They went at dawn, along a goat path that fell steeply toward the sea, with the wind in their faces and the grey light spreading across the water. The cove was so small and so well hidden that Nora would have walked past it a hundred times. At the end of a shingle beach stood a weathered boathouse with a patched roof and a thread of smoke rising from its chimney.
The man who opened the door was thinner than she remembered, his hair gone white and his back bent, but his eyes were the same pale grey as hers. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Elias Vale said, in a voice rough with disuse, “You kept the lamp polished.”
“I just got here,” Nora said, and started to laugh, and then to cry. He held her the way he had when she was six and afraid of thunder. “I’m sorry,” he said into her hair. “I’m so sorry, my girl. I needed you to be somewhere safe.” “I’m here now,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
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