The Language of Sand

“I’m going to make it up to you,” she told the clipping.

Grabbing the flashlight, which she’d left beside the phone along with the hammer, Abigail made for the basement door, set on learning more about the ship’s demise. She dragged the crates into an open area of the basement and searched their contents for a reference to the Bishop’s Mistress. Eventually she found a ledger that corresponded to the year the ship sank, 1909. It was shoved at the bottom of one of the crates, out of order from the rest. The first portion of the ledger was reminiscent of the others. Details of the tides and the weather were scrupulously penned in a rigid script that was plumb with the margins. Then came the date of the sinking of the Bishop’s Mistress.

The page appeared to be written in an entirely different hand. Notes about the morning tide and wind were at the top in a wavering scrawl. From there, the writing turned illegible. Abigail held the flashlight close to the page, trying to decipher it. A single sentence mentioned the Bishop’s Mistress, something she was able to deduce only because she recognized how Wesley Jasper formed his S’s. The rest of the words were too mangled to decode, except for a pair toward the end: oil and pail.

The entry ceased cryptically. Abigail flipped the page. The ledger returned to normal. The penmanship was clear and upright and didn’t meander outside the lines.

“Three weeks are missing between these entries.”

As she spoke, the flashlight flickered. She rapped it against a crate. “But these are brand-new batteries.”

Exactly. They are brand-new batteries.

Clutching the ledger, Abigail ran to the first floor and flung the basement door shut. She contemplated locking it. That was what Lottie would have done.

“For the record, I’m not going to lock the door the way some people would. Nope. No need to lock the door.”

Lottie was scared of the basement. Abigail didn’t want to be. Still, she tested the handle to make sure the door was closed tight.

The day the Bishop’s Mistress sank was etched into the soul of the ledger. The entry made the perfection of the others pale, and that page felt thinner than the rest. Abigail spent hours poring over every inch of it, mindful not to touch the paper. From her work with antique dictionaries, she knew that the oil from human hands could seep into the paper fibers, causing deterioration. Under normal circumstances, Abigail would have worn cotton conservator’s gloves. Her rubber dish gloves would have to do.

Unable to puzzle out most of the words in the entry, Abigail studied the drastic change in penmanship. The acute slant of the script indicated the speed at which it was written, while the low pitch of letters and the hasty slashes that topped the I’s and T’s confirmed her theory. The entry had been dashed off, the author distracted.

From the article, Abigail had gleaned a general sense of what happened. A vicious storm had blown in, assailing the Bishop’s Mistress and sealing her fate. Yet there had to be more. Whatever truly transpired that night had affected the lighthouse keeper to the point of altering his handwriting. Abigail knew that only tragedy was powerful enough to transform a person that thoroughly.

Night had swept in, and she’d been scrutinizing the ledger entry for so long her eyes hurt. Abigail would soon have to leave to do Merle’s rounds.

“Oh, no. The grout!”

Upstairs, the radio was playing and the trowel was lying on the tile where she’d discarded it. The layer of grout had dried into a meringue-y mess. In her fervor over trying to call Dr. Walter, Abigail had completely forgotten to wipe the excess grout with a damp cloth, as the directions dictated. However, her watch said it was time to go.

“I’ll deal with you later,” she told the floor.

That evening’s route began with the modern houses on the southwest end of the island. They were a warm-up, as they were closer to the lighthouse than the others, easier to inspect, and far less foreboding. Because the homes were new, the foliage hadn’t grown in, meaning fewer places for anyone who didn’t belong there to hide. It was the older homes Abigail hated. She imagined they must be lovely during the day, the trees swagged with Spanish moss, flowering shrubs nestled in close. That beauty turned ominous come nightfall.

Abigail sped through her rounds until she got to Timber Lane, the road where the burglary had occurred the night before.

“They wouldn’t come to the same place,” she reasoned.

Would they?

Lottie’s cottage on Timber Lane was the quintessence of charm. Roses dripped from trellises and a hammock swayed from an elm tree in the backyard. Abigail could imagine Lottie describing it to potential renters as an adorable love nest, the perfect setting for a romantic getaway.

“And prime for a thief’s picking.”

After a quick whirl around the cottage, Abigail deemed the property untouched and hurried to the next unit three lanes over. She checked the windows and gave the back door a shake, then her flashlight faltered.

“Not now. Please not now.”

Tapping the head of the flashlight against her palm, she attempted to resuscitate it. The bulb dimmed, leaving Abigail in the dark. The crickets seemed to grow louder in the absence of light.

“Thanks for the faulty merchandise, Merle,” she griped. “Just get to the car and you’ll be okay.”

As Abigail pushed through the shrubs into the front yard, arms held out as antennae, she heard the steady