Mr. B. wanted to know every detail of their visits. Did they comment on the light’s appearance? Did they praise its whitewashed shine? Compare it to other, bigger lights farther down the coast? Did they complain?
“No,” she told him every time. “No complaints.” No tourists that morning, either. The day before, a family in matching pastel shirts hopped from the mail boat and clanked up the stairs to the lookout room. The boy and girl bounded from window to window, shouting their discoveries of rocks that looked like dolphins and sails on the horizon. Zan pushed down the ache that threatened to rise. She could barely watch them, their energy too familiar. They were older, though, their mannerisms more assured than her own son’s had been, could ever be—she had to look away. She clenched the back of the chair she stood behind, facing out to sea. Her ring dug into her skin. She matched her breath to the break of green waves against the cliffs.
“Do you live alone here?” the children’s mother asked. Zan didn’t register the question was for her, at first. The woman asked again.
“I… have a goat,” Zan said.
“A goat!” The boy turned away from the historic mercury barometer he was flicking. “Can we go see?”
“I suppose I could take you down to her,” Zan said. She couldn’t look at the boy’s eyes. “Do you want any milk? Or cheese? I’ve just started learning to make it.”
She’d been surprised at how easy it was to transform milk, vinegar, and salt—after a few inedible batches. She’d never tasted cheese that still held sunlight.
Her visitors came to agree. As June swelled to July, in each boat bearing tourists, at least one knew to ask if Zan had any milk or cheese to sell, or if she was making soap.
*
“We’ve never had so many folks from away,” Mrs. B. told her, beaming, an evening weeks after Zan had first given away cheese.
They stood on the path between the keeper’s cottage and the lighthouse. Dusk softened the flowers’ brilliance to shades of lavender and gray. Zan held the goat’s lead rope. The animal leaned against her and she drew in the warmth of its flank, coat prickling the bare skin of her thighs. She remembered what it had felt like to always have another body—two other bodies—to hold. Her hand brushed the top of the goat’s head.
“They all tell us how magical our island is, and how beautiful our gardens look,” Mrs. B. said. She bent and plucked a spear of lupine from beside the cottage path. “More than they used to, at least.” She spun the stem between her fingers, held it out to Zan, who automatically reached with her left. The gold of Zan’s ring flashed.
Mrs. B. caught Zan’s fingers in her own. “You said you’re not married!” Her voice slid between triumphant and hurt.
“No,” Zan said. “Just that he’s…” she swallowed the true word, “Not here.”
Mrs. B. nodded. “Poor dear.” She squeezed Zan’s shoulder, soft cheeks squinching up to her eyes in sympathy. “Won’t you come and play bridge down at the town hall?” she said. Inwardly, Zan pulled away from the pity in the other woman’s voice. “We ladies set up there every Thursday. It’s really quite an event.”