Chapter 12: The Lighthouse

Hyunjin had never written a song that was not about leaving.

Every lyric he had ever put on an album was about distance.

Or it was about someone who walked out of a door.

Tonight he had written one about a woman who stayed.

He did not know what to do with it.

Chan had said it plainly in the cabin that evening: the manager's plane was down, and she would come to the Wick by morning.

Missy had looked at the four of them and said, "Then we have tonight."

So Hyunjin carried it up the cliff to the old lighthouse in the dark, with Missy's hand in his.

"You're shaking," she said.

"It's cold."

"It's sixty degrees, honey."

"It's a different kind of cold."

She laughed, and the wind took it.

The lighthouse had been shut to visitors since September.

Her husband had once repaired the lamp room door, and she had kept the key.

Inside, the stairwell smelled of salt and old iron.

At the top, a ring of glass held the whole black sea.

He set his notebook down on the gallery floor and stood with his back to the glass.

He found that he could not make himself say it.

"Read it to me," Missy said.

"It isn't finished."

"Then read me the finished part."

He took a breath and spoke the first verse, not sang it, in a low voice.

It was about a woman in a doorway with a cat on her shoulder.

It was about a man who had been taught that he was only worth the picture.

When he finished she stood very still.

"That's me," she said. "That's not the girl in the comments."

"No. That's the girl I met."

Her eyes were bright.

"You wrote about my doorway."

"I wrote about all of it," he said. "The ink. The soup."

"The way you told me I was wanted for more than my face."

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