The Lady of the Lighthouse

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. World Castle Publishing, LLC Pensacola, Florida Copyright © Terri Greening 2023 Hardback ISBN: 9798385875740 Paperback ISBN: 9781960076403 eBook ISBN: 9781960076410 First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, March 20, 2023 http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com Licensing Notes All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews. Cover: Karen Fuller Editor: Maxine Bringenberg This fictional novel is based on the little known fact that the Soo Locks in the Great Lakes region was under military protection during WWII due to fears of sabotage. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the teachers, students, editors, writers, and poets who generously shared their time and advice online and elsewhere to help make this novel possible. I would also like to thank the librarians, booksellers and book marketers for their insights and reading recommendations, the online writing groups for their community and inspiration and my publisher for this opportunity. Cast your heart to the sea, Loralei. Your Captain will return for you soon. Let the light shine In the window at night. He will sail by the light of the moon. Keep your heart open. Let your light shine. Your love will come back to you soon. Chapter 1 Summer 1942 The evening sun set against the magenta and orange background of the sky as Loralei Lancaster watched the dark silhouette of a freighter float on the horizon. She sighed with delight at the artistry of the scene. She was in the only place she knew where she could look north over the lake and watch both gorgeous sunsets in the west and brilliant sunrises in the east. She felt blessed to live in a place so wild and untamed in its wilderness and natural beauty that it took her breath away. Her life and her family’s life had revolved around the lighthouse and the lake for as long as she could remember. Even now, she was waiting for her husband, Devon, to return home from a long voyage on the Great Lakes—or the inland seas, as some people called them. He was a shipping captain on one of the iron ore freighters that shipped cargo through Lake Huron to Detroit to bolster the war effort. She hoped the freighter she saw was Devon’s and that he would be home soon, even though he was sometimes harsh to her when he returned. It was hard for him to be on land. He preferred his command and the order and structure of his “boat.” She finished pulling open the curtains she drew during the day to protect the prismatic Fresnel lens of the beacon from the sunlight and turned to look back over the rippling, indigo-blue waves from her vantage point high in the lighthouse. She perused the sky for warplanes, one of the new duties asked of every Portstown resident after rumors of a possible attack by the Germans had surfaced in a nearby town. She was relieved to see no sign of them. Rumors had been rampant in the area since the beginning of the war, and she didn’t listen to many of them. But she listened to this one because she feared for the safety of her country. She turned to see her grandfather, Edmund Clairmont, looking at her from the top step of the spiral staircase. His white hair and mustache set off the dark tan of his craggy, sun-wizened face, and he looked careworn when he gave her a small grin. “Are you looking for Devon?” he asked. “Yes, actually, I am. I hope that’s his freighter out there,” she replied. Edmund walked to her side and gazed out the wide, tall windows of the lantern room. “It could be. It’s time he was home.” “Yes, it’s been a long wait this time,” Loralei said quietly, feeling the loneliness that overtook her whenever Devon was sailing his freighter on a voyage. She missed her husband when he was gone, and she wanted to see him again. “I came up to tell you I brought water up from the barrels in the basement and poured some in the sink to do the dinner dishes. It was a wonderful meal, as always,” Edmund said. “Thank you. That was Grandmama’s recipe for apple cake with sauce for dessert. Do you remember?” she asked. “How could I forget? It’s legendary.” Edmund’s pale grey eyes twinkled at her. Loralei smiled at her grandfather, grateful, not for the first time, that he lived in a cottage down the beach and came by to help with keeping the lighthouse. Her grandfather was the one person she could always count on to be there for her. Before he retired, he had been a shipping captain like his son, Loralei’s father, who had been lost in a shipwreck when his freighter went down in the deadly Armistice Day storm on the Great Lakes two years ago. She swallowed hard as she remembered the full extent of the losses that day. Devon’s father, who had been part of the crew, and many friends and family members of the townspeople were lost as well. The shock of the disaster had irrevocably changed her, Devon, her grandfather, and everyone she knew in the town. Devon stopped talking to her, except to grumble, after his father’s funeral. He had no other family in the area, and he spent a lot of time drinking by himself. And she needed him. She needed his touch. Sometimes she wondered if she or her marriage would ever recover. “I’m going into town in the morning with Misha to see if the Manitoulin is in port. I want to be the first person Devon sees when he