The Night Mark. Tiffany Reisz

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СКАЧАТЬ and too happy to be offended. Not that Ty could offend her if he tried. After four years in a bad marriage, one dirty pussy joke couldn’t begin to ding her armor. Oh, but that smile of Ty’s, that sweet, sexy smile could. It wriggled its way through the chinks in her chain mail.

      Tonight she was going to make very bad decisions.

      The rest of the evening passed in a blur. Faye and Ty both had a little to drink at dinner and then a lot to drink back at the Church Street house. So it wasn’t that much of a rude awakening to find Ty still in her bed when she woke up around 3:00 a.m.

      He lay on his stomach, facing away from her, looking so painfully young and terribly sweet. She forced down any guilt she might have felt. This hadn’t been his first time, and it wouldn’t be his last. Might not even be his last time tonight. She’d almost told him during their first round that it was the best sex she’d had since getting married, but she kept that comment to herself. After all, Hagen had set a low bar.

      Faye slipped out of bed, put on her bathrobe and went to the bathroom. Ty stirred as she slid back in next to him.

      “Just me,” she whispered as Ty rolled over to face her.

      “Did I fall asleep? Sorry. Your bed is bigger than mine.”

      “I don’t mind. Just be careful sneaking out. I don’t want to get in trouble with Miss Lizzie. She seems a little on the religious side.”

      “She makes Mother Teresa look like Miley Cyrus.” Ty slid from bed and started gathering his clothes. She rolled over onto her side to watch him dress in the dark. “Luckily she sleeps so hard we could knock the headboard through the wall and she wouldn’t wake up.”

      “That sounds like the voice of experience.”

      “Did you think I was a virgin?” he asked, crawling over the bed to her.

      “No, but I was.”

      He laughed softly and kissed her. “Hope you had fun,” he said.

      “I did.”

      “You sure?” he asked. Faye blushed in the dark. She hadn’t been able to come during the sex. She’d tried, but it was going to take a while before she figured how to use her body for anything other than baby making again. But Ty didn’t need to hear that.

      “I did have fun,” she said. “Don’t take my lack of orgasms personally. I’m a little out of practice.”

      One more kiss and one more smile. “Practice makes perfect.”

      On his way out of her room she stopped him with a whispered question.

      “Hey,” she said. “What’s the name of the island with the lighthouse again? Not Bride Island, the real name? Sea Island?”

      “Seaport Island.”

      “Thanks. I need it for the caption.”

      “I’ll take you out there again anytime you want.”

      “I might take you up on that. How much will you charge me for it?” she asked, smiling.

      “One clam.”

      Ty crept into the hallway and was gone, leaving Faye laughing in bed. She didn’t hear a single footstep creaking on the hardwood.

      Faye tried to go back to sleep, but it eluded her. Her new life had officially begun with a bang and a whimper or two. Sliding out from under the covers, she walked naked to her camera bag sitting on the floor. She enjoyed the breezy tickle of the night air on her breasts as it wafted in under the blinds. It made her tingle in a pleasant way.

      She hadn’t had a chance to upload today’s pictures yet and wanted to see the lighthouse again. She plugged her camera into her computer. Ah, there they were, her beautiful photos. The stork, the trees, the glimmering ivory lighthouse. Faye would get this photo printed out and she’d hang it in her room. It was possibly the best work she’d ever done. Maybe she’d finally found her subject. Man Ray had his nudes. Dorothea Lange had her migrant workers. Ansel Adams had his landscapes. Maybe Faye Barlow would have her lighthouses.

      She typed “Seaport Island Lighthouse” into the spreadsheet she kept to label her photographs. Out of curiosity she entered that phrase into Google image search to see who else had been taking pictures of the lighthouse. She found a few amateur pictures of the island, most of them obvious iPhone pictures posted on Pinterest. As she scrolled through the results she found a few historical pictures. One of the iron skeleton of the lighthouse as it was being built in 1884. Another when it was completed.

      Faye was about to shut her computer down when a tiny thumbprint photograph caught her eye. It was a faded and sepia-toned picture of one of the lighthouse’s keepers who’d been stationed there after World War I, according to the caption.

      Faye narrowed her eyes at the photograph. Her heart raced. She clicked on the link and enlarged the picture until the face of the lighthouse keeper filled up the fifteen-inch screen.

      “No way...” she breathed, putting the laptop onto the sewing table and leaning in closer, staring at the photograph until her eyes watered. And she stared at it even longer until the watering turned to tears.

      Faye reached out to touch the photograph on her screen.

      She knew the face in the photograph, knew it well.

      It was the face of the only man she’d ever loved.

      Will’s face.

       4

      When the Beaufort County Library opened the next morning, Faye was the first one through the double doors. Unfortunately, the librarian at the reference desk was fairly new to the area, a transplant from Tennessee, and she’d never heard of Bride Island and/or Seaport Island and had no idea there was a lighthouse other than the Hunting Island Light. She suggested Faye walk down to the local tourist center with a smile and a “God bless.”

      Thankfully everything that wasn’t an island was within walking distance in Beaufort. The tourist center was housed in a clementine-colored brick storefront house on Bay Street. Between last night and this morning, the wholly uncanny feeling of the lighthouse keeper’s photograph had faded from her consciousness the way a nightmare fades, mostly gone but leaving a strange, smoky pall over the day.

      And yet...it was strange. Too strange to ignore, although too strange to take seriously, as well. But finding out the man’s name wouldn’t hurt, would it?

      In the front window sat six watercolor paintings on easels. All of them were paintings of Lowcountry—the beach, the Hunting Island lighthouse, the Penn School...

      And there it was, set off behind the others, a single painting of a solid white lighthouse and the pier that no longer existed. At the end of the pier stood a woman in a light gray trench coat. The woman faced the ocean and seemed to be holding something in her hand, something Faye couldn’t see. And behind the woman on the pier?

      A large white bird perched on a pillar.

      Faye froze, unable to walk away from the painting, СКАЧАТЬ