Ronan O’Malley, 58, retired Split Rock Lighthouse keeper, has had the same Friday night routine for seven years, ever since his wife Ellie passed from ovarian cancer. He drives his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 the 12 miles from his off-grid cabin into Two Harbors, stops at the hardware store for whatever odd part he needs for his woodstove or boat, then grabs a spot at the far end of the last picnic table at the town’s weekly fish fry. He brings his own homemade habanero hot sauce, sits alone, says no more than three words to anyone the whole time. The only quirk he lets show is the faded 1998 lighthouse crew hat he never takes off, even in the dead of winter. The August 2024 loon conservation festival has packed the town with out-of-state tourists, so the picnic tables fill faster than usual, and he’s already mentally rehearsing a gruff excuse to leave early when someone slides into the bench across from him.
He looks up, ready to brush them off, and freezes. It’s Maeve Carter, Ellie’s younger cousin, 54, the last person he expected to see. He hasn’t laid eyes on her since his and Ellie’s wedding in 1994, when she snuck up the lighthouse steps after the rehearsal dinner, tripped on a loose rail, and sliced her left wrist open bad enough to need three stitches. The scar is still there, thin and silver, wrapping around her wrist when she sets her plate of fried cod and coleslaw on the table. Her auburn braid has streaks of silver running through it, freckles are scattered across her nose from weeks of shooting photos outdoors, and she smells like jasmine perfume and pine, the same scent he remembers from the wedding. He’d had a stupid, quiet crush on her back when he was engaged to Ellie, never told a soul, wrote it off as a dumb, impulsive thought he needed to bury, and the guilt of that old crush hits him so hard he almost chokes on the sip of root beer he just took.
She grins, sharp and playful, like she can read his mind. “Recognized the hat. Figured it was you, even from across the parking lot.” She leans forward to grab a bottle of tartar sauce off the middle of the table, and her elbow brushes his bicep, warm through the thin cotton of his gray work shirt. He doesn’t pull away, which surprises him. He’s spent seven years avoiding any physical contact that isn’t a handshake from the hardware store clerk, and here he is, leaning into the brush of her arm like it’s the first warm day after a six-month winter. She tells him she’s in town shooting a series of loon photos for the Minnesota DNR, just got out of a 12 year marriage last fall, has been driving around the north shore camping out of her van for three months. He finds himself telling her stories he hasn’t told anyone else: the time a group of drunk college kids snuck up the lighthouse steps at 2 a.m. and got stuck on the catwalk during a fog storm, screaming so loud he could hear them over the foghorn; the way the northern lights look from the top of the tower, so bright you can read a book by them; the way Ellie used to bring him coffee up to the watchtower at 4 a.m. when he pulled overnight shifts.
The crowd around them fades to background noise: kids screaming on the nearby playground, a bluegrass band playing off to the side, the distant crash of Lake Superior waves against the shore. All he can hear is her low, smoky laugh, the way she snorts a little when he tells the story about the college kids, the wind rustling the oak leaves overhead. When he dribbles hot sauce on the knee of his jeans, she reaches across the table to pass him a paper napkin, and their fingers brush. Her palm is calloused from holding heavy camera lenses all day, rough and warm, and he feels a jolt he hasn’t felt in 15 years, half sharp guilt, half something hungry he thought he buried with Ellie. He starts to stammer out an excuse to leave, to run back to his cabin and hide from this feeling, but she cuts him off before he can get the words out. “You still have keys to the lighthouse, right?” she asks, tilting her head like she already knows the answer. He nods. The park service gave him a lifetime set when he retired three years ago, when they switched the tower to fully automated operation. Most people don’t know the old manual access lock still works, only him and the park superintendent.
“Take me up tomorrow evening?” she says, biting her lower lip the same way she did when she asked him to sneak her up the tower after the rehearsal dinner 30 years prior. “I want to get sunset shots from the catwalk, no crowds, no tourists getting in the way. All the official permits only let me go up during the day.” Every sensible part of him screams no, that this is wrong, that he’s dishonoring Ellie by even considering spending time alone with her cousin, that he’s opening a door he locked seven years ago and will never be able to close again. But he looks at her, at the scar on her wrist, at the way the late afternoon sun is gilding the edges of her braid, and he says yes.
The next evening is clear, no fog, the lake so blue it looks like polished glass. He leads her up the 128 spiral steps, the same ones he climbed twice a day for 22 years, the metal rail warm under his palm from the day’s sun. When they step out onto the catwalk, the wind picks up, blowing her braid over her shoulder, and she presses her back to his chest for half a second when she shifts to set up her tripod, steadying herself. He doesn’t move. She takes photos for 45 minutes, chattering about light angles and loon migration patterns, until the sun dips below the horizon, painting the sky pink and tangerine and soft lavender. She turns to him then, camera set down, and says Ellie called her two weeks before she died, told her if she ever found herself near Two Harbors, she should look Ronan up, told her he’d been closing himself off from everyone, that he deserved to be happy. He blinks; he never knew that. She steps closer, rests her hand on his chest, and he can feel her heartbeat through her flannel jacket, fast, matching his. He wraps his arm around her waist, and the guilt that’s been gnawing at him for 24 hours melts away, feels like Ellie is up there laughing at him for taking so long to catch up. When she tilts her chin up to kiss him, he can taste the pink lemonade she’d been sipping all afternoon on her lips.
