The Night Mark

“No, you are not, Miss Faye.”

“You sound pretty sure of that,” she said. “Wish I could be.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and faced him.

“Why did you paint her on the pier like that? You wouldn’t have been alive when she died.”

Pat turned and leaned back against the railing of the dock, putting the Marshlands before him and the lighthouse behind him.

“Retirement age for a priest is seventy. Did you know that?” he asked. It wasn’t what she expected him to say, but she trusted he had a reason.

“No. I’m not Catholic.”

“I retired from the Church when I was sixty-four. I should have hung on for six more years, but I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve painted all my life. It’s my second religion. A few years ago my hands started shaking when I held anything heavier than five pounds. Then it was four pounds. Three pounds. A priest isn’t supposed to drop the communion wine. I had to take early retirement.”

“I wondered about your painting style. Kind of impressionistic, like Degas.”

“Degas was almost blind at the end. And I can’t hold a pen without it shaking like a leaf. I used to paint in a more realistic style. Impressionism was all that was left to me after the tremor started.”

“Your work is lovely.”

“It wasn’t, in the beginning. It was just awful, embarrassing. Whatever technique I’d developed over the years was gone. I painted like a child. Imagine if someone took your camera from you.”

“They can pry my camera out of my cold dead hands.”

“That’s what I always said about my brushes. But no one had to pry them out of my hands. They fell out.”

“I’m so sorry,” Faye said.

“It was hard to keep my faith after the tremor took the priesthood away from me, took painting away from me. My only two loves. So I went out to the lighthouse with a heavy heart. I had lied to Ms. Shelby, telling her I wanted to paint the lighthouse. But that wasn’t the real plan.”

Faye heard a note of shame in his voice, embarrassment maybe. She pictured herself curled up on the floor of the bathroom, the pill bottle in her hand while she worked up the courage to take off the lid. That was how Hagen had found her. The real plan, Pat had said. Yes, she knew exactly what the real plan had been.

“That would be quite a fall from the top of the lighthouse, wouldn’t it?”

“And onto rocks,” he said. “When the tide’s out, it’s nothing but rocks. A quick drop to a certain death.”

“I’ve been there,” Faye said.

He nodded. “I imagine a widow would know that place all too well.”

“What changed your mind?” she asked.

“The lighthouse. I won’t pretend a miracle happened. No angel stayed my hand. No voice from heaven. The lighthouse has always been a beacon of hope. That’s why you see it so often in Christian art. ‘A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all...’”

“Very pretty.”

“Matthew 5:15. I suppose it’s a cliché to say I saw the light. But there was a moment, an instant where I thought I saw the lighthouse lamp burning again. Just the sunlight tricking my eyes, I know. But it... I don’t know, it made me feel something I hadn’t felt in years.”

“Hope?”

He nodded. “Hope. Something told me to paint the lighthouse. And when I did paint it, I painted it well. Not like my old style, but not bad. And I painted it again. Eventually I wanted to paint it more than I wanted to throw myself off the top of it.”

“And the lady in the painting? The Lady of the Light? Why did you paint her?”

“Carrick never got over losing Faith. Maybe I just wanted to bring her back to life. The lighthouse gave me my life back. I guess I wanted to return the favor.”

“Pat,” Faye said. “I need to get out to that lighthouse.”

“Bad idea.”

“Why?” she asked.

“That lighthouse is dangerous.”

“You said it saved your life.”

“It could have taken it, too. It’s not safe out there. Some kids went out there a few years ago, got drunk on the beach and drowned when they went for a midnight swim. The lighthouse was there for a reason. There’s the sandbar and one hell of a riptide, too. We already have one Lady of the Light. We don’t need another.”

“How did she get that nickname?”

“People swear they see her sometimes. But lighthouses are notorious for having ghost stories attached to them. Parents use her as a warning, a scare story to keep their kids from breaking into the lighthouse or swimming near that corner of the island. The real story is much sadder. Faith hadn’t been at the lighthouse long. Just a few days. Nobody knows why she went out on the pier at night, but she did. A wave hit hard and high, and she fell into the water.”

“How old was she?”

“I can’t say for sure. A young woman.”

“Where was she before? In school or something?”

“She was with other family members,” Pat said.

“And why did she come down here?”

“A love affair gone wrong,” Pat said. “She was a beauty, they say. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Stop it.”

“I’d love to paint you. I’d have to get the right purple paint for your eyes. Elizabeth Taylor eyes.”

“Got them from my grandmother. I swear, I think her proudest achievement in life was passing her eye color on to me. She wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor when she was a girl. Even did her hair like hers. Black bouffant even in her sixties.”

“I might have had to go to confession after seeing Father of the Bride as a boy.”

“You know, I can tell when someone is changing the subject. Why don’t you want to talk about Faith Morgan?”