The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,112

while you are away. She can cook and look after the children while I attend to the many jobs that must be done after the storm.

Get well quickly. The children are missing you.

Jack

Mary was irritated. Rose was an ineffective solution. She was simply too lazy, and she’d be no use around the house. But of course, Jack, would be blind to that—all he’d see was an extra pair of hands.

Sitting by the fire in her parents’ home, Mary had much time to contemplate. She thought about Jack’s letter and everything it represented. She read it over and over, looking for something that wasn’t there. The fall and the broken leg had shaken her and she needed something from Jack, some reassurance that she mattered and that she was important to him. She wanted to know how he’d felt when he discovered she was missing. She wanted him to tell her about the search and rescue. She wanted to hear of his concern, the revival of his love and affection when he knew she was hurt. But the letter gave her none of this.

She wondered what would have happened if she’d died. The children might have grieved for a time, but what of Jack? How long would her death have affected him? Over the years they had become like ghosts to each other, shadows passing along the walls, beings without substance or reality. At best, she figured Jack would have noticed her absence more than he noticed her presence. The space in his bed. His dinner plate unfilled. The empty kitchen. Nobody to nurture the children. The cow waiting by the gate to be milked.

Their conversations, he would not miss—they were devoid of anything that mattered, littered with necessary facts, but bearing nothing of warmth, no connection or intimacy. In recent years, their eyes had flattened during speech. They had closed each other out like a door pulled shut. And their jobs had become the reason for existing. Jack, the lighthouse keeper. Mary, the mother.

If she had died in the accident, Mary was aware that Jack could have written a new future for himself, one without the burden of a wife. He could have sent Jan and Gary to boarding school. He could have become one with the wind and melted into the solitude he wrapped so closely around himself. She often wondered if he would have been happier that way.

After ten weeks, the leg mended and she went home, aware there was much work to be done to knit her marriage back together. But it seemed she was too late. The Jack she arrived home to was a stranger, aloof and unwelcoming, disinterested in her return. Aware of her own fragility, and shocked by Jack’s detachment, she took the children and went back to her parents’ house. She needed space to find her way out of the debilitating grip of despair before she could attempt to revive her relationship. Two months later, she returned once more to the cape; this time she was ready to fix things with Jack.

At first, she and Jack edged around each other like skittish crabs, not knowing how to reconnect. There were times when she considered leaving for good, but commitment was something her parents had taught her, and divorce never seemed a real option. It might have been possible if she’d been a different person in a different era. But society frowned on separation, and she was in her mid-thirties with two children. Jan and Gary had to be considered too. Jack was their father, and they needed him.

There was also the burden of her guilt. Over the years at the lighthouse as Jack had become more distant, instead of retreating and dreaming of a life with Adam, she could have put more effort into her marriage. Jack might not be passionate like Adam, but he was solid and dependable, with an inner strength that matched the place they lived in . . . Bruny Island. Yes, the island was part of what held them together. How lucky they were in their mutual love of this place. It gave them a base on which to reconstruct themselves.

In the end, it was Mary’s task to remake the family. She strived to avoid conflict, steering cautiously around prickly issues. She organised weekly picnics down in their quiet cove where sometimes they saw seals or dolphins. She re-ignited their sex life. Despite his initial resistance, she could see this was important to Jack. Sex reunited him with