Lottie had her there. Abigail certainly didn’t want to offend anybody. “What sorts of traditions?”
“I’m happy you asked.” She unlocked a second door, which was situated under the staircase, but didn’t open it. “You’ll have to keep your eye on the water heater. It can be a touch finicky. ’Specially come winter.”
If the water heater was a principal part of these alleged traditions, Abigail couldn’t fathom what the others might be.
“What about the furnace?”
“What furnace?”
“There’s no furnace? How do you heat the house?”
“The old-fashioned way.” Lottie nodded at the fireplace, with its smoke-stained surround. Ash was heaped under the log rack.
The possibility that fire might be her sole means of heat hadn’t occurred to Abigail when she agreed to rent the cottage. Fear began to roil beneath her ribs.
“I should also mention there’s an old cistern in the basement built for underground water storage, what with the flooding we get. Oh, and you’ll have to remember to check the generator, make sure it’s running right. If the power goes out on the island, yours will be first to get cut.”
Lottie prattled on about odds and ends related to the light house and cottage, everything from how to open the chimney flue to how to prevent the pipes from freezing. The measures were as woeful as the events they intended to preclude. As the catalog of responsibilities mounted, Abigail was convoluting the do’s with the don’t’s.
“Let me stop you, Lottie. Can we start with the basics? For example, where’s the breaker box?”
“In the basement, dear.”
“Then we should probably have a look around. Finish the tour.”
“I…I…I can’t go down there.” Lottie was unconsciously backing away from the basement door. “I mean, my sciatica, it won’t let me.”
“I’ll go. Just tell me where to find the breaker box.”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“Because we have other things to do. Tons of things. Tons. We have to go see the…the…” She scrabbled for an answer. “The shed.”
“The shed?”
“Garden hoses. Rakes. Pruning shears. These are pertinent details.”
Whatever had come over Lottie caused her face to turn crimson red. Abigail was willing to follow her anywhere if it would calm her. She gestured for Lottie to lead on, saying, “Let’s see this shed.”
“Excellent. This way, please.” Lottie patted her heart, feigning she was fixing her pendant. Abigail noticed because it was similar to what she herself had done when Denny accidentally frightened her on the ferry.
“Are you all right, Lottie? You seem spooked.”
“I’m fine, dear,” she insisted, rushing for the door. “Really, I’m fine.”
Outside, birds heralded the setting sun while the crickets broadcast the temperature, quieting as the air cooled. Though Chapel Isle was on the same seaboard as Boston, the same continent, the same hemisphere, what made the island feel a world apart was the weather or, more specifically, Abigail’s awareness of it. The wind currents were evident in how the seagulls wheeled in the sky and in the changing tides of the high grass she and Lottie were slogging through as they wended around the lighthouse.
“You must have noticed there’s no TV. The house has an antenna, though. You can call the cable company on the mainland to hook everything up. You brought a television set, right?” Lottie asked, the grass shushing her with each step.
“No, I didn’t.”
Abigail’s life had been on mute for months, the picture and resolution grainy. The volume was finally returning, and whatever she tuned in to was, at last, coming in loud and clear, so she didn’t want a television.
Aghast, Lottie halted. “My word, Abby. Are you crazy?”
“That might be debatable.”
“I’d absolutely perish without my soaps. I thank the Lord every day for giving us TV. What about a computer? You bring one of those?”
“Nope.”
Her laptop had fallen victim to the fire too. Abigail appreciated her computer as a tool, but she could live without the Internet, email, even a cell phone, as long as she had a land line. There was a lot she could live without. There was much more she would have to learn to live without.
“I don’t care for computers much myself,” Lottie remarked. “I can play solitaire on the one my husband bought. That’s about it. To me, it’s a big paperweight. By the by, that’s the fuel house over there.” She pointed to a lean-to structure hunched at the base of the lighthouse. “That was where they stored the kerosene to run the lamp for the light. It’s empty, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
“My, my, my, Abby. What are you gonna do here by yourself without a TV or a computer?”
