The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

Grizzly-haired Tomas Pader had lived alone in the lighthouse, barely a soul to keep company, and he never tread on the mainland if he could avoid it. His only companions had been the rush and tumble of the ocean waves, the scant tang of a sea breeze, and the ships passing by day or by nightfall under the watch of his keen eyes.

It was a wonder I had ever been born at all, but my mother fell in love with the lighthouse long before she had ever met the man who presided over its care and upkeep. She had been a summer bird, there for a few weeks and then gone back to the north when the waters turned cool. I had a picture of her from those summers: her pretty blonde hair in ringlets, a red mouth puckered into a kiss, and an old-fashioned bathing suit that hinted at the curves beneath. She probably could have given a mermaid a lesson or two; that’s likely how my father fell into the net she had cast for him.

But, just like summer’s whims, it wasn’t meant to last. My father wouldn’t leave behind his duty to the lighthouse, and my mother left that summer with a secret growing in her belly. It would be many long years before my mother wrote a letter and told my father of my existence. But he never wrote back.

The first summer I saw the lighthouse from afar, I was fifteen and lean like a whip. My mother had approved a trip with friends, not knowing of my machinations that had led to the purchase of an overnight bus pass to the oceanfront she had loved. But I didn’t dare edge closer than just hundreds of feet away, my eyes combing for details of this place where my parents had met and loved and parted. I was jealous too: how had this lighthouse meant more than my mother, more than me?

I wouldn’t know the answer until years later when Tomas Pader died and I was called to collect his belongings. It turned out he had mentioned me in a will, though he had never tried to acknowledge me while he still had time left on this earth. This man, whom I hadn’t even seen before I glimpsed his obituary photo, had carved out a hollow in my heart that would ever after stay empty.

As I climbed the steps of the lighthouse, I found myself saddened by the disrepair: chips of white paint had fallen from the walls, each step creaked underfoot, and the dank smell of brine mixed with mildew assailed my senses. It had probably been too much work for one man alone to take care of such a place. In another life, it might have been the three of us as a family here, working together to keep a legacy alive. Now, this “older brother” of mine was ailing, moaning with each turn of the ocean winds, and someday it would probably sink into the depths, like a lost city waiting to be uncovered hundreds of years from now.

The remnants of a life greeted me in the alcove where my father had lived and died. A chipped mug sat next to a paring knife and reading glasses. A rumpled blanket and pillow still sat on the cot, unused for weeks. There was a small wardrobe filled with clothes that were like strangers to me, each one a question I would never have an answer to. Most of it would be donated, I thought, until my eyes fell on a trunk left as an afterthought in the sparse room.

Kneeling, I opened the trunk's lid and found myself staring at bundles of paper yellowed by age. I almost allowed myself to be disappointed—surely there was nothing there for me to see—until I saw a scrawl on one of the letters.

Greta.

With shaking hands, I lifted up the first of dozens of letters, each one bearing my name. Some were dated as far back as ten years past; others were just scraps of paper with free-form thoughts transcribed and left to be forgotten. There were even photos of people I had never met, people who had eyes like mine or my same toothy smile, people who didn’t have names but who had existed to go down the line leading to me.

I also saw letters from my mother, some that had pictures of me aging throughout the years. I wondered what Tomas Pader had thought, seeing his daughter grow up in this disparate way, and I had so many questions.

Why didn’t you send me this letter?

Why did you never try to meet me?

What kind of father and daughter might we have been?

Even the letters themselves gave no clue as I scanned through them. They were like journal entries, each one personal and vibrant in the moment yet somehow lacking in context in the present. He talked about my mother, he wrote down myths and stories of seafarers far and wide, and he spoke about the lighthouse most of all. Always, always the lighthouse.

When it all got to be too much, I shut the trunk and dabbed at my eyes with my sleeve. How silly, getting sentimental over a man I had never met. He was gone, cremated and ready to be scattered to the shores of this place he had never wanted to leave. There was no history for us, not anymore; those ashes too would be flying to the wind, never to be seen again.

Once I was back outside and facing the ocean, I saw the daily march of sailboats and ferries that crossed this patch of sea. My breath fogged in big gulps, and only when I looked away from the ocean did I realize I was crying anew. The father I had never known had watched these same waters every day, and there was no chance of ever hearing his voice telling me why he loved this place so much.

His voice, another thing lost, gone to the ears of sirens he might have believed lurked below the waters.

I drew my coat more tightly around my body and looked back up at the lighthouse towering over me.

Tomorrow, the lighthouse would have another watchman. But today? It was mine, the legacy of a man named Tomas Pader, and for one brief moment I truly was the lighthouse keeper’s daughter.