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Obviously, she’d picked up on his slight discomfort that they were approaching the more intimate details of his life and was stalling by detailing the technical.
“Do you enjoy this work?” she asked.
Did he? He’d never really thought about it. “I love—” loved “—that this career gives me the flexibility to be with family and a sense of pride and purpose to be protecting the community.” Though, for a while now, he had been thinking of giving it all up, walking away from that sense of duty...
“But that community hasn’t always been a source of support for you, has it?” she asked gently.
Oliver hesitated, unsure how to comment. It hadn’t, but then, that was a long time ago and he wasn’t sure how he could explain without dredging up old hard feelings. He didn’t want anyone reading the article to think he was still bitter or angry.
Rachel cleared her throat. She hit Pause on the recording device. “Are you sure you’re okay talking about the accident? We really don’t have to.”
Unfortunately, he felt as though he did. No story about the lighthouse—its history, its secrets, its past and potential future—could be told without unfolding the past. His family’s story and life were entwined with the old buildings. They were woven together like a delicate tapestry and he’d agreed to give Rachel the story. “I’m good.”
She nodded and hit Record.
“This lighthouse has seen some tragedy. Three years ago, your wife and daughter disappeared at sea,” she said gently.
“We’d just finished building Alison’s new sailboat. As a family, we’d decided to start constructing boats as a side business and Alison’s was the first. It was a twenty-foot beauty with double mast sails and an engine for backup. All the safety equipment was top-notch...”
Why hadn’t they used it? Why hadn’t they radioed for help if they’d been in trouble? It was one of the main thoughts that still plagued him.
He cleared his throat and continued. “Alison and Catherine had decided to take the sailboat out for the day for its first test run. The weather was perfect. The ocean was like a sheet of clear, pristine glass—smooth and peaceful, force level zero...maybe one. There was just the right amount of breeze and they were both qualified sailors and competent swimmers.”
Oliver took a deep breath and continued.
“They packed a lunch and water and necessary supplies and planned to return by dark. I had a copy of their charted route for the day. They were prepared and had taken all safety measures.”
Rachel nodded and voiced the part he couldn’t. “But they didn’t come home.”
He shook his head. “By nightfall, I knew something was wrong. They never stayed out longer than they planned and Alison didn’t love being on the water at night. She had a deep respect for the ocean and its mysteries and fully embraced the mythology and beliefs adopted by the town.”
“Sealena?”
“Among other things. She always said she felt relief knowing there were unknowns lurking in the water around Port Serenity, but she never wanted to encounter one.” He chuckled sadly. His wife had been such a beautiful dichotomy of strength and softness. She was fearless but held to strong beliefs that humbled her.
“So, what did you do?”
“Alerted the authorities right away and they didn’t hesitate to send out the coast guard boat in search of the sailboat. But they found nothing that night and called the search off when the weather took a turn for the worse. They searched for days, but there was no trace of them anywhere.”
“As if they’d simply vanished,” Rachel said, almost in a whisper.
Oliver nodded. “The following months were hell. Tess and I were grieving but trying to remain hopeful, the worst possible combination, as the body doesn’t know how to react, how to feel. Caught in this limbo of not being able to move through the stages of grief and come to a level of acceptance, when there was no closure. There was always the optimistic what-ifs that prevented us from moving on.”
It had been torture to be in that state, knowing in his gut they weren’t coming back but clinging to any hope that they might. And when he wanted to finally let go, Tess would pull him back with her desire to have her mother and sister return.
“And the investigation couldn’t have helped,” she said with a slight anger toward authorities that made him feel better.
“No. Once authorities couldn’t locate the boat or the...bodies—” he stumbled over the word, his gut twisting “—I became a suspect. They questioned me and everyone who knew me. They searched the grounds all around the lighthouse.” That had been one of the hardest days of his life—watching the search crew look for clues and answers in the wrong place, knowing they were wasting their time. He shook his head. “It’s hard to grasp that a community that I once was a solid part of could ever think I would do something so terrible...” It still made his gut tighten to think about those days. Still made his heart hurt. Time had passed, people had put suspicions to rest, but without the closure of knowing, he had never fully felt like everyone believed he was innocent.
“What did they think happened?” she asked, leaning closer.
“I’m not sure. They wanted to charge me with maybe tampering with the boat in some way, but without the boat, there was no strong evidence to support that claim.” It had, however, left him with the guilt and nagging thought that maybe he had done something wrong in the boat’s construction, but he knew he hadn’t.
“I can’t imagine how tough that was.” She reached across the table and touched his hand gently, taking a breath as though she too needed a quick pause. Then she said, “So how did you move on?”
“Life doesn’t give you a choice. Tess and I finally had to get up in the morning and continue living. We hold Alison and Catherine in our hearts, but we’ve learned to accept that they are no longer part of our everyday. It was hard at first and it continues to be hard, but less and less all the time. Time heals even if you don’t want it to.” It was a new sense of guilt that had wrapped around him in recent years—the fact that he was less sad, less angry, that thoughts of them were less over the years. That he was moving on was a betrayal, but he knew in his heart it wasn’t.
Rachel stopped the recording and sighed. “Thank you, Oliver. That was beautiful.”
