The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

My father kept the light for forty-one years. He kept it through three shipwrecks, two marriages, and the winter the sea froze halfway to the horizon.

When he died, they offered me the cottage. I said no. I said no for six months.

In April I drove up anyway. The key was where he had always kept it, under the third stone from the door.

I have been here ever since.