The Lighthouse Read online

  The Lighthouse

  by Melanie Wilber

  The Lighthouse

  © 2011 by Melanie L. Wilber

  Revised, 2013

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination. Except for well-known historical and contemporary figures, any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental.

  Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

  Also:

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

  Cover photo by Tawnya Bund. © 2008. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  The Lighthouse

  Chapter Guide

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  For David & Pam, Frank & Leslie, Brian & LaVonne, and many other lighthouse keepers I am blessed to know

  “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

  John 8:12

  Chapter One

  The lighthouse sat along the jetty at the entrance to the harbor. I had always been fascinated by it. I could see the cylindrical tower from my bedroom window in the early morning hours while I dressed for school, and its beam of light shining in the darkness often kept me awake at night.

  Standing there in my room, I gazed at the lighthouse once more under the mid-day sun, hardly believing I was hours away from my new life as a college student. I knew I would miss the sea terribly, but the decision had been made and I had to go through with it. Backing out now was tempting, but not realistic. My adult life away from my childhood home was calling, and it was time to set sail toward the future.

  I sighed and turned away from the picturesque view. Picking up my suitcases from the floor, I carried them out of the room and down the narrow staircase of our Oregon Coast home. As the youngest of four children, I was the last one to head off to college, but the first to be melancholy about it. My older sister and brothers had been anxious to leave home and small-town life, but I was dragging my feet, and everyone knew it.

  “Maybe I won’t go,” I said back in May when I had five different scholarship offers to choose from. I didn’t feel like I wanted to go to college, let alone know which school to choose.

  “Won’t go?” my mother laughed. “Why would you say a ridiculous thing like that, Jennifer?”

  I hadn’t answered Mama that day and still hadn’t answered the question inwardly. Of course I should go to college, but wanting to go was a different matter.

  Setting the bags by the front door, I called to my uncle to take them out to the car. He had asked me to when he came upstairs twenty minutes ago to see if I was all packed. My uncle had been living in this house for six years now, ever since marrying my widowed mother when I was twelve. My father died when I was nine. He went on a sailing trip with his best friend and never returned. The boat was found capsized in the ocean, but their bodies were lost at sea. Thinking about it always gave me an eerie feeling, so I tried not to, but I had never forgotten my father. And even now I missed him.

  Going back upstairs, I placed my comforter and pillow on top of the laundry basket filled with miscellaneous items to make my dorm room more homey and functional. I carried the heap down the staircase carefully, thinking briefly about tripping on purpose so I would injure myself and have to delay my college days by a few months, but I knew I would be going eventually and didn’t want to cause myself unnecessary pain.

  My uncle had already carried the suitcases out, and he met me at the front door to take the load from my arms. Stewart is my dad’s younger brother by a few years. He had provided well for Mama and each of us during the last six years and comforted my mother’s heartbreak. I knew he loved all of us, but he wasn’t my dad, and I would never see him that way.

  “I packed some food for you,” Mama said, handing me a reusable grocery bag to take along. I took it from her and gave her a hug. Mama didn’t cry and neither did I, but I knew we both felt like it.

  I walked down the front steps to the car, and Mama followed me. Uncle Stewart was there and hugged me as if I was his youngest child going off to school, and I accepted it, but I imagined he was my dad in that moment and said good-bye to him the way I wished I could have to my real dad nine years ago.

  Once their faces had disappeared from my rearview mirror, I imagined my mom and dad turning back toward the house to enjoy their empty-nest. I didn’t understand my need to believe my father was still alive after all this time, but I did, especially today.

  ***

  The campus of Oregon State University was as unfamiliar to me as any other place I had never been to before. I had only seen pictures until today. Turning onto the street my campus map indicated led to the parking area behind my dormitory building, I saw the lot was semi-full, and not seeing any empty spaces near the front, I pulled into the loading-zone along the curb and got out of the car to go inside and check in.

  Some excited, screaming girls came running past me before I reached the door, and they entered the lobby in front of me. They laughed and giggled and pointed out everything from the mailboxes along one wall to the vending machines and the lounge. They reminded me of the girls at school back home I had tried my best to avoid, and I had no desire to talk to them here either. I don’t know why I expected college to be a place where girls like that didn’t exist, but I had; disappointment number one of my college experience.

  When my turn came to give my name to the person at the front desk, I did, saying my last name as clearly as possible so she wouldn’t ask me to spell it, but she did anyway. How else could one spell Ellison, I often wondered, but as usual I simply uttered the letters and waited for her to find my name on the list.

  “Ellison, Jennifer,” she said. “You are on the sixth floor, room 608. Does that match the information we sent you?”

  “Yes,” I replied without having to look at the paper in my hand.

  After I had my keys, I went back outside to get what I could carry, supposing I could get it all in two trips. Some girls were using carts to load up everything they had, but there weren’t any spare ones at the moment, and I thought my small amount of belongings would look ridiculous on one anyway. I placed my bedding on top of my laundry basket once again and carried the full load toward the door.

  “Hey, can I help you with that?”

 
I looked to my left and saw a guy coming up from behind. He had a small suitcase on wheels he was pulling behind him but nothing else in his hands. I wanted to say I was fine, but the comforter on top was slipping to the side, and I knew I was going to have to set it all down to readjust things.

  “You’re not in this dorm,” I said, curious about him and the suitcase he was pulling along. I had specifically chosen an all-girls building.

  “No,” he admitted. “My sister is. She left this in the car by accident. It was under my big one.”

  He seemed nice, and I didn’t mind the help, but I wondered what I should give to him. He spoke again before I could decide, stopping to set the suitcase on its end and reaching for the load in my arms.

  “Here, I’ll take this, and you can pull the suitcase,” he said, smiling as he took the basket from me.

  I adjusted the comforter so it was in the center, but he was much taller and had long arms so it wasn’t as precarious for him to manage. Reaching for the suitcase handle, I grabbed it and walked in front of him to the doors. I wondered what floor his sister was on and if he would want to stop there first, but I didn’t ask until we were waiting for the elevator.

  “She’s on the sixth floor, room 608.”

  I laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  “Just the floor, or the room?”

  “608, that’s me.”

  He smiled. “Have you met Marissa?”

  “No, not yet. I just checked in.”

  “She’s excited about meeting you.”

  I felt nervous about meeting her, but I didn’t say so. With as good-looking and friendly as her brother was, I could imagine how beautiful and socially with-it she must be compared to me. The elevator doors opened, and we waited for some girls to emerge from the cubicle before we stepped on board with some others.

  “I’m Jonathan, by the way.”

  I smiled at him and wondered if he already knew my name, but I told him anyway. “I’m Jennifer.”

  The elevator stopped on the third and fifth floors before rising to the sixth. A girl who was with her mom rode the last stretch with us, but no one said anything until the doors opened and the mom wondered which way her daughter’s room was. Jonathan asked her room number and then pointed to the left.

  “And you’re this way,” he said, stepping in the opposite direction.

  I followed him and entered the long corridor. I glanced at the doors we passed, most of which were open, but the girls inside were busy and didn’t notice us walking by.

  Jonathan stopped at the door marked 608 and tapped lightly on the light colored wood, opening it slowly as he called out a verbal “knock-knock”. “Are you decent, sis?”

  “Yes,” I heard Marissa say. “Did you find my other suitcase?”

  “I did,” he replied as the door swung open fully.

  “That’s not my--Oh, hi! Are you Jennifer?”

  “I am.”

  Marissa smiled at me. She had light red hair cut in a simple shoulder-length style.

  “I found her too,” Jonathan said, stepping inside with my laundry basket and bedding in his arms.

  “Hi, I’m Marissa.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I replied. “And I believe this is yours.”

  She looked down at her suitcase and appeared relieved. “Yes. Thank you, Jonathan,” she said over her shoulder and then whispered to me. “It has my feminine products in it. Excuse me while I make a trip to the bathroom.”

  I let her have the suitcase, and she carried it to her bed. Jonathan had set my stuff on the other one, and he asked if I had more he could help me bring up. I said I only had two suitcases and a box of school supplies, but he appeared to want to help anyway.

  Marissa stepped past me and said she would be back in a few minutes, adding something Jonathan and I could hear plainly.

  “Let Jonny help. It’s his calling in life to help anyone with anything. You’ll make his day.”

  Chapter Two

  My dorm room wasn’t much. Not much space. Not much comfort. Not much of anything. But it had a lovely view. A large grassy park across the street was surrounded by historic campus buildings, including one with a clock tower. It wasn’t a lighthouse, but it would do.

  I spent the remainder of the afternoon unpacking and arranging my side of the room. Marissa did the same, and we talked as we worked. She was a bit of a chatterbox, but she didn’t annoy me with her conversation or her presence. She reminded me of a friend I had back home. I hadn’t spent much time with my friends this summer, and I hadn’t really missed them while I was there, but now that I was here, I did.

  Jodi was my best friend. I’d known her since first grade. She lived close and we rode the same bus to school and had played softball together in our younger days. Jodi had decided she wanted to be a nurse, but she couldn’t afford to go to a four-year college yet and hadn’t gotten any scholarship offers like I had, so she was remaining along the coast to attend community college for now.

  But I missed the others too: Sam, Annie, and Tess. Marissa reminded me most of Tess. They both made conversation the same way, asking me questions they waited for me to answer and then filled me in on how they would answer the same question if I had been the one to ask them. But I didn’t mind. Initiating conversation wasn’t my forte, and I wanted to know about Marissa. I wanted us to get along well. I wanted us to be friends, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up too much. I would rather have low expectations than be disappointed when my desires didn’t match up to reality.

  After getting settled, we went down to the cafeteria to have some dinner. It was in the adjacent building of a coed dorm, and I saw a variety of people waiting in the food line and sitting at the tables. Males and females. An eclectic mix of nationalities and social groups, talkers, observers, healthy eaters, and gluttons.

  I had the sushi, green salad, and a fruit bowl. It wasn’t the best food I’d ever tasted, but it wasn’t bad. Marissa decided to get ice cream for dessert, so I got some too. She got a mixed cone, but I got vanilla, explaining I was allergic to chocolate.

  “Bummer,” Marissa said. “What happens if you eat it?”

  “I get hives. Everywhere.”

  “Major bummer,” Marissa laughed.

  “I’m used to it. I’m just glad I’m not allergic to seafood.”

  I explained to her how I had grown up in a fishing town and how my dad and uncle were both fishermen. They brought home seafood every working day: whatever they didn’t sell on the wharf or had traded for something else, and my mother knew how to cook it all up more ways than I could count. I also told her about my dad dying in a sailing accident when I was nine, something I hadn’t planned to tell anyone here for awhile, if ever.

  “Wow, so your mom married your uncle after that?”

  “Three years later. It was a gradual romance. He lived next door to us and wasn’t married, so when my dad was still alive he came over for dinner almost every night. After he was gone, him continuing to be there was a natural thing, and somewhere along the way my mom fell in love again. I wasn’t aware it was happening until they were practically engaged.”

  I was surprised by how easy it was for me to tell her. My friends back home knew the story because they had lived it with me, but sharing it with someone I had just met wasn’t something I had done before.

  “That’s nice she isn’t alone,” Marissa said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It’s a good thing.”

  “But you miss your dad.”

  “Yes.” I couldn’t say any more than that, and Marissa seemed to understand.

  She shared about her parents then. They had been married for twenty-five years, and her whole family was close, which didn’t surprise me with the way Marissa and Jonathan had interacted today. I asked her something I had been wondering since meeting her brother earlier.

  “How much older is Jonathan than you?”

  “Tw
o years. He’s a junior.”

  “Did you decide to come here because of him?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. I’ve missed Jonny a lot, and I knew I would get homesick if I went anywhere else.”

  “I’m not that close to my brothers,” I said. “Tom is twenty-three, and Joseph is twenty, but we’re really different; I mean, I know they would be there for me if I ever needed anything, but it’s not like we’re friends, just family.”

  “And your sister? Are you close to her?”

  “Not really. She’s twenty-six, married, went to college when I was ten, moved away permanently when I was starting high school. She lives in Seattle now. I see her at Christmas and a few days during the summer, and that’s about it.”

  “I hope I can stay close to my sister even though I’m in college now,” Marissa said. “I think we can, but I’m going to try and make sure of it, especially since she’s the only one left at home. I was actually torn between coming here to be close to Jonathan or going to school in Portland for Megan. Hopefully I made the right choice.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Sixteen. We’re all two years apart.”

  I expected us to stop talking at some point after we returned to the room, or for Marissa to have someplace else to go, but she didn’t, and I told her all kinds of things I never imagined saying to someone I had just met.

  I had told Jodi I would call her tonight, but I didn’t get a chance until Marissa decided to go take a shower before bed. Jodi wanted to hear all about my day, but there wasn’t much to tell. Talking with Marissa had taken up two-thirds of it, but I had to consolidate my words by saying, ‘getting to know my roommate--she seems nice’.

  Jodi had sworn me to remaining BFF’s even though I was going away and leaving her in Bandon. ‘Abandoning me in Bandon,’ she had said countless times, to which I always responded, ‘I’ll be back, and it will be like I never left.’