She sleeps soundly that night but wakes herself up just before dawn and gathers her things.

She puts the knife and the pistol and the canteen and her panama hat into the cooler and drags it down to the beach. Then she walks back up to the lighthouse to say goodbye.

Its a sorry thing to leave your home, and this ones been good to her. She feels like a pea at the base of that tallboy tower. She climbs the steps one last time to the catwalk and looks at herself in the thousand little mirrors of the dead light. Her hair is long and stringy, and she takes a band and ties it up at the back.

Then she reaches in and uses her fingers to prise loose one of the little mirrors and puts it in her pocket as a souvenir of her time here.

Truth be told, the inward gaze is something shes not too fond of. But there are secrets that lurk in the mind, and she doesnt want any of them sneaking up on her. Sometimes it pays to take a deep look inside even if you get queasy gazing into those dark corners.

Back at the bottom, she goes out and shuts the door, pulling it closed tight behind her so the wind wont blow it open and stir things around in there. Its a warming thought to picture it staying the same after shes gone away from it.

She stands at the base and cranes her neck to look up at it.

Goodbye, you good old tower, she says. Keep standin true. Take care of whoever settles down in you next, dead or alive, sinner or saint.

She nods. Its a nice thing to say, she thinks, like a blessing or a toast or a birthday wish or a funeral sermon and she knows that words have the power to make things true if theyre said right.

*

Down at the beach, she strips naked and puts all her clothes and her shoes in the cooler with everything else and shuts the lid as tight as she can, stomping up and down on it a few times. She pulls it into the waves until it begins to lift in the current of its own accord, then she swings it in front of her and pushes it over the breakers until shes beyond them and beyond the swells.