a little as he brushed aside a sodden strand of hair and found the top button of her dress.
The act of disrobing a woman felt alien to Jesse. Yet at the same time, it seemed unbearably familiar, as if he were that bridegroom once again.
He set his jaw and undid the row of buttons. She lay unconscious, oblivious to his clumsy manipulations as he peeled off one sleeve, then the other, rolling the flimsy wool garment over her arms and legs, dropping it on the floor.
Beneath it she wore a simple shift that had once been white. Her breasts and belly stood out in pale relief against the thin fabric. With his teeth tightly clenched, he forced himself to honor her modesty and cover her, working the shift off by touch alone. Yet he didn’t need his eyes to detect her graceful curves, the smooth texture of her skin.
Her skin was dangerously cool.
In his blind haste, he tore the shift as he finished dragging it down the length of her. He added it to the pile on the floor, tucked the blankets more securely around her and stood up.
He was shaking from head to foot.
Back in the kitchen, he filled canteens and bottles with hot water and placed them around her, insulated by the blankets. That done, he leaned against the rough-timbered wall of the room and closed his eyes briefly. Finished. That phase, at least, was over. The difficult part lay ahead.
The lightkeeper’s house was less a home than a refuge. The one-and-a-half-story dwelling, embraced by a towering forest, had been enough for Jesse, who needed little except to survive from one moment to the next. Yet now, with the light spilling through an east-facing window and slanting across the unmoving form on the bed, the house felt small, cramped. Dingy, even.
The birth-and-death room off the kitchen was designed with the idea that a patient lying abed should be close at hand, where the heart of the house beat the strongest. In all the years Jesse had lived here, no one had occupied this room, this bed.
Until now.
She lay unmoving beneath the blankets and quilts. Her face was pale and serene. Her dark red hair fanned out in untidy hanks, stiffened by salt. She held one perfect hand tucked beneath her chin. Her delicate eyelids were webbed with faint blue lines.
I’m alive. I suppose that’s something.
The words she had uttered so quietly on the beach whispered through his mind. He had thought he detected an accent of sorts, a lilting inflection that was hard to place. She hadn’t opened her eyes.
He caught himself wondering what color they were.
“Who are you?” he whispered, his voice harsh. “Who the hell are you?”
She was Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tale. Her bed should be a sunlit arbor entwined with roses, not a crude bedstead with a sagging mattress. She should awaken to Prince Charming, not to Jesse Kane Morgan.
He forced himself to turn away. It hurt to look at her, the way it hurt to look directly into the sun on a summer day. Better for all concerned if she were simply whisked away, still unconscious, never knowing who had pulled her from the sea.
Yet he had an urge to sink to his knees beside the woman, to grab her by the shoulders and plead with her to live, live.
He began to pace, wondering what was keeping the Jonssons. Trying to shove aside a jolt of urgency, Jesse observed his house through new eyes, trying to see it as a stranger would. Sturdy pine furniture, hand-hewn. A plain wag-on-the-wall clock, its long pendulum measuring the moments with unrelenting reliability. The shutters were open to the morning. Palina had offered to make curtains, but Jesse had no use for frills.
The longest wall in the keeping room was lined with books. Novels by Dumas, Flaubert, Dickens. Essays and stories by Emerson, Thoreau. When Jesse left the world behind, the only possessions he’d brought along were his books. He read constantly, voraciously, escaping into worlds of make-believe. In the early years, after the tragedy had first happened, he had clung to the books like a lifeline. The babbling voices of fictional characters had blocked out the howl of emptiness that screamed through his mind. The books kept him from going insane.
Lined up neatly on shelves in the kitchen, jars and cans and crocks were stacked by height so he always knew where his supplies were. The Acme Royal stove had been well maintained, blacked over and over again throughout the years he had been here.
The years he tried his best not to count.
Impatience drove him out to the porch to ring the bell again. He gave the rope pull a quick jerk, but he needn’t have. He could hear Magnus and Palina coming.
Their voices took on a hushed quality in the strange green wilderness that surrounded the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse Station. The forest floor was paved with layers of brown needles, cushioning their footfalls. They spoke in their native Icelandic, animatedly, like old friends who had just met again after a long separation.
It never ceased to amaze Jesse, the way they found constant interest and delight in one another, even after some thirty years of marriage. They had a grown son, Erik, who was simple but beloved of his parents. Strong as a young bullock, Erik spent his days working in contented silence around the station.
The Jonssons appeared around a bend in the forest path. The morning sun, filtered through lofty boughs of the soaring cedar and Sitka spruce trees, was kind to their aging faces, giving them a soft glow as they smiled, lifted their hands in greeting and hurried toward him.
Magnus Jonsson had a fisherman’s deep chest and broad shoulders, the result of decades spent hauling nets and cranking winches. He had retired after an injury had taken his left hand. When most men would have lain down in defeat and died, Magnus had willed himself to heal.
Beside her adored and adoring husband, Palina looked dainty, though she was as sturdy as any pioneer in the prime of life. She had bright eyes and prominent teeth, and in her face there was an unexpected depth that hinted at a keen, quiet intelligence and a vivid imagination.
“Good day, Jesse,” she said, a light singsong in her voice. “And look at the fine morning Odin has given us.” She encompassed the small clearing with a sweep of her arm, showing off her bright orange shawl. On the slope below, the horse pasture shone in the radiance of the sun.
“All the clouds chased off and the fog burned away by the breath of Aegir,” Magnus added.
Jesse nodded a greeting. He had grown used to their constant references to the legends of the sea. And who was he to discount them? Many of the ancient tales they recounted held an almost eerie ring of truth.
“That’s not all the morning brought,” he said, motioning them up the steps to the porch. He pushed open the door and held it as they moved inside. They followed him through the keeping room and past the kitchen, into the birth-and-death room.
When the Jonssons spied the woman on the bed, they froze, clutching each other’s hands.
“Hamingjan góoa,” Magnus said under his breath. “And what is this?”
“She washed up on the beach from a shipwreck.” Feeling inexplicably awkward, Jesse was reminded of a moment in his boyhood, when he’d gotten a gift he hadn’t wanted. What did one say?
Thank you.
But he wasn’t thankful,
