The Last to See Me (The Last Ghost #1) - M Dressler Page 0,75

lighted buoys out on the water now. Everything’s automatic.”

“Would we find anyone there?”

No. Not me. I’ll make sure of it.

“I don’t think so. It’s turned into sort of a den for delinquents. The buildings are sad. It’s all a mess. Though a cleaner did come and flush it out, at some point.”

“But maybe missed something useful. As other things have been missed in this town.” Pratt taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “I say we go there now.”

“It’s getting dark, though.”

“We’ll drive back to the hotel and pick up a few lights. Unless you’d rather stay there?”

“No, I want to go. I’m feeling something. Something about how it feels. To come back from the dead. And want to make a life for yourself again. I think I’m getting the hang of this. Did you see how that crawler at the Botanical Garden didn’t even really upset me?”

Pratt studies her. “I did.”

Brave little Ellen. I’ll give her that.

“So,” she says. “Let’s go.”

22

I need you. I need you. I need you, Mrs. Folde said.

For soaping and scrubbing the baseboards until the children’s scuff-marks were all gone. That’s how she needed me. For beating and airing the hooked rugs and laying them down again. For taking the chimneys from the lamps and polishing them. For oiling the banister and burnishing the brass. I need you, Emma, right now. For this work. I need you.

If only a person knew, if only you knew when you were going to die, you might spend your last hours in some other, more treasured way than spitting on dulled brass. On a beach. With a bright boy. Reading a poem. Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

Mrs. Folde grew so nervous about the commission’s visit she decided to send the children and the baby away with her sister, who came with her husband in a Packard.

“I’m torn, oh Emma, I’m so torn,” she said as she waved them goodbye. “I do want those men to see we’re a growing family—but not such a circus we can’t handle the head keeper’s responsibilities. If only I hadn’t let myself be burdened with so many little ones.”

The sun rose on the day of the commission’s visit, my nineteenth birthday, and I did nothing more than put a fresh ribbon in my hair and begin making the tarts. I missed Quint, who hadn’t come to see me since we’d argued about my waiting on people he knew. He didn’t know it was my birthday. That was my doing. I hadn’t told him. I should have, and if I had, I would have said all I wanted, truly, was to see the same moon he did at night and not count what that might be worth.

“I need to make clear we’re a good family,” Mrs. Folde said as the hour drew near, fidgeting with her hair, coiled high on her head. “Not like some keeper’s wives, whom I won’t mention, whose bloomers have no lace on them. All right. Let’s keep to our schedule. The men’s shifts have been altered today. Mr. Folde is going early to the lighthouse, and then will come back to us. We’re on our own for now. Let us rise to the occasion.”

It was a warmer day than it had been all spring. The starch in the napkins was already wilting. But God took the measure of a soul, Mrs. Folde said, and so did the commission, by how well that soul bore disaster.

I tried not to think about Quint as I pulled the curtains tight to keep the sun out. Still, I couldn’t help peeking through them, hoping for a surprise, something sweet, unexpected.

At noon I saw the touring car carrying the commission down through the woven canopy of the cypress trees. Three large men, all wearing bright yellow straw hats, sitting tall in their seats, like suns all risen to the same height. Such steady-looking heads. I supposed they had to be, since they had the job of supplying so many light stations with men they could trust, up and down this stretch of coast.

I called out to Mrs. Folde. She flung her apron aside and told me to put my cap on. She took one last, beady look around the dining parlor and checked her face in the hall-tree mirror. “I don’t look bohemian, do I?”

“No ma’am.”

“Madam. Don’t forget.”

She told me to stand ready to take the men’s hats. We watched through the glass of the front door as Mr. Folde came boldly