landing. There are no words spoken between us. The whole thing is perfectly choreographed, like a ballet with a hundred-ton prima donna. It’s time to go. Punctuality is important, so I don’t delay. Little Bear residents set their clocks by the ferry, and I’ve disappointed enough people to last a lifetime.
Chapter Eight
Katherine
It’s a twenty-minute ferry ride from New Porte on the mainland to Little Bear Island, and my stomach is twisted with paranoia. I’m certain everyone on board is staring at me, the new girl. There’s a particular skin-prickling intensity coming from above, from up where they drive this thing. I turn my back on it and spot the grumpy old man from the ticket booth. He’s standing at the stern, still glowering at me as if I kicked his puppy. You’d think the guy already hated me or something.
Get a grip, I tell myself. You’re imagining things. And by the time the ferry bumps the dock on Little Bear, filling my nose with a gust of diesel fumes, I’ve halfway convinced myself that it’s all going to be okay.
As we dock, I stand cautiously along the rail and wait for someone to signal that it’s my turn to get off. That’s when a weather-worn man runs toward me from shore, pushing a small furniture dolly and moving at an alarming clip.
“I’m Calloway,” he says as he reaches me. “You the summer girl?”
Joseph Calloway—the lighthouse caretaker and the man I spoke to on the phone about the job—is one of those people of indeterminable age. His hair is thick, silver, and windblown around his bronzed and weathered face. He walks with a slight limp, but he has no problem loading up my suitcases and running them to his car.
“Katherine D’Arcy,” I reply to the back of his head. He throws my bags into the backseat of his rusted-out car, then jumps behind the wheel.
I barely get myself belted before he stomps on the gas and we fly backward into a neck-snapping Y-turn, then up the slope to the main street.
“Brace yourself,” he warns as the blacktop ends, and with a hard bounce, we continue on a deeply rutted dirt road that weaves through the woods and up a steep hill.
I support myself with one hand gripping the car door and the other pressed against the roof. We careen around corners, then skitter across the loose gravel before straightening out, jarring and jolting until my teeth rattle and I imagine my head has turned into a giant maraca.
At the top of the hill, there’s a sign that reads march’s berry farm, then we take a sharp right at a break in the pines, revealing the lighthouse in all its…okay, so it isn’t exactly glorious.
In a word, the old lighthouse can only be described as squat. The short tower is built of dark brown stones with an iron railing around the widow’s walk. It is attached to a stub of a house with two square-paned windows that are evenly spaced, glowing with a dim light and framed by peeling, dark green shutters. Together, the house and the tower remind me of a toad smoking a cigar.
The car tires make a crunching sound as they roll over the pea-gravel driveway, finally coming to a rest in one of two parking spaces.
When I step out, I can hear the lake lapping against the shoreline, out of view and somewhere far, far below the grass-fringed edge of the yard. Seagulls squawk and sail over the water.
Calloway pulls my suitcases from the backseat, carrying them in one hand while his right arm wraps around my backpack full of books. I grab my smaller bag and purse and follow him into the house.
An old radio is playing on the kitchen windowsill. It’s picking up two stations at once, creating a confusion of white noise. There’s a crusted pan of scrambled eggs on the floor, and I try really, really hard not to notice that the plaid curtains over the kitchen sink don’t match the floral curtains on the window behind the table.
The refrigerator is squealing. Calloway leans his weight against it, and the shrill whine dips to a hum.
When I step farther into the house, the floorboards creak, and a hairy red dog comes barreling out of a back room.
“Oh gosh!” I yelp and take a few stutter steps backward. The dog makes a beeline for me. “Crap!”
I bend over at the waist, stiff-arming the beast before it knocks me over. Only once I think I’ve convinced