The Ghosts of Aquinnah (2 page)

H
annah Forrester stared out the window of her Boston apartment and watched the rain drench the street below her. It had been raining steadily for two days now, but it felt more like two hundred. The April showers had extended well into May, and she’d had enough rain to last a lifetime. She couldn’t wait for the summer sunshine.

Hannah smoothed her long brown curly hair with her hands and tied it into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. She had tied and untied her hair at least five times since she’d sat down to work. She had also tied and untied the drawstring on her dark green pajama bottoms, and fastened and unfastened the buttons at the top of her cream-colored Henley shirt. In short, she had done everything besides what she was supposed to be doing, which was researching her book on New England lighthouses. She glanced down at her laptop and her legal pad full of scribbled notes and immediately focused her attention back on the rain.

“
Is there a lighthouse out there I haven’t noticed?”

Hannah jumped at the sound of the voice behind her. She turned and saw her boyfriend Jon Rodriguez walking into the room.

“
I didn’t even hear you come in,” she said.

“
I’m not surprised. You’re too engrossed in the rain.” He leaned down and kissed the top of Hannah’s head.

“
I thought you had surgery this evening.”

“
I did. It’s finished.” Jon sat down on their king-sized bed and started to remove his shoes. “It’s 10:00, Hannah.”

Hannah stretched and leaned back in her desk chair, massaging her shoulders with her hands. “I didn’t realize it was that late. Time got away from me tonight.”

“
Tonight and just about every night lately. Are you getting anywhere on that book?”

“
Not really.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re wasting your time then.”

“
I’m not wasting my time. It’s just a temporary block.”

Jon got up from the bed and headed for the master bathroom, holding up his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Right, right, I’ve heard that before. I’m taking a shower and then going to bed. One of us actually has to work for a living.”

Hannah watched him leave the room and bristled at his tone, although she should have been used to it by now. Jon had been making snide remarks ever since she’d left her marketing job in order to focus on her writing full-time. He conveniently ignored the fact that she had enough freelance clients to pay her share of the bills. And that his medical school loans had always been the biggest drain on their income.

Not for the first time, Hannah wondered why she stayed with Jon. It was mostly out of habit, and the fact that moving out and starting fresh felt too overwhelming. She’d been with Jon almost as long as she’d lived in Massachusetts. She had met him not long after she moved from Indianapolis to Cambridge in order to attend Harvard. Jon had already been planning for medical school then, and excelling in pre-med, and she’d been drawn to his ambition and his confidence, two qualities she’d always lacked in spite of her academic success and admittance to the most prestigious university in the country.

She heard him turn on the water for the shower and forced herself to focus her attention back on her research. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to Jon, but there was a reason she was having difficulty focusing on her writing.

It had started once she’d moved on to the Martha’s Vineyard lighthouses. Hannah’s family on her mother’s side had spent summers in the island’s African-American “Inkwell” community in the town of Oak Bluffs since the early part of the 20
^th
century. Hannah loved visiting the island when she was a child, and had many fond memories of escaping the monotonous Indiana landscape and spending summers on the beach with her parents and grandparents.

Since her parents’ sudden deaths three years earlier, Hannah had not set foot on the island she had once loved. It reminded her too much of her parents and, since the car accident that had claimed both of their lives, that was a door Hannah didn’t want to open.

But if she wanted to write about the history of New England lighthouses, she could hardly bypass Martha’s Vineyard. And she couldn’t ignore the historic Gay Head light, which stood atop the famous cliffs of Aquinnah and was the oldest lighthouse on the island.

Hannah had always loved going to Aquinnah. She loved standing at the top of the multicolored clay cliffs and listening to the roaring surf below as the sun sank into the sea. Both her mother and her grandfather had loved the clam chowder sold at one of the small restaurants that lined the walk to the overlook. Hannah had never cared for the clam chowder, but loved the soft serve ice cream her grandfather always made sure to buy her.

Her family was all gone now. But the cliffs were still there, and the lighthouse continued to shine out over the sea as it had for centuries, warning sailors of the dangers of the cliffs and the rocky coastline.

Hannah’s writing woes had started once she’d forced herself to delve into the Vineyard’s history and visit the island’s official website, which featured webcams of both the Gay Head light and the beach below it. She’d found memories in every picture and video she’d looked at on the site. Hannah sighed and clicked on the window she had been using to look at the lighthouse webcam earlier that night.

It was dark at Aquinnah now, and the night sky was lit by nothing but the full moon and the twinkling stars, as well as the lighthouse beacon, which rotated across the screen every ten seconds. A security light outside one of the restaurants cast a glow over the white fence and the stone steps that led up to the lookout area. Hannah stared at the screen and heard the laughter of her parents and grandparents in her head. She looked away.

As Hannah turned towards the window, a movement on the laptop screen caught her eye. She looked back at the scene beneath the webcam and was surprised to see a small woman wearing a long white dress walking up the steps toward the overlook. She was wrapped in a thick blue cloak and had covered her head with a drawn bonnet. The woman’s dress was buttoned up to her neck and she wore brown laced-up boots. Hannah wondered what she was doing alone at the cliffs at night, hours after the tourists had left and the restaurants had closed. And wondered why she was dressed in such an old-fashioned manner.

Hannah watched as the woman stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back towards the road and the sandy path that led down to the sea. She stared out at the surf below her as the wind whipped her dress and cloak around her legs. She raised a thin hand to her head to keep her bonnet from blowing off. Hannah continued to watch as the woman started to walk again, heading up to the overlook and out of the view of the camera.

Hannah watched for several minutes, expecting to see the woman coming back down the steps and onto the screen in front of her. But the stairs and parking lot remained empty. Hannah wondered what the woman could be doing at the overlook for this length of time. Unless something had changed in the years since she had last been at Gay Head, there were no lights at the overlook and, with the exception of the lighthouse beacon passing over them, the cliffs were pitch black at night. Why would anyone want to stand up there alone in the dark?

Hannah leaned back in her desk chair as she heard Jon turn the water off. She had almost forgotten he was home. She looked once more at the webcam, but saw nothing but the bright white beacon and the bushes that lined the stone steps. No one was there.

Hannah tried to imagine who the woman on the webcam was, and why she was dressed so peculiarly. Perhaps there was some sort of historical event taking place at the lighthouse that weekend. But Hannah had not seen anything about any special events on the island’s website.

She closed her laptop and put her work away before Jon returned to the bedroom. She didn’t want him asking any questions or making any more remarks about her book. Hannah left the bedroom and walked to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of water and leaned against the sink as she took a sip.

Unable to stop thinking about the mystery woman, Hannah tried again to come up with a reason for her dress. Perhaps she belonged to one of those religious groups where women dressed conservatively. But that wouldn’t explain what she was doing alone at the lighthouse in the dark of night.

Hannah realized it wasn’t just the woman’s presence that had seemed odd to her, it was also her demeanor. The woman was very young, but she looked overwhelmed with sadness. Hannah set down the glass, suddenly worried that perhaps the woman had gone to the cliffs to commit suicide. Was that why she’d never returned to the stone steps? Had she jumped from the cliffs into the sea?

Hannah didn’t find that likely. The overlook was fenced in, and the ground below it was more sloping than steep.

Hannah shook her head and finished her water before putting her glass in the sink. Why was she trying to figure out what this woman was doing? What concern was it of hers, anyway? If the woman wanted to dress oddly and wander around the island at night, that was her business.

As she headed back to the bedroom, she could imagine Jon saying that she was fixating on this woman as yet another excuse to avoid her work. He wouldn’t be wrong. But as she turned off the kitchen light she realized what it was that had struck her the most about the woman on the webcam. It wasn’t just her dress or the sadness that was so plain on her face.

It was that in spite of the fact that she seemed to be so lost and alone, she moved with a purpose and sense of determination that was evident even through the lens of the camera. She looked like she was looking for something. Or like she was searching for someone.

1884

“
I
think he’s coming 'round.”

Christopher heard the sound of a woman’s voice and felt a hand push his dark brown curls from his forehead. The gentleness of the hand was a welcome contrast to the searing pain that started in his arm and radiated throughout his body.

He tried to focus as he opened his eyes. The woman stood next to him, her hand still resting on his head. A man came up behind her.

“
You awake, boy?” the man asked.

Christopher struggled to orient himself. He remembered the ship and the hours he had spent hanging on the rigging. The men who had rowed towards him and pulled him onto their boat…

“
Where am I?” he asked, his voice no more than a whisper. “Who are you?”

“
I’m the doctor that’s trying to help you. Dr. Josiah Winslow.” The man motioned towards the woman next to him. “And this is my wife, Stella Winslow.”

Christopher tried to sit up and immediately began to cough. He gasped with pain. “Oh sweet God, my arm…”

“
I’ll give you something for that pain, don’t worry.” Josiah moved from the bed and returned with a vial of liquid. He stuck the vial in Christopher’s mouth. “Swallow that.”

The woman took a cloth from a nearby basin and gently rested it on Christopher’s forehead. “I think he’s running a fever, Josiah.”

“
Of course he is. Listen to that coughin' and wheezin'. He'll be lucky if he doesn't end up with consumption.” He looked down at Christopher. “How’d you break that arm?”

Christopher closed his eyes and tried to remember. He felt a fresh blast of pain as his mind flashed back to the wave picking him up and slamming him into the rescue boat. “The waves,” he said. “They tossed me into the side of the boat.”

Josiah nodded. “Well we got it set. We’ll do right by ya.”

The man busied himself with a medical bag as the woman continued to press the wet cloth to Christopher’s face and forehead. She smiled down at him.

“
We will,” she said.

Christopher noticed that the man looked more like the woman’s father than her husband. He was more than twice her age, and had to be at least 40 years old. He also seemed to be nearly twice her size. The man was tall and heavyset, and he cut an imposing figure in a black woolen suit. He had thick black hair with a mustache and sideburns to match and brown eyes so dark they were nearly as black as his hair. By contrast, the woman was thin and petite, with small hands and delicate features. She wore a long-sleeved white dress that buttoned up to her neck. Christopher could see waves of auburn hair pulled back from her face and hanging down her back