Lightkeeper's Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

collapsed against him, then he carried her to the bed and lay with her until she fell asleep.
    ***
    Dusk settled over the house like a trance. Dusk fell across the fields and emptied the air of any promise save the light flashing every eight seconds, a steady pulse, as familiar to Hannah as her own breath. She kneeled down for a closer look at the sailor, then she nudged his shoulder until he opened his eyes for a moment and squinted at her.
    â€œYou’re okay,” she told him. “You’re at Dangerfield Light.”
    He looked down the mummified length of his body, the layers of blankets and quilts.
    â€œYour ship went aground,” she told him. “You’re injured, but you’re safe now.”
    â€œYou should’ve let me drown,” he said, his voice scraping his throat, his eyes fierce now and fixed on her.
    She sat upright in her chair. “You should’ve let yourself drown,” she told him, startled. “When I found you, you were clinging to a spar. What’s your name?”
    â€œWilliam Pike.” He remembered clinging to the spar, his elbows hooked over on each side, his head resting like a child’s while his legs drifted. Frigid with cold, he’d stopped caring whether he lived or died. Still, he didn’t let go of the spar. It was the weakness in him, clinging to life.
    â€œYou cut your head. I’ve been changing the bandages so you don’t get infected. It’ll scar though. You’ll be quite distinctive.”
    â€œI’ve got enough scars.”
    â€œAnd the name of your ship?”
    â€œIt wasn’t my ship.” He held his arm over his eyes. “ Cynthia Rose . We went aground in the storm. The light was so close. I don’t know how it happened.”
    He struggled to free himself from the blankets, took a quick look around the room, and then dropped his head back onto the bedroll.
    â€œWhere are the others?” he asked.
    Hannah looked into the pattern of wear on the blanket, pilled and frayed on the edges. She picked at the torn edge and thought she should mend it, but the blanket was too old for mending.
    He clamped his teeth down and turned his face away from her. “They’re all drowned, aren’t they?”
    Hannah was silent, and he turned his face toward the fire. “You’re the only one I found,” she said.
    He placed his hand to his forehead, as if remembering the pain. He let her hold a cup of broth to his mouth and drank a little before he slept again.
    Hannah added wood to the fire, his rasping breath a lonely kind of solace as she waited for John.

3
    William Pike pretended to sleep, but instead watched the woman mend a shirt, then get up and pace by the front window before she sat down and took up her mending again. She jabbed at the fabric, then pulled the thread taut with three sharp tugs. He kept his eyes partway open for minutes at a time. When she stood to press a damp cloth to his forehead, the gentle sound of her voice eased him as she said fever, delirium . The smell of chicken cooking in a pot that hung over the fire and the warmth of the room made him drowsy. When the woman found out who he was, she’d make him leave.
    When he was awake, the overwhelming knowledge that he’d washed ashore with no place to go, no people, drove him to sleep again. Dreams swept through him, vivid as life. He tried to remember a time before he’d gone to sea, before the Alice K and the Intrepid , when he’d lived in Worcester and known his family. The last William heard about his own mother was that she worked as a laundress. His father had died in prison, where he was incarcerated for embezzling funds from his biggest client, a textile manufacturer who found him out when they hired another firm to audit the accounts. The lightkeeper’s wife tugged the blankets tight around his neck, and as she leaned over him, he felt her breath on his face. Her careful attention