The Lightkeeper's Daughter Read Free

found you on the shore and brought you home. He insisted we tell no one how we’d found you.”
    Addie examined her mother’s words. Surely she didn’t mean Papa hadn’t been her real father. “You’re jesting.” She pressed her trembling lips together and studied her mother’s face. The defiance in her eyes convinced Addie she spoke the truth.
    Roy Sullivan had not been her father? He’d saved his pennies to buy her every Elizabeth Barrett Browning book that lined the shelf in her room. He’d bought her the treadle sewing machine. Even the stacks of fabric in her sewing room were purchased by him to give her the start she needed. She’d seen him make many sacrifices for her over the years on his modest lightkeeper’s salary.
    Pain pulsed behind her eyes. And in her heart. She needed air. She started to rise to go outside, then sank back to her chair when her muscles refused to obey. “What do you have to do with this?” she asked Driscoll.
    “I believe I’m your uncle,” he said. Cradling his sling with his good hand, he settled on the sofa.
    Her hand crept to the locket at her neck. “My uncle?” She rubbed the engraved gold. “I don’t understand.”
    Gideon thrust his head against her leg. She entwined her fingers in his fur and found a measure of comfort. “Is Addie even my name?” she managed to ask past a throat too tight to swallow a sip of water.
    Her mother looked away as if she couldn’t hold Addie’s gaze. “Not if my suspicions are right,” Mr. Driscoll said.
    “Then who am I?” Addie pressed her quivering lips together.
    He smoothed the sling. “I believe you’re Julia Eaton, daughter of Henry and Laura Eaton. There are newspaper clippings in the file that lead me to that conclusion.” He nodded at the metal box. “Laura was my sister.”
    Addie focused on the woman standing by the fireplace. Josephine Sullivan. Not her mother. No wonder Addie had always sensed a wall between the two of them. It explained so much. She’d often wondered why her auburn hair and green eyes didn’t match either of her parents’ features. Her mother had cruelly teased her about being left by fairies until her father put a stop to it.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?” Addie asked.
    “Roy refused to allow the truth to come out. You were his little darling.”
    “You never loved me,” Addie whispered. “Even before Papa died.”
    “Your disobedience killed him,” Josephine said. “If I’d told you once, I told you a thousand times not to go swimming out past the breakers.”
    Addie dropped her gaze. “And it’s something I’ll have to live with the rest of my life.”
    “What’s this?” Mr. Driscoll asked. “She killed her father?”
    Josephine hunched her shoulders. “He took this post hoping the sea air would cure his consumption, but it never happened. The stress of saving Addie from her own foolish behavior sent Roy into a decline he never recovered from.”
    Addie bolted to her feet. “I need air.”
    Josephine caught Addie’s arm and forced her back into the chair. “It’s time the truth came out.”
    Addie rubbed her throbbing arm. “If you hate me, why did you keep me?”
    “I don’t hate you,” Josephine said. “But you were a constant reminder of my failure to have our own child.”
    “Then why keep me?” Addie asked again.
    Her mother shrugged. “Money. Someone pays for your upkeep. We receive a monthly check from San Francisco. The attorney who sends the funds would never tell us who his client was, so don’t even ask.”
    “You were paid to keep me from my real family?” She struggled to take it in. “So the sewing machine was paid for by someone else? The books, the fabric, my clothes?”
    “Roy was much too generous with you. I wanted him to save it for our old age. We earned every penny. He saved some, but not enough. Instead he bought you fripperies you didn’t need.”
    “But we’ve been paupers since Papa died. Did the money stop?”
    “With Roy