it?” she asked. “It’s very valuable, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yes, but there was a lot of opposition to raising the lens,” he said. His own father, once an advocate for saving the lighthouse, had led the fight against finding the lens. “The travel bureau and the lighthouse society wanted it raised, but the locals tend to think that things should remain right where nature puts them. And, as you can imagine, they’re also not keen on bringing even more tourists to the area as it is. Besides, who knows? The lens could be in a thousand pieces down there.”
“But it also could be in one piece, or in just a few pieces that could be put back together,” she argued, and he knew she had a feisty side to her. “I think it’s a crime to leave something that’s historically valuable on the bottom of the sea. It should be displayed in a museum somewhere.”
He shrugged. He didn’t really care about the lens. Never thought about it, actually. In the great scheme of things, it did not seem worth getting upset over.
“It was a first-order lens, wasn’t it?” Gina asked.
“Yes. It’s three tons, at least. Whether it’s in one piece or a hundred, it would be a job to bring it out. Once they got the thing up, it would probably have to spend months in an electrolyte bath so the metal parts didn’t disintegrate in the air.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” she said. “The metal parts are brass, aren’t they? Brass wouldn’t need an electrolyte bath.”
She was right, and he was wrong. And also a little impressed.
“And if it’s three tons,” she continued, “it couldn’t have drifted too far from the lighthouse, then, could it?”
He looked out toward the black cavern of the sea. Long ago, he and Terri would drive up here to Kiss River and sit on these stairs at low tide, trying to spot the lens, expecting to see it jutting out of the water. They never were able to spot it. “It was an unbelievable storm,” he said. “And there have been a few just as bad since then. The coastline’s really changed here. Before that storm, the water was never up this high. It’s washed away the beach. By now the lens could be just about any—”
“Hey!”
The shout came from the beach, slipping past Clay’s ears on the breeze. Leaning over, he saw a flashlight far below them.
“Hey, Lace!” he called back. “We’ll be down in a sec.”
Turning to Gina, he stood up. “That’s my sister,” he said. “Are you ready to go down?”
She nodded. He held his hand out to her as she stood up, but she didn’t take it. Leading the way down the staircase, he kept his flashlight turned backward a bit to light the stairs for her. “Watch your step,” he warned. “It’s not as easy in the dark.”
He moved slowly, aware that Gina had a death grip on the railing behind him, and it was a while before they exited through the tiled foyer. The waves washed over their feet and legs once they’d descended the three concrete steps into the water. Sasha bounded toward them, splashing their arms and faces as they waded to the dry sand where Lacey stood.
Gina nearly ignored Lacey as she squatted low to the ground to pet Sasha, and Clay’s opinion of the woman instantly rose a few notches. Sasha rolled in the sand, exposing his stomach to the stranger, and Gina obliged by rubbing his belly.
“That’s Sasha,” Clay said. “And this is my sister, Lacey. Lacey, this is Gina …?” He couldn’t recall her last name.
“Higgins.” Gina stood up, wiping her sandy hand on her shorts before extending it to Lacey.
“Are you a friend of Clay’s?” Lacey asked as she shook Gina’s hand, and Clay heard the hope in her voice. His sister would love nothing better than for him to have a new woman in his life.
Gina smiled at her. “No,” she said with a slight laugh. “I’m a trespasser, actually. I was up on the lighthouse when it got dark and your brother rescued me. That’s all.”
“Really?” Lacey raised her eyebrows at him.
“She came in from the road,” he explained.
“I walked around the chain,” Gina said. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see—”
“No big deal,” Lacey said, waving her unlit flashlight through the air. Her long red hair was tied back against the breeze, and her fair skin glowed white in the darkness. “We don’t own this place.” She glanced from Gina to Clay and back again, and he could almost see what she was thinking. Right age, very attractive, perfect for Clay. “Are you here on vacation with your family?” she asked. “Or with a bunch of girlfriends?” Clay nearly groaned at her transparent probing. Why didn’t she just come right out and ask the woman if she was available to be fixed up with her pathetic brother?
“I’m alone,” Gina said. “Just here for a few days.”
“She’s a lighthouse historian,” Clay said.
“Amateur,” Gina added, glancing away from him. She was probably still embarrassed over her pronunciation of Fresnel.
“Well, listen.” Lacey swatted a mosquito that had landed on her bare shoulder. “Have you eaten? Would you like to stay for dinner?”
“Oh, no,” Gina protested.
“We know absolutely every minute detail there is to know about the lighthouse,” Lacey coaxed. “We can tell you everything.” He knew his sister would not take no for an answer. He understood how her mind worked. It wasn’t so much that she was hoping to fix Gina up with him, or that she was eager to tell her stories about the lighthouse. It was that she couldn’t bear to think of anyone being alone.
“I bought plenty of fresh tuna for dinner, so you might as well stay,” Clay said, surprising himself as well as Lacey. “Then one of us can drive you back out to your car.” The truth was, he didn’t want her to go, either. He wanted to see her in the good light of the kitchen. He wanted to find flaws in that perfect face.
Gina looked down at Sasha, who was leaning against her thigh. She scratched the dog behind his ears.
“All right,” she said. “That’s so nice of you. I have to admit, I was a little nervous about walking back through those woods, with the wild horses and pigs and all.”
He and Lacey stared at her, then started to laugh.
“Wild pigs?” Lacey asked.
“I’d heard there were wild pigs,” Gina said. “Boars, I mean.”
“A long, long time ago,” Clay said, wondering where she’d received that piece of information. Whatever lighthouse source she was using had to be ancient. She hadn’t known the Kiss River had been destroyed. And wild pigs?
“The horses were moved way up past Corolla and fenced in,” Lacey explained. “Too many were getting killed because of the traffic. And it used to be open range here, long ago. Full of cows and hogs, and some of them did run wild. Mary Poor, who used to be the keeper, told me about them. I think there’s still some wild boar up in the wildlife refuge.”
“You
