she had walked down to the lifeboat station and begun to ready the vessel just in case.
“The winds woke me,” she lied.
He nodded his understanding. “They’ve woken most of the village. Old Man Cressa has lost a third of his roof, and one of the swells has flooded a few cottages on Cove Hill. Thank the Lord it’s not tourist season and most of them are empty.”
“They’re not all empty,” she said. Even though the reception she’d received the first time was more than frosty, and despite everything that had been said, she knew she had to call by to check on Tom’s mother. She’d tried to see them a few times since Tom’s leaving, but they never answered the door.
“If you’re talking about Tom’s, I’m afraid to tell you it is. His parents left a few weeks ago.”
“What?” Left? How could that be so? “Where to?”
“Heard that Pat found work on the Tremayne farm, out near Releath. Now, it’s not safe to be out here. Get yourself home.”
Even the idea of his parents leaving terrified her. Had Tom just disappeared too? Had he come back from Wolf Rock and slipped quietly away? With the aid of one of the ropes dangling overboard she shimmied down to the ground. “Mr. Pommeroy, I have to ask you about the letter,” she said, swallowing hard, gulping at courage she was struggling to muster. “The one I wrote to Tom.”
He opened his mouth to speak, hesitating, she was sure. But before he could answer, the emergency line sounded, the coastguard calling in the lifeboat. Both Mr. Pommeroy and Elizabeth knew there was no time to waste, and that awful sense of foreboding returned, along with a silent prayer for it to be anything other than something related to Tom. Mr. Pommeroy picked up the call, Elizabeth listening to his mumbled answers as he scribbled down the most pertinent of details.
After hanging up the telephone he turned to face her. “Fetch me the flares, Elizabeth.” The need to ask questions held her back, but sense prevailed and she hurried away while Pommeroy set about opening the doors. Lights blared against the black night still upon them, and almost as if in protest, the inimical sea roared loud and defiant, charging at the slipway like frantic hands clawing at the shore. Rain soaked him as he fired two of the rockets into the sky. The boom was loud enough to be heard up to a mile away, bright enough to light the whole of the bay for a second or so. He was soon back inside, completing a list of tasks that he knew as well as he recognized his reflection, readying the vessel the best he could before the rest of the crew arrived. They would already be rushing into yesterday’s clothes, woken by the sound of the gun, the indication that somebody, somewhere was in trouble.
“Mr. Pommeroy?” she probed, getting as close as she could without hindering him. The frayed ropes that tethered the lifeboat to the slipway strained against his might. He stopped only briefly, but it was a pause heavy with meaning, and she knew then that her worry across the course of the previous night hadn’t been in vain. Tom hadn’t left the lighthouse, she would have felt it if he had, and that meant he was in danger. “Tell me.”
The gray pallor of worry spoke a million words before he could find the courage. “A vessel has struck Wolf Rock. It’s beached, and the crew are stranded.”
The waters off the coast of Cornwall were notorious and fierce. The crew of the Susan Ashley knew every hidden rock, every current that could take an outsider by surprise. Strangers to these waters had no such knowledge, but that was what the lighthouses were for. What had happened to Wolf Rock that a vessel could land upon its foundations? Why hadn’t the sailors seen the light?
“And the lighthouse crew?” she begged, clutching at Mr. Pommeroy’s arm. “Tom?”
His heavy hand pressed against hers. A misty rain waxed down the window, casting irregular shadows on the wall. “The lifeboat crew will be here soon with a bit of luck. Let’s get out there and see, eh? You’ve done your bit. Best thing you can do is get yourself home.”
Leaving the station as instructed, stepping out into the cold air with a wind that bit her skin as it burrowed through her clothes, she stood against the railings, watching a disquieted sea. Tom himself had