The lighthouse keeper's daughter wasn't supposed to be in the tower after dark, but Sadie had learned long ago that rules were made by people who didn't understand the sea.
She pressed her palm against the cold glass, watching the storm roll in from the east. The beam swept across churning waves, illuminating something that shouldn't be there—a boat, too small for these waters, struggling against the tide.
No one goes out in weather like this. No one sane.
But there it was, and there was someone on deck. Sadie grabbed the binoculars with shaking hands.
A woman stood at the helm, dark hair whipping around her face, wearing a dress that seemed to shimmer even in the darkness. She wasn't fighting the storm. She was dancing with it.
The boat drew closer, impossibly close, defying every law of wind and current. The woman looked up, directly at the lighthouse, directly at Sadie, and smiled.
Sadie's breath caught. She knew that smile. Had seen it in the photograph her father kept locked in his desk drawer, the one he thought she didn't know about.
The woman on the boat looked exactly like Sadie's mother.
Her mother, who had drowned fifteen years ago.
The lighthouse beam swept across the water again. The boat was gone. But on the rocks below, something glimmered—a piece of sea glass, the exact shade of her mother's eyes.
Sadie ran for the stairs. Behind her, the lighthouse beam flickered once, twice, and went dark for the first time in a hundred years.
Her father's voice echoed up from below: "Sadie? What have you done?"
What had she done?
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