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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.”
    One less thing on a growing list of hundreds , Abigail mused.
    “My, my, my, Abby. What are you gonna do here by yourself without a TV or a computer?”
    “I have my books.”
    “Hope you brought a lot, because you’re going to need a whole mess of ’em. Me, I could read a romance novel a day. I go through them like Kleenex. You ever read those kinds? The racy stories about damsels in distress, hunky men with bulging biceps. Mercy me, they get my blood to swimming. I’ll have to lend you some.”
    Abigail had no interest in Lottie’s romance novels whatsoever. She kept her reply polite. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”
    “It’s not a bother. Not the slightest.” Lottie had gone from a shaky wreck to her spunky self in a minute flat. “Here we are. This is the shed.”
    Hand-built with wood planks and large rocks from the shoreline for the foundation, it had the feel of an oversize safe. Lottie unlatched the padlock. “There’s the firewood. And those are the kerosene lanterns. They’re a must. We have shovels, buckets, a lawn mower…”
    While Lottie itemized the shed’s contents, the enormity of Abigail’s decision hit her squarely in the chest. She was officially the caretaker of a lighthouse. Whatever needed doing, she would have to do. She’d romanticized the lifestyle, coloring it up with minor chores such as cleaning the glass on the top of the tower and pulling the occasional weed. The dingy little shed filled with dirt-crusted tools and aged containers of ant spray was a hint of how much Abigail had underestimated what the job of caring for a lighthouse—make that a run-down lighthouse—would entail.
    “Are you getting this, Abby?”
    “Every word.”
    She hadn’t heard a syllable Lottie said.
    “Merle Braithwaite over at the hardware store can help you with any other questions you might have.”
    “Was he the last caretaker?”
    “Merle? Heavens, no. He’s an islander. A native. Been looking after the place since the last caretaker left.”
    “When was that?”
    “Dear me, I can’t quite recall.”
    Abigail had no doubt that was a lie. She’d lost count of how many Lottie had already told.
    “Takes a rare soul to care for a landmark such as this.”
    If “rare soul” was a euphemism for idiot, Abigail thought, thenthat was the first honest thing to come from Lottie’s mouth since they’d met.
    “I should be getting back to the office, leave you to your unpacking.”
    “Yeah. Sure. Okay.” Abigail trailed her to the front yard in a daze.
    Lottie hoisted herself into the Suburban and tossed Abigail a set of keys for the house. “Almost forgot these.”
    The key ring dropped heavily into Abigail’s hand. There were dozens more than she could account for.
    “Wait. None of them is marked.”
    “Whoopsies. Where is my head? I’ve had them forever, so I remember which