Cora pulls the grey calico sheet from her father’s wingback chair. A cloud of fine, chalky dust rises into the late afternoon gloom, catching a single stray beam of light. The sitting room smells of stagnant salt air and the sweet, rot-tinged scent of old pipe tobacco. Boxes sit stacked like ramparts against the hearth, containing the curated wreckage of Edward Alden’s seventy-four years.
She reaches for a small wooden crate labelled Lighthouse Logbooks. Inside, the leather-bound volumes are damp to the touch, their spines cracked from decades of sea spray and service. She thumbed through the most recent one, her breath hitching as she reached the final entry. The paper is ragged. Three pages have been torn out with such violence that the binding thread has begun to unravel. Why did he hide the end? she wonders.
Outside, the Cornish wind rattles the windowpanes, bringing the rhythmic moan of the foghorn from the reach. Cora sets the book down on a stack of paraffin receipts. She moves toward the hallway, but a sharp, metallic sound stops her. The heavy brass knocker on the front door begins to lift, hovering an inch from the wood.
