at them, and Tess shrieks and shrinks against Connor’s side. “Oh, how frightening!”

Connor lets her weight lean against him, keeping a strong grip on the railing with one hand, nursing his coffee in the other. “Forget I said that. The wind ain’t gonna hurt you none. Just hold on tight and you’ll be fine.”

She holds on tight, all right, but to him rather than the railing. “I’d rather you held me, Connor.” The words are daring, put out there in the open like that, so boldly.

“You don’t know a durn thing about me, Miss Kinross. I ain’t fit company for a lady like yourself.”

“I’m the daughter of a sailor—I’m no lady. I’ve spent more time on the deck of a ship than among proper society, and I can read the sea more easily than I can the newspaper.” She pulls away, then, straightening her spine and turning to face the sea. “I know myself, Mr. Yates. I know what I want.”

“You’ve been here not even a day. Come winter, the storms have real teeth. And there wouldn’t be anyone around, not anyone at all ’cept me. Not for months and months at a time. No way to change your mind once you see how things is.”

“I’ve weathered hurricanes and typhoons, helped fight off brigands, seen men hung, keelhauled, and thrown overboard. We’ve been becalmed several times, nearly sunk twice, and I once ordered a man flogged for rape when my father was ashore conducting business.” She turns to face Connor, then. “I know myself, Mr. Yates.”

Connor has no idea how to respond to this, and so he doesn’t. Silence breathes between them, and Tess seems content to let the silence be, rather than needing to fill it with chatter, as he’d have expected.

After a while, she turns to Connor again. “Will you walk me back down?”

“O’course.”

The walk down the stairs is long, and she seems to push ever closer against his side as they descend, and her hand continually brushes against his. This, for some reason, makes his heart pound worse than the first battle he fought, in the moments before his line rushed the enemy.

Tess pauses at the bottom of the stair, plucking at Connor’s sleeve. “Wait a moment, please.”

He stops, turns back to face her, the door behind him. “Yes, Miss Kinross?”

She stares up at him. “Call me Tess.”

“All right.”

“I like you, Connor.”

He just blinks at her. “Not rightly sure why, ma’am.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I ain’t good company.”

“You seem like perfectly agreeable company to me.”

“The war, you see. It…did things to me, here and here.” He taps his temple, and then his heart. “You saw what happened when you startled me.”

“Not all of the men on my father’s boat are chosen for their skill as sailors, Connor.” There’s a subtext to her words, which Connor reads easily. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“We just met, Tess.”

“I know. But I know myself. And I know what I want.”

“What is it you want, then?”

“A quiet life, away from the crowds and the cities. A home near the sea. Solitude, and a good man to keep me company. A child, perhaps, someday.”

Connor’s collar suddenly feels too tight, and his chest wouldn’t expand all the way. “I—Tess, I—”

She just smiles at him. “Think about it, perhaps?” Her hair drifts across her face, hiding a smirk and a burst of soft laughter. “You’ll have several months in which to consider the idea, after all.”

She’s passed him, then, out the door and tiptoeing across the stone flags, her candle guttering in the wind. He watches her lithe, lush form, an uneasy, unfamiliar rush of something sharp and hot and tense filling him at the sight of her body, highlighted by the way the wind blows her nightdress against her curves. She stops at the back door, and the wind shifts, pushing the nightdress against her breasts and between her thighs, and his mouth goes dry and he feels dizzy and the sharp hot tense feeling intensifies, until he recognizes it as desire and lust and something deeper, something more.

He has a small cot up at the top of the lighthouse, in case a storm blows up and he has to doze by the light, to keep it lit the night through. Here, Connor sleeps, fitfully. He dreams odd dreams, full of desires he thought he’d forgotten long ago, in his quest for solitude.

Next morning, she is awake before he is and bustling about the kitchen, preparing a more hearty breakfast than any he’d had even before he joined the army. She smiles at him at odd moments, brightening a face already so beautiful it makes Connor’s heart ache.

Her father notices, Connor is certain.

When it is time for Captain Kinross and his daughter to return to the ship, Connor walks them down. Captain Kinross goes ahead a few steps, and Tess walks in stride with Connor.

“I had hoped you would take my hand yesterday night, as we descended the stair,” she murmurs to him, as they walk together. “Or that you would have kissed me, there at the landing.”

“I don’t know if I could be so bold,” Connor says. “You’re so beautiful, I’d think I was…taking airs above my station, or somethin’ of the like.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tess says. “I don’t think THAT for stations, or airs, or any of that nonsense.” On the emphasized word, she snaps her fingers. “But I do thank you for your compliment.”

Connor walks a few paces more in silence, considering his words carefully, as he always does. “I’m not a clever man, nor an ambitious one, Tess. This is what I’ve chosen for my lot in life. I don’t know that I’d be good company for a woman, nor a child. If you’re having me on, then leave off the game. And if you’re serious, then you as well have many months to consider if this is really the life you’d like.”

She seems to drag words out of him, great floods of words he didn’t know he possessed.

Tess just smiles at him, and presses something into his palm, discreetly. “I am not a woman to play games, Connor, be assured of that. And furthermore, I neither need nor want cleverness nor ambition in a man. Only truth, protection, and love. And, perhaps…passion.” Here, she gazes up at him, and her eyes are full of innuendo he doesn’t miss, which makes his heart pound and his chest feel constricted. “Do you think you could possess those qualities, Mr. Yates?”

“I think—I think I could learn, if a body was patient in the teaching.”

They are interrupted, then, by a call from Captain Kinross. “Tess, darling. We must go.” To Connor, then. “Mr. Yates. A word.”

The men pace away from the dock, out of earshot of Tess, who sits in the lighter. “This is no place for a woman, Mr. Yates, and certainly not my daughter. Nothing said against you, mind, but—”

“I’ve expressed much the same to Tess myself, Captain. You’ve a headstrong daughter on your hands, sir.”

Captain Kinross laughs good-naturedly. “Indeed I do, Mr. Yates. Indeed I do.” He claps the younger man on the shoulder. “Well, we’ll be off, now. And if she’s still interested when we come back for our fall visit, well…I’m not sure I could stop her if I wanted to, and by all accounts, you’re a good man.”

“She’s a rarely fine woman, Captain. I wouldn’t ask her to choose this life…but if she did? Well, sir, I’d consider it a greater honor than a man like me deserves.”

Connor watches the ship depart, standing at the rail of his lighthouse. He can’t see nearly so far, but his imagination provides for him a vision of Tess, standing at the stern, wind tossing her hair sideways and her dress against her thigh; perhaps, to her, he is a speck near the top of the white spire. He wonders if she will be back.

He hopes, for his sake, that she will be; and for hers, that she won’t.

As she’d said, Connor has all the months of spring and summer to wonder. He thinks of the moments spent with her at the top of the lighthouse, and the descent down the stairs, her hand brushing his, and the words they exchanged at the landing. He thinks of the things she’d said on the way down to the dock, that last day, and the way she’d looked up at him. As if a creature so lovely and elegant and wonderful and angelic could look at a man like him and see him with anything like the desire he feels for her.

As such things go, he plays in his mind the few moments they’d shared together over and over again, until each individual second with her is imprinted on his mind like a tintype image. He imagines the things she might say if she returns, and what he would say. Sometimes he chastises himself as a fool, wasting his time on romantic notions which could never see fruition, and sometimes he thinks perhaps she might arrive on the next ship, and he would be there on the dock waiting as the lighter drifted slowly from ship to shore, and she would alight from the vessel and she would be in his arms, and her eyes, so like the color of the Caribbean sea at high bright noon, would fix on his and neither would have to say anything—they would just know.

Time, ever the miscreant, ever the mischievous mistress, plays its usual tricks upon Connor, dragging days out to feel like weeks, and weeks like months, then compacting months into the space of a week, and he finds himself watching the eastern sea for signs of the ship. He finds himself consulting his calendar and marking days off, when he used to barely care for the arrival of the ship at all, except that it meant fresh food and new spirits and the occasional batch of news from beyond his island, and perhaps the silent company of Elijah.

Now, though, he finds himself waiting for the ship with impatience he’d never known before. It bothers him, his impatience. His hope. That hope frightens him—to survive alone in so desolate a place requires a certain numbness, an apathy, a willful lack of concern for the company of others, disdain for what the future might hold.

Until Tess, each day of Connor’s future held the same as the day before; now, though, the future holds something else: the unknown. Possibility.

It is a tantalizing thing.

He still spends much of his time at the railing of the lighthouse, watching the sun rise and set. In his hands, he holds the small square of paper she’d handed him upon her departure, now wrinkled and thin from much folding and unfolding. The wind plucks it, trying to snatch it away, but he holds it firmly. On the paper are written a few words in a neat, looping, feminine script:

---

I SHALL BE A VERY PATIENT TEACHER, MR. YATES.

—TESS

---

He reads this over and over again, thinking back to that conversation, and hoping that her note means she will return, and that she will want him.

Folded into the square of paper had been a scrap of lace, which smelled of perfume, of woman. He isn’t at all sure where the lace had come from, and his imagination plays tantalizing tricks on him, suggesting all kinds of possibilities. It really is just a scrap of lace, a few small inches of fabric that could have come from a handkerchief or a bedspread or the rags of an old dress. But it smells of her, the way he remembered her smelling.

He keeps this piece of lace folded into a scrap of cloth and tucked away in his Bible, a generations-old keepsake handed down from grandfather to grandson. The note he keeps in his pocket, and withdraws to read often.

And so, he waits.

He lives the life he’s always lived, there on the remote island, going about his daily chores the way he always has; nothing has changed. But yet…all is changed. She changed things just by existing, by offering even the faintest ray of hope.

No, he tells himself. Don’t be absurd. You are a silent, sullen, soldier prone to nightmares, he tells himself. You drink too much. You live on a remote island far from civilization. You have nothing to offer anyone, let alone a vibrant, funny, beautiful woman like Tess Kinross—

She said it herself, though, he argues back: she knows what she wants. And she made rather clear what she wanted—

Unless you were imagining that—

The note referring to our conversation doesn’t leave much room for misunderstanding, though—

And so, around and around it goes.

Days, weeks, and months more, stretching and compacting. The air grows cooler and he harvests his vegetables—he knows from the inventory tally in his ledger that the ship is due soon.

He is in his garden, turning over the soil so it will go fallow for the following spring. His back aches, and his hands are blistered from the rough handle of the hoe. He straightens, stretching his lower back, resting the hoe against his shoulder and rubbing his stinging palms on his trousers.

There, off in the distance, is the ship. Anchored, sails furled. He can almost make out the bustle of activity on the deck, tiny specks hustling to and fro, the shadowy outline of the lighter as it is lowered.

His heart pounds.

Is she on that lighter?

Will eight months of the wide, complex, interesting world beyond this isolated shore have changed her mind?

He turns back to his work, knowing it will be quite some time before the lighter is loaded and longer yet before it can make the trip from ship to shore. He finishes turning over the garden, washes his hands at the well pump, goes inside to change his shirt. Pausing at the mirror by the front door, he examines his reflection—his wild, long, tangled hair, his unkempt beard.

He stumbles hurriedly to the bedroom, finds a comb on the bureau, drags it through his hair and his beard. His reflection, then, is somewhat more presentable—but his shirt is buttoned wrong.

He curses his foolishness, and takes a deep breath. Considers stopping in the kitchen for a slug of whiskey to fortify his nerves, but rejects the idea—Tess would not want to shackle herself to a drunkard.

He is a mass of jangling nerves by the time the lighter arrives, and his heart sinks when only Captain Kinross is in the boat. Tying off the line, Connor begins immediately retrieving supplies, without a word. Captain Kinross helps him, handing up bags and sacks and barrels and crates. Not a word is spoken until the lot is piled on the dock and tallied, and then Kinross ascends to the dock, wipes his forehead with a kerchief, and settles his weight on the top of a barrel.

“You were hoping to see Tess, unless I’m mistaken,” Kinross says.

Connor just nods.

“She took ill in the weeks before we departed.” Captain Kinross delves a hand in the breast pocket of his suit coat. “A dreadful case of influenza. She would have taken berth for this journey even ill, but I feared for her life, and forbade it.”

“She will recover, then?” Connor asks.

“Oh, most certainly. Her anger at me may not, but her health will.” Kinross hands Connor an envelope. “She bade me give you this.”

“I see.” Connor takes the letter, slices it open with his knife then and there, and withdraws the letter.

---

MY DEAREST CONNOR,

---

CURSE THIS ILLNESS, AND MY BODY FOR SUCCUMBING! I HAVE MISSED YOU MUCH THESE PAST MONTHS. I HAVE SPENT NEARLY EVERY WAKING MOMENT THINKING OF YOU, AND I LOOK FORWARD MOST EAGERLY TO OUR REUNION. I DO NOT DARE LEAVE SUCH WEIGHTY MATTERS AS OUR FUTURE TO THE VAGARIES OF TIME AND THE CAPRICE OF THE SEA, AND SO I RISK ALL WITH AS MUCH FORWARDNESS AS I POSSESS:

IF YOU SHALL HAVE ME, I WOULD BE YOUR WIFE.

I KNOW WELL THIS IS NOT HOW SUCH MATTERS ARE CUSTOMARILY ARRANGED, BUT I AM FAR TOO IMPATIENT TO WAIT. IF YOU DESIRE THIS UNION, ASK MY FATHER FOR MY HAND WHILE HE IS THERE, AND TELL HIM I HAVE ALREADY AGREED. THEN, I WILL, WHETHER SICK OR HALE, JOIN YOU ON YOUR—NAY, ON OUR ISLAND—AS YOUR WIFE. IF YOU SHOULD AGREE, I WILL BE MRS. CONNOR YATES BY THE COMING SPRING.

WITH ALL OF MY LOVE, AND MORE YET TO COME,

SOON TO BE YOURS,

TESS

---

Connor reads the letter through a dozen times before the meaning and the import of the contents truly sink into his head and his heart.

“Well?” Captain Kinross grumbles. “What does she say?”

Connor blows out a breath, considering his next words with great care. “She regrets her absence, and curses her illness.”

“Is that all?” Kinross’s voice betrays doubt, and not a little amusement. “I seem to see more words upon the page than that.”

Connor nods, reading it through yet again. “She bids me—” He stops, teeth clicking down on his words. “What I mean to say, sir, is that I humbly beg you for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

Kinross is quiet a moment, considering. “Well, I do admit this is not momentously shocking news to me. You were, these past months, nearly all my daughter would speak of.”

“Sir, I—”

Kinross interrupts. “Connor—Mr. Yates. Answer me this: is this marriage your idea, or hers?”

Connor just blinks. “Both.”

“You told me, last we spoke, that I have a headstrong daughter on my hands. You little know how much so, I fear. I would not want to see her suffer for getting what she thinks she wants, and coming to regret it. Your isolation here is total, for the majority of the year.”

Connor nods. “I said so to her myself, back in the spring. I believe I love her, sir, and will love her all the more every day, if I should be so honored as to have her as my wife. I would never begrudge her the chance to change her mind. If she were to ever want to leave, if she grew to hate this place, I would see her gone on the next ship, so she could find her happiness elsewhere. But yet, as long as she willfully desires to be my wife, I will love her and protect her with all that I am.” He is nearly panting with exertion, having used so many words all at once, and so properly.

Captain Kinross nods. “I believe you. You have my blessing.”

The rest of the visit passes swiftly—without Tess, the men find little to speak of, and so waste little time transferring the various goods to the residence and packing them away. There is a pot of coffee, a little food, less conversation, and then Captain Kinross makes his departure.

Standing on his lighthouse, Connor watches the ship vanish over the horizon. He finds it little coincidence that the ship vanishes from sight at the exact moment of sundown, when the last orange slice of sun sinks under the horizon, and he takes it as a portent of good fortune when the rim of the bright yellow-orange-crimson orb flashes green.

Another moment, and the sun is gone.

Now comes the long, cruel winter. Storms, and bitter cold. Endless wind, sharper than razors. Deep nights, dull days.

It is, in every way possible, the longest and most lonely winter Connor has ever known.

Eagerness to see Tess consumes him, and stretches the passing of the weeks and months out to unbearable agony. It is worsened by the fact that there could be no letters in the meantime, even if could he find the words to put on paper. He tries, just for practice, but his penmanship is so awful and the few words he did manage so clumsy that he burns the scraps of paper.

The waiting is torture, and with the storms raging so frequently and the cold so brutal, there is little enough for him to do besides sit in the lighthouse and tend the light. He very nearly lives up there, that winter. He has a stockpile of bits of wood of odd shapes and sizes, and he whiles away the time whittling, carving little figures, likenesses of horses and wolves and bison and whales and dogs and roosters, until he has enough to fill a crate.

The storms fade, flowers bloom, and warmth returns.

His inventory tells him the ship is due soon—he’s nearly out of coffee, sugar, tobacco, and wheat, which he very carefully rations.

Then, on a sunny but cool evening, he spies the ship cresting the horizon, spurring a freshet of panic in him.

He quells it, with difficulty.

As the lighter approaches, he combs his hair and beard, changes into fresh clothing; he considers attempting to trim his hair and beard, but decides against it—she claimed a desire to marry him as he is, so why attempt to change himself into something else? If she wants his hair and beard trimmed, perhaps she will do it herself.

He does, however, find himself waiting on the dock, impatiently whittling away at a block of wood, slowly revealing the shape of a flower.

He finishes the flower when the lighter is still only halfway between ship and shore, and so he pulls out a scrap of sandpaper out of his pocket and sets to work smoothing out the edges. He has little enough to offer Tess, and this, at least, is something of his own doing which he can present as a token of his affection.

At long last, the lighter comes to rest against the dock. Within the lighter, aside from the supplies, are Captain Kinross, Tess, a black-clad priest or minister—Connor is not a religious man, and little knows the difference—and a handful of men who must be ship’s crew—the first mate, the bosun, and the quartermaster, most likely.

Connor’s nerves thrum into life, then, at the sight of so many people. He has not encountered so many people all at once since the war, and he finds his heart squeezing and clotting in his throat, his pulse hammering wildly, irrational fears racing in his mind.

Then his eyes land on Tess, and all quiets within him.

She is wearing a yellow dress, and it is not designed for practicality this time, but for allure. The neck is scooped almost indecently low, and it hugs her waist and hips, and when she steps from lighter to dock, Connor sees a glimpse of her calf. Her eyes dance merrily, happily, as she drifts across the dock to where Connor stands, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other clutching the carven flower.

Tess stops mere inches from him, gazing up. “Why Connor, you’ve combed your hair and beard.”

“Probably needs a bit of a trim,” he mumbles.

She only smiles. “Nonsense.” She reaches up and runs her fingers through his beard. “You’re quite handsome just like this.”

“Your dress is…” he hems and haws, and tries again. “You’re the loveliest woman I ever saw.”

“Thank you, Connor. I purchased it especially for this day.”

He just stares down at Tess, drinking in her face, the black luster of her hair, the vivid azure of her eyes, the pale cream of her skin. “You’re here. Felt like you’d never get here, some days.”

Her hand rests on his chest. “Oh, the voyage here was absolutely interminable! And Papa even says we made excellent time. I just…I couldn’t bear a single minute apart from you.”

“Thought I’d dreamed it all.”

“So did I.”

“You…you really want to be here? With me?”

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be, and no one I’d rather be with, than here, with you.”

“Why?” He can’t help the question. “Why me?”

She combs her fingers through his beard again, her touch gentle and affectionate. “My heart chose you. The moment I stepped onto this dock and saw you, I knew. And when I stepped off the dock the last time, I knew I’d be back. And now that I’ve returned, I just know…”

“Know what?”

“I shan’t be leaving again. I’m home, now.”

“I’m not much for pretty talk, Tess.” He steps a little closer, so he can almost feel her body against his, a tease, a ghost of a touch, a promise. “But if you’re patient, and you’re willing, I’ll learn how to love you. That’s about the best I can promise.”

“I don’t care overly much for fancy words. I can get those in books, if that’s what I want.” She takes his hands in hers. “I just want you, Connor. Just as you are. Gruff, and quiet, and dependable.”

“Don’t deserve you, Tess.”

“That’s the thing about love, Connor—it’s not something we earn, or deserve. We have only to accept it, and give all we have in return.”

He hesitates a moment, and then shows her the flower he carved for her. She takes the carving and examines it with surprise and joy.

“Why, Connor! I had no idea you were such an artisan!” She tucks it into the valley of her bosom, and then returns her gaze to Connor’s.

“It’s just...I just wanted to have something to give you.”

“It’s lovely. I shall treasure it always.”

Behind Tess, the other men were unloading the goods, but for once, Connor let himself stay still, let himself just stand and hold the woman who had decided she was his, and he hers.

“I got one question, though,” he murmurs.

She smiles softly up at him. “Which is what?”

“The lace, that bit of lace you gave me with the note.” He hesitates, and then continues. “Where’s it from? What’d you cut it out of?”

Her smile is less soft, and more playful. “Well, Connor, I’m not sure it’s proper or decent that I tell you.” She tugs on his beard, an eyebrow quirked up. “You’ll have to wait until after we’re married to find that out.”

His face heats. “Oh. The wondering has been eating at me, these months.”

“You won’t have to wonder long.” She glances at the minister, who has remained in the boat, perusing a passage in his Bible. “Reverend Galloway can marry us today.”

“Today?”

She nods, and then eyes him quizzically. “Unless you’ve a reason to want to wait?”

“No!” he protests, a little too suddenly. “No.” He eyes the cluster of men standing around the pile of supplies. “There’s no one else you want with you for the wedding?”

“My mother died many years ago, and I’ve spent most of my life aboard ship with these men. They’re nearly as much my family as Papa.” She pats his chest. “And really, all I need is you.”

“You have me.” He gestures at the island. “This place…it’s all I have to offer, Tess.”

“As long as you’re here, I shall be more than happy.”

He shakes his head, not quite able to dislodge the lingering doubt and disbelief. “You’re sure, Tess? I know I’ve asked this more than once, I just…I need you to be sure. About me, and about this life.”

She laughs, then. “I’ve had a year to think on this, Connor—a year to consider the hardships, the realities, and the dangers. I’ve thought of little else, all this time.” Her hand comes to rest on his cheek. “I am absolutely sure this is what I want. I have not a single doubt. Not one.” A glance at her father, and the other men, huddled together, trying to light their pipes despite the wind. “Now. Kiss me, quickly, while they’re distracted.”

Her lips are softer than velvet, and warm, and damp, and she tastes of something sweet. It is a moment only, a promise of a kiss, lips on lips for mere seconds, but Time plays its trick on Connor, and he feels the kiss to last a lifetime, and more.

They are married just outside the garden, with the sun setting. Tess clutches a spray of daisies and gardenias Connor has grown, and she wears a white dress, which leaves Connor’s breath coming short and pulse hammering hard, and he wears his only suit. There is a time of conviviality afterward with the captain and the other officers, a bottle of wine brought by Captain Kinross for the occasion is opened and shared, and then, with a few tears on the part of Tess, and a gruff, huffing hug by the captain, the lighter departs. Connor and Tess watch it shrink across the water, watch it be drawn up into the ship, and then the ship’s sails drop down and belly out in the stiff wind. A cannon blasts once, a farewell, and then the ship slowly dwindles over the horizon.

“Well, husband?” Tess, finally, turns and rests her hands on Connor’s chest, and her eyes betray a myriad of heated emotions Connor has trouble believing are real, and meant for him. “We are alone, now.”

“So we are.”

“I bet if you explored a bit, you might find out where I cut that bit of lace from.” She brushes a lock of his hair away. “You’d have to make rather bold in your exploration, however.”

“Should we…” he glances up at the house, “should we go up, first?”

Tess lifts a shoulder in answer. “We could. But it is a beautiful and warm evening, and your coat upon the dock would make a fine cushion, and there is, after all, no one around to see us.”

“Here?” He is surprised.

“Anywhere, Connor. Everywhere.”

“Will I ever cease to be surprised by you?”

She unbuttons the top of his shirt. “I most certainly hope not, my husband.”

His fingers are clumsy, seeking the buttons of her dress, at her back, but she is patient, and allows him to fumble.

She is patient, indeed, as he spends long moments freeing her from her many layers, and eventually, she is clad in only bits of silk and lace, there on the dock, and he discovers that she’d cut the lace from the inside of her most intimate unmentionable, where the lace lay against her skin.

He gazes at her for long moments.

She reaches for his clothing, and removes it item by item, until he is clad as she—that is to say, nearly not at all. And then she smiles up at him. “There is clothing yet to remove, Connor,” she says. “I’ve dreamed of this moment with you more than I dare admit.”

“I didn’t dare dream of this at all.”

“Then touch me, my love, and find out that this is not a dream.”

“You’ll always be my dream, Tess.”

“And you said you weren’t one for pretty words.” She breathes a laugh of delight as he finally, finally, runs a hesitant, questing hand over her skin.

Later, lying tangled together on the dock, she gazes at him, happy, replete, and full of joy. “I don’t think passion is something I’ll need to teach you, Connor. You seem to have quite a firm grasp of that all on your own.”

He laughs with her, and shows her again all the things he feels for her, which he doesn’t have the words for.

He doesn’t need words, he discovers. She is eager and willing to learn in other ways, and shows him her own love, thus.

In the years that follow, the dreams loosen their grip on him. When a nightmare does rack him, Tess never wakes him, only clings to him when he does awaken, screaming, and she is quick to soothe him with kisses and words of comfort and love, and soon even the dreams are as distant a memory as the war itself.

With Tess at his side, the island becomes truly home, somewhere to LIVE, not just subsist.

---

[Conakry, Guinea, Africa; date unknown]

That story…it feels familiar somehow. It poured out of me unbidden, spewing from my pen in an unbroken stream of scribbles, from midnight through the dawn, until my hand cramps and my eyes swim. Even as I finish it and set the notebook aside and lie in my cot, the fan swirling slowly overhead, flies and mosquitos buzzing beyond the screen, I think of the story and wonder over and over and over why it feels as if it is a story I have somehow known before.

Is it a story I’ve written before? Is it something from my life before I lost my memories? A book I’ve read or a film I’ve seen? I don’t know. I just know it feels familiar. Certain elements strike me as…not quite déjà vu, but something like it. The lighthouse in the middle of nowhere, the quiet, stern, gruff man, the woman who brings him to life, the ship coming only so frequently…did I invent these elements, or did I bring them over from a hazy, forgotten corner of my past, brought alive and made new? Is it a metaphor?

My mind often works like that, I think, telling stories in an attempt to make sense of my life and my circumstances.

What does it mean?

Am I the island? Am I the man alone upon it, barely surviving day to day, each day a twisted gnarl of sameness and boredom and loneliness?

The woman…she is, clearly, Ava—at least, the Ava I am remembering, assuming she truly exists, and is alive. If my Ava were to have been born in the nineteenth century, she would have been like Tess, forward, lovely, elegant, impatient with nonsense, eager, full of life and love and affection.

I didn’t want to write the rest, I wanted to keep it for myself, hidden and private in my mind—but I saw Connor and Tess together, on that island. He learned to whisper, at least to her, the truths deep in his heart, and she healed him of his pain, and accepted that which could not be healed. She bore him a child, a son. They raised him together on the island, until he became old enough to require school, and then Connor took a position at a lighthouse nearer civilization, where Tess could have friends and their son could be educated, and Connor even formed a friendship with an old barkeep…

Am I Connor? Scarred and haunted, and in need of my own Tess to come and bring me to life?

That feels true; it slices at me, probes deep, stirs dark, shadowy memories in my soul.

There is a cauldron of pain roiling beneath all this, I think.

I am honestly frightened of remembering.

Sleep claims me as I think on all this, and my sleep is haunted by ghosts and dreams and memories—if those are indeed disparate entities.