The Lighthouse Letters

The letter came on a Thursday, which was the first strange thing about it, because the ferry did not run on Thursdays and had not since the year Nell was born.

It was addressed in a careful, upright hand to The Keeper, North Light, and the ink had not run, though the envelope was damp at one corner as if it had been carried some distance in weather.

Nell turned it over twice. There was no return address. There was only the small pressed shape of something on the flap — a thumbprint, she decided later, though at the time she thought it looked more like the beginning of a word someone had thought better of.

She should have taken it to her mother. She took it to the lighthouse instead, up the hundred and twelve steps, and she read it standing in the lamp room with the whole grey Atlantic going about its business below her.