Dark Light

for years.

A mild deceit.

I slowed, as usual, as I neared the estate. For the last two weeks, the house had been dark, shutters bolted. On this night, I expected it to be the same. It wasn’t. The balcony doors were wide, curtains dancing, flickering candles bounced giant shadows among bare trees.

I stopped without realizing I had stopped. Stood with hands on hips, staring.

Was that music playing upstairs? It was difficult to hear because of the wind and rolling surf.

The path that led through trees, past the cemetery, to the house was ahead. I approached it cautiously—no reason to be cautious but it’s the way I felt.

Was Chestra inside? It had to be Chestra.

Downstairs, I saw a flash of angular light, then darkness. Someone had exited through the sliding doors. Once again, I stopped. I waited, eager to see.

It was a woman, dressed in white. A lean, elegant figure, ghostly as she moved through shadows, hurrying along the path toward the beach, her perfume a vague intimacy dispersed by wind—vanilla and musk. Familiar. She passed without noticing me. The Gulf of Mexico was her focus…the surf line where waves sailed, then collapsed beneath their thunderous weight.

I took a few steps after her…then stopped. Took a few more, then called her name. She didn’t hear. I called again. Chestra!

The woman was at the tidemark, where beach tilted downhill. I watched her strip off her robe, fold it over her arm, and walk mechanically toward the water.

Chestra swimming? On a night like this? The surf was booming. It was craziness—as crazy as her obsession with storms.

A question she had asked came into my mind. A question about the epitaph on Marlissa Dorn’s crypt: WHOM THE SEA GIVES UP, GOD EMBRACES.

Did I believe it was true?

Of course not. But someone like Chestra might…

I called her name again. Then ran after her, still calling. Finally, the woman heard me. She turned.

“Hey, mister, what’s the problem?”

The voice was eerily similar: a dense, smoky alto, but it wasn’t Chestra. It was a young woman, lean, wearing a dark, one-piece swimsuit. The moon was not bright; the lighthouse was far down the beach. Even so, I could see she was remarkably fit. Painfully fit, Tomlinson might say.

“Mister? Is there something wrong?” The woman shifted her weight from one foot to another, communicating impatience.

I felt ridiculous. “No, I…I thought you were someone else. You looked familiar. I’m sorry.”

Overhead, clouds moved. Moonlight brightened. I could see her in more detail: the symmetry of cheeks, pale hair piled up, eyes peering out from two shadowed caverns. I was facing the moon. It was easier for her to see me, I realized.

“The name you called me, what was it?”

I said, “Chestra. It’s…an unusual name.”

The woman’s voice warmed slightly. “You don’t have to tell me. That’s my great-aunt’s name. Do you know Chessie?”

It took me a moment to answer. “Yes. We were…we are…friends.”

“Friends, with Aunt Chessie, huh? Really.”

The challenging inflection was familiar. Really. The woman’s voice, even the way she stood, nose to nose, comfortable inside herself, at ease with her body in the one-piece swimsuit, her attitude saying: Show me. Prove it.

Intimidating. I felt as if I was being inspected and judged at the same time.

I said, “That’s right. I enjoyed listening to her play the piano. She was working on a song when she was here. I liked it a lot. She wrote the song for—”

I stopped. That would have been going too far, saying she’d written the song for me. Indelicate.

As the woman patted at the pockets of her robe, she laughed—a purring sound, aloof as a cat. “My crazy old aunt Chess, yeah, I know the song you’re talking about. Chessie left the sheet music here. I was upstairs practicing, but I needed a break. I love the stuff she writes, but she won’t let me record anything. She’s so damn private, I’ve never figured out why.”

I had a guess but kept it to myself.

I said, “You’re a musician?”

“An actress, but I sing, too. I know the song well enough, I could play it—”

It was her turn to stop; realized that she should complete her inspection before inviting a stranger upstairs.

The woman stared at me for a moment, eyes invisible in their two smoldering caverns, an implicit intensity. She said, “You were running. You’re in pretty good shape—”

I didn’t think she would say it but she did.

“—for a guy your age.”

I said, “Thanks. I swim, too. There’s a pool at the school, but I like the Gulf better.”

That won her approval. The woman said, “Me, too. The ocean, it’s real. I love to work out, swimming especially. Which will mean no more of these”—she leaned toward her cupped hands, lit a cigarette, but left the lighter burning so I could see her face as she lifted her eyes to mine—“I’ll be here most the winter…if you need a partner?”