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Back The Lighthouse Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. PART ONE
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. PART TWO
  13. 12
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 18
  18. 19
  19. 21
  20. 22
  21. 23
  22. 24
  23. 25
  24. 26
  25. 27
  26. 28
  27. 30
  28. 31
  29. 32
  30. 33
  31. 34
  32. 35
  33. 36
  34. 37
  35. 38
  36. 39
  37. 40
  38. 41
  39. 42
  40. 43
  41. PART THREE
  42. 44
  43. 45
  44. 46
  45. 47
  46. 49
  47. 50
  48. 51
  49. 52
  50. EPILOGUE

When he reached the second floor, he could see the door to his room was open. There was a pool of water. People were standing outside the room, hands covering their mouths.

“Get out of the way!” he screamed as he came barreling down the hall. “Move!” He flew through the door and followed the trail of water, which led straight into the bathroom.

The floor was flooded. Water everywhere. And there was his daughter lying in the bathtub. Her skin was pale, lips blue. There was another woman in the room already trying to help; she was standing at one end of the tub with her hands beneath Amy’s shoulders, keeping her head above the water. Kevin took over from the woman and ordered her down to the other end to grab Amy’s feet. Together, on the count of three, they lifted Amy out of the bath and set her down on the floor. Kevin covered her body with towels, then sent the woman to go and get more. Tilting back her head, he lifted Amy’s slack jaw and put his ear to her mouth and listened for any sign of breathing.

Nothing.

The bartender burst into the room, pink faced and sweating. “Sweet Jesus! What’s happened ?”

“Call 911!” Kevin yelled. “Now!”

Fumbling for her phone, she dialed the number and smacked the phone against her ear. Kevin, doing his best to stay calm and engage what he could remember from his first-aid training, pinched Amy’s nose shut, leaned in, sealed his lips around hers, and breathed air into her lungs. Her chest rose and fell. He breathed in again then lifted her arm and checked for a pulse, holding his fingers on the underside of her wrist for a few seconds.

Nothing.

He put his ear to her chest.

Still nothing.

He saw an empty container rolling on the floor nearby—his sleeping pills.

“Dammit, Amy, what have you done?” Locking his fingers together, he put the heel of his hand to her chest and started compressions, furiously pushing in and out for nearly twenty seconds before stopping and giving another two breaths. A god-awful panic stirred in his gut.

40

40

Amy stopped sobbing into her mother’s chest long enough to raise her head. Her instincts had been right—this wasn’t the same beach. The lighthouse was gone and so was the town. There was nothing around her, nothing but sand and seawater and a small wooden rowboat, beached nearby. There were no dunes, no bush-­covered cliffs, no craggy outcrops—what had previously been a curved bay was now a straight beach, a perfectly uniform strip of sand that seemed to stretch to infinity in both directions. The sky was a single shade of blue, and the ocean was so still it could have been mistaken for a sheet of glass; mirrorlike water extended from the shore and kept going and going and going as if there wasn’t any horizon.