Surely someone has food they’re willing to give me. Maybe I can find some if I forage behind restaurants, or… something.
I sit on the little loveseat on the bottom floor. In front of me is the white circular staircase that leads to the second floor, a spiral gateway to the rooms above. There’s the base floor with our plumbing and tiny kitchen, the second floor where we keep our books and my little bed, and the floor above which functioned as my father’s bedroom. He slept on the top floor on the sofa so that he could access the topmost floor where the light was kept. He said that he didn’t want an extra bed in the house, for if anyone ever came by unannounced, they wouldn’t suspect anything amiss.
About a week ago, the water started acting weirdly, though, and I’m not sure why. And a few days after that, someone came by. I hid on the bottom floor, the way my father taught me to, in the tiny closet behind the stairs.
It’s strange being nonexistent.
I saw them before coming up the walkway from the basement level, and I barely made it to the closet before they entered. I could see just a sliver from my hiding place. Two men. One in a pressed policeman’s uniform, the other wearing black pants and a striped shirt.
“Could give it over to the town’s property,” Striped Shirt said meditatively.
Give what over?
“Right,” the police officer said. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I heard him pick up the cup of tea I left on the little table. I closed my eyes tightly. Would they know someone was here?
“’Tis cold,” he said. “But doesn’t look days old, does it?”
My heartbeat quickened, when I heard footsteps approaching the closet.
“Eh, I imagine the fresh air from the ocean changes the climate in here,” Striped Shirt said. “Locked up tighter than a drum. Who’d come here?”
I held my breath until they left.
Now, I pace the bottom floor, kneading my hands on my belly. I can sneak out. I have to. I’ll have to leave, though, I’ve literally never left this little haven I call home. I can walk out into the garden when night falls, then go into town…
But what then? How will I see at night? And what if someone sees me?
No. That’s a terrible idea. Not only would that mean waiting all day, I wouldn’t have enough light to see where I need to go. And darkness scares me.
My only other choice is to stay here and starve to death. I shake my head and peer out the tiny window on the bottom floor.
Would he have kept anything in the shed? I wasn’t even allowed to go out that far, but now it seems I have no choice. It’s worth looking, at least.
My hand trembling, I unfasten the latch that leads outside and formulate a plan. I’ll go to the shed and stay there, investigating to see what I can find. I’ll look at anything and everything, and if I don’t find either money or food, I’ll… I’ll do something else.
What else? I have no idea.
But first, the shed.
I walk to the top floor, far away from the windows so no one who happens by could see me, as if my vantage point from here will help me make a solid plan. I haven’t been up here in years, even after I saw them come and take my father. I crept down to the first floor and could hear them loud and clear through the window.
“Dead,” one officer said. “Looks like a heart attack.”
It killed me to see his body taken away. I have no idea where they took him, or what they did after that. My father always told me, no matter what, not to leave the lighthouse. That they’d find me. That my life would be forfeit.
They.
They.
If only I knew who they were.
I suspected, when I grew to be a young teen, that my father had some type of mental illness that made him suspect anything and everything. It didn’t seem normal that I was tucked away like this, with no contact with the outside world. From my reading, I knew of such things as schools and villages and shopping areas. Neighbors and officers, political officials, and… friends.
But they’re foreign concepts to me. My only contact was my father, my only companions my books.
I haven’t even spoken a word out loud since he died. Even when he was alive, words were minimal, conversation sparse. Today’s the first time I speak aloud.
“How could you?” I whisper to the sun. “Why?”
How could he leave me like this? Starving, without a crust to put in my belly or a penny in my pocket?
How could he have left me so isolated from anyone and everything that I’m bereft with his passing?