not bring it closer. Was this the right choice? What would happen if this letter were delivered after she died? Would it really matter? But then again, could she die peacefully while it still existed?
Too weary to answer her own questions, and too uncertain to act without careful reflection, she blew out the match and took the letter back to bed. Tonight was too soon. She had days to resolve the matter. Blurry with exhaustion, she propped herself up with pillows so she could breathe more easily. At home, everything was as she needed. Here, she’d have to improvise to find comfort.
While she wafted somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, the wind whined around the house and racketed at the windows. It was noisier than she’d expected. She’d forgotten the way it moaned in the eaves. How unrelenting it could be. How it could seed doubt in the most determined mind.
Nights like this on the cape, she used to creep closer to Jack, the large solid slab of him, soaking up his warmth. Now she was alone. Jack gone nine years ago. She missed his secure presence, the acceptance and lack of expectation. It had taken a lifetime to achieve, a rough ride on a hard road. But surely that was love; not the flare of a bright light that glimmered briefly and then disappeared.
She lay there seeking steadiness. Thinking of Jack. Thinking of the wind roaring up from the south-west. In time, she would become accustomed to it again. The wind would once more become part of her psyche. Instead of shrinking away you had to embrace it. This place was not for the weak and suggestible.
In the morning, after a slow breakfast of porridge with partly frozen milk, she adjusted the thermostat in the gas fridge then sat wearily on the couch beneath the rug and stared out across the bay. It was another world out there. The wind had whipped the waves to white-capped fury and the scrub rustled and sighed, branches waving in the blast. Clouds and sea spray swept over the distant cliffs and the light was grey. Occasional rain spattered against the window.
A thread of icy air from beneath the front door wound itself around her legs, and she was cold despite the closely tucked rug. She got up and lit the gas heater. At the lighthouse, she never sat still long enough to get chilled. There were always jobs to do. But here, the morning was long. She was waiting for the ranger to come. And he must come soon.
She was eager to meet this ranger. He was important to her plan, and she needed to befriend him quickly. Removed from her family, she had to rely on someone else to drive her around the island, taking her to places of importance to her and Jack. This ranger was it, whether he liked it or not. She disliked this deliberate intent to use another person, but it was necessary. And perhaps it mattered less if she manipulated a stranger. What else could she do?
Leaning back and closing her eyes, she listened to the dull thud of waves smacking onto the beach. Sometimes, it was clear and strong. Then it faded as her mind focused elsewhere—on a memory or the song of a bird down in the scrub. It was Tom who had taught her to notice birds. Even as a lad, he’d wanted to know all about nature: the birds’ names, what they ate, where they nested, what their eggs looked like. When he was small, he chased robins around the cottages where they hopped and fluttered, common as chooks. He mimicked the bird calls—even the complex lyrical song of the tawny-crowned honeyeater that fluted across the cape in autumn. As he grew older, he would sit on the grass reading books amid the whirr of brown quails as they fled across the hillside. After lessons each day, he used to climb the hill past the light tower and follow the track down the other side where he had a special nook. There, he liked to sit watching sea eagles circling over Courts Island, or Tasmanian wedge-tails roosting on low branches in the scrub. When the mutton birds were nesting, he’d be gone for hours, coming back with stories of eagles plucking fat chicks from burrows and tearing them apart with their beaks.
Mary had realised long ago that a boy who grew up with eagles could never be ordinary. At age ten, he announced