The old iron gate groaned a rusty protest as Finn pushed it open, the sound swallowed by the keening of the wind.
Before them, the Sea-Chaser Lighthouse stood not as a proud beacon, but as a tired old soldier, slumping against the bruised-purple sky. Lena’s meticulously constructed composure, the one she’d worn like armor to the lawyer’s office, began to crack.
“Oh,” she said, the single syllable a small, hollow sound.
The idyllic image from her memory—a whitewashed tower gleaming in the sun, Aunt Maeve’s cheerful marigolds lining a neat stone path—had been replaced by a grim reality. The paint was peeling in long, leprous strips, revealing the bruised gray stone beneath.
The path was a battlefield where dandelions and thorny weeds had choked out any sign of flowers. The windows of the keeper’s cottage, connected to the tower’s base, were filmed with a cataract of salt and grime, and one pane in the front door was a spiderweb of fractured glass.
Lena’s mind, a place that thrived on order and predictability, recoiled from the chaos. She felt an almost physical urge to turn around, to get back in her sensible sedan and drive until the smell of salt and decay was replaced by the sterile air of her city apartment.
Her hand tightened on the strap of her laptop bag. It’s a business transaction, she reminded herself, the phrase a desperate mantra.
One year. Fix it, sell it, fund the firm partnership. Simple.
Beside her, Finn was silent. But it wasn’t the stunned silence of dismay that gripped Lena.
It was a silence of reverence. He lifted his old Leica camera, its worn leather body a familiar extension of his hand, and framed a shot.
The peeling paint. The gnarled, wind-scoured branch of a dead cypress tree clawing at the cottage roof.
The rust patterns on the iron lantern gallery, which looked like ancient, forgotten constellations.
“It’s magnificent,” he breathed, and the shutter clicked, a soft, final sound.
Lena stared at him.
“Magnificent? Finn, it’s a tetanus shot waiting to happen. The roof is sagging.
That entire porch looks like it would collapse under the weight of a strong opinion. It’s a disaster.”
“It’s got character,” he countered, not taking his eye from the viewfinder.
“It’s got a story. Maeve’s story. Our story, I guess.”
He finally lowered the camera and looked at the lighthouse, his gaze soft with a sentimentality Lena found both infuriating and, in a secret, shuttered part of her heart, vaguely enviable.
“You can’t just erase the story, Lee. You have to listen to it first.”
He pushed past her, his boots crunching on the gravel-and-weed path, leaving her standing by the gate. The wind whipped a strand of her dark hair across her face, and she swatted it away with irritation.
Listen to it? It was the most Finn O’Connell thing he could have possibly said.
It was the same romantic, impractical nonsense that had been a charming quirk when they were twenty-two and a fatal flaw by the time they were thirty.
Taking a fortifying breath, she followed him. The key, a heavy piece of antique iron, turned reluctantly in the lock.
The door swung inward on a long, agonized creak, opening into a cloud of dust and the thick, cloying smell of mildew, mice, and memory.
The inside was worse. Much worse.
Dust motes thick as insects danced in the weak shafts of light slanting through the grimy windows. Furniture, what little there was, huddled under yellowed shrouds.
A fine layer of grit covered every surface, and the damp had crept into the very bones of the place, leaving dark, map-like stains on the wallpaper.
Lena’s meticulously planned business transaction was starting to feel like a sentence. Her mind immediately shifted into triage mode, her defense mechanism against the overwhelming tide of chaos.
“Okay,” she said, her voice sharp and unnaturally loud in the oppressive quiet. She pulled her phone from her pocket, grimacing at the single bar of service.
“First things first. We need a full structural assessment.
The roof and the foundation are priorities. Then electrical and plumbing. We’ll need to get quotes from at least three licensed contractors for everything.
I’ll set up a joint account for the inheritance funds tomorrow and create a shared spreadsheet to track expenses and project timelines.”
While she spoke, Finn drifted through the space, his touch light as a whisper on the draped furniture. He ran a finger over the cold stone of the massive fireplace, then moved to the base of the spiral staircase that corkscrewed up into the tower.
He looked up, his head tilted back, watching the light trickle down from the lantern room far above.
“Finn, are you listening?” Lena’s voice was tight with frustration.
“We can’t afford to be sentimental right now. We need a plan. A schedule. A budget.”
He turned, his eyes—the same startling blue as the deep ocean—seemed to see right through her frantic organizing.
“I’m listening, Lee. I hear the words. ‘Budget.’ ‘Timeline.’ ‘Contractors.’ But what about the heart of the place?”
He gestured around the dusty room.
“Maeve chose every piece of this. The color of the wainscoting, the curve of that window seat.
We can’t just gut it and slap on a coat of neutral beige to flip it. We need to understand it. We need to sit with it for a bit.”
“Sit with it?” she echoed, incredulous.
“The will gives us 365 days. If we ‘sit with it,’ the whole place will have crumbled into the sea by day 364.
That porch railing is a lawsuit. The leak that’s clearly caused that stain on the ceiling is probably rotting the joists. We have to start now.”
She marched towards the porch door, her heels clicking decisively on the dusty floorboards.
“Porch first. It’s a safety hazard. We’ll rip out the rotten wood this afternoon and take measurements.”
“No.”
The word was quiet, but it stopped her cold. She turned.
Finn stood by the staircase, his arms crossed, his easygoing expression replaced by a stubborn set to his jaw she knew all too well.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” she demanded.
“I mean, we’re not starting by tearing things apart,” he said.
“I mean, I’m going to walk the grounds. I’m going to go up to the lantern room.
I’m going to take pictures. I’m going to figure out what this place needs, not what a spreadsheet says it needs.”
The argument was so familiar it felt like a well-worn coat. Lena, the planner, the pragmatist, versus Finn, the artist, the dreamer.
It was the fundamental clash that had first drawn them together and then, inevitably, ripped them apart.
“The ‘soul’ of the lighthouse isn’t going to keep the rain out, Finn!” Her voice rose, sharp with the resurrected ghosts of a thousand similar fights.
“This is a project. A massive, complicated, and very expensive project.
It requires logistics, not a séance! Aunt Maeve left us a responsibility, not a spiritual retreat.”
“And you think she’d want us to treat her home like a corporate turnaround?” he shot back, his own voice gaining an edge.
“To sterilize every bit of her memory out of it so you can get your partnership and be done with it? Is that all this is to you? Another box to check on your five-year plan?”
The accusation struck home, and it stung. Because it was true. And because it wasn’t.
She did want the money for her career, but a part of her, a part she refused to acknowledge, genuinely mourned the woman who had always shown her unconditional kindness. But admitting that felt like a weakness she couldn’t afford.
“My five-year plan is what pays a mortgage and builds a future,” she said, her voice dangerously low. “Something you never gave much thought to while you were off chasing the perfect light.”
The air went still and cold between them, the insult landing with brutal precision. Finn’s jaw tightened, the muscle jumping in his cheek.
He said nothing. He just picked up his camera bag, slung it over his shoulder, and walked out the back door, letting it slam shut with a resounding crack that sent dust raining from the rafters.
Lena stood alone in the decaying heart of the house, her breath coming in ragged bursts. She was trembling, not with rage, but with the hollow ache of failure.
They hadn’t even lasted an hour.
She sank onto a dust-sheeted armchair, the puff of stale air smelling of defeat. She pulled out her laptop, the hum of the machine a small comfort in the suffocating silence.
She opened a new Excel file, the clean, orderly grid a balm to her frayed nerves. She typed a heading: Sea-Chaser Restoration Project.
Then she started a list: Roof Repair. Foundation Inspection. Electrical Rewiring. Porch Demolition. The words were a shield, a way to impose logic on the emotional and physical wreckage surrounding her.
Hours later, as the sun began its slow descent, painting the grimy windows in hues of orange and rose, she found him. He hadn’t gone far.
He was up the spiral staircase in a small, circular room just below the lantern room. It must have been Maeve’s study.
A simple wooden desk sat beneath a wide window overlooking the churning Atlantic. He wasn’t taking pictures.
He was just sitting on the dusty floor, his back against the curved wall, watching the waves crash against the rocks below.
Neither of them spoke. The argument had drained them both, leaving a raw, exhausted silence in its wake.
There were no more words to be said. Not yet.
“I’m taking the east bedroom in the cottage,” Lena said finally, her voice flat. “It seems…drier.”
Finn nodded without looking at her. “I’ll take the one facing the sea.”
She lingered for a moment, a foolish, fleeting hope that he might say something more, something to bridge the chasm that had opened between them. He didn’t.
Retreating down the echoing iron stairs, Lena found her chosen room. It was small and smelled of old books and lavender.
A single bed was covered in a heavy quilt that looked hand-stitched. She didn’t bother pulling off the sheet.
She sat on the edge of the mattress, her laptop open on her knees, the glow of the spreadsheet illuminating her tense face. The neat columns and bolded headers were her only allies here.
Upstairs, in his own dusty room, Finn didn’t unpack. He sat on the window ledge, the cool glass against his shoulder, and watched the last sliver of sun disappear below the horizon.
The lighthouse was a living, breathing thing around him, groaning with the wind, sighing with the tide. He could feel its loneliness, its resilience, its story. And he could feel his own.
A thick stone wall and a hundred unspoken resentments separated their two rooms. The physical distance was nothing compared to the emotional one.
They were co-owners, partners in a bizarre inheritance, and yet they had never been further apart.
The first day was over. Three hundred and sixty-four to go.