Read Chapter 14: Aftermath of the Truth

The wind had dropped overnight, leaving the island wrapped in a strange, heavy stillness. Freya stood at the window of her cottage, watching the light from the tower sweep across the grey water, and she understood, for the first time, that she was no longer making a film about a lighthouse.

She was making a film about a ghost.

The thought sat uncomfortably in her chest as she pulled on her boots and stepped outside. The air smelled of salt and wet stone, and the path to the village was slick with rain that had fallen sometime before dawn. She hadn't slept. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the storeroom, the shrouded ultrasound machine, Alistair's face in the half-dark as he spoke his sister's name.

She needed to see where Eilidh was buried. She wasn't sure why, only that she couldn't keep circling the question in her head without somewhere to anchor it.

The village was quiet. A few curtains twitched as she passed, but no one called out to her, and she was grateful for it. The kirk stood at the far end of the settlement, a squat stone building with a slate roof that glistened under the low sky. Beside it, behind a low drystone wall, the graveyard sloped toward the sea.

Freya unlatched the iron gate and stepped inside.

The ground was uneven, studded with headstones of varying ages. Some leaned at precarious angles, their inscriptions worn smooth by a century of wind and rain. Others were recent, their granite still sharp-edged, the lettering crisp. She walked slowly along the rows, reading names she didn't recognise, dates that spanned generations. MacLeods, of course. MacLeans. Morrisons. The whole island was a family tree written in stone.

She stopped at a stone that read *Donald MacLeod, 1928-2001, Beloved Father and Keeper*. Beside it, a newer marker commemorated his wife, Iona, who had died just five years ago. The keeper's parents, a life spent in service of a light that would soon be gone.

Freya moved on, scanning each stone with increasing urgency. She knew Eilidh's surname would be MacLeod too. Alistair had never once volunteered it, but Donald had called her Eilidh, and the island was full of MacLeods. She checked every marker dated within the last five years, her eyes snagging on each recent death, each name that might be hers.

But there was no grave for Eilidh MacLeod.

Freya walked the perimeter twice, once from the kirk wall to the sea gate and back again, reading every stone she'd missed. There was a small, flat marker near the far corner, half-buried in grass, that read only *Baby MacLeod, 1998*. Beside it, someone had planted a clump of sea thrift that had gone to seed.

But no Eilidh.

She stood at the sea wall, looking out at the water. The tide was low, exposing rocks that glittered with wet seaweed. Somewhere out there, on the east cliff, Eilidh had gone to save someone. Someone who maybe hadn't been saved either, because there was no grave for her here. Or perhaps the sea had taken her body entirely, leaving nothing for the island to bury.

Behind her, a voice said, "You'll not find her."

Freya turned. An old woman stood at the gate, a black wool shawl pulled tight around her shoulders. Her face was a map of creases, her eyes pale as sea glass.

"I'm sorry?" Freya said.

"Eilidh." The woman's voice was thin, but carried clearly across the quiet of the graveyard. "You're looking for her grave. You'll not find it."

"Do you know where she is?"

The woman tilted her head, studying Freya with an intensity that made her feel like a specimen under glass. "You're the film woman."

"I'm Freya. I'm staying with—"

"I know who you're staying with." The woman's mouth tightened. "He doesn't talk about her. None of them do. But you've been asking questions. The island knows."

Freya took a step toward her. "I'm not trying to cause trouble. I just..." She trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence.

The woman looked past Freya, toward the sea. "When Eilidh died, there was no body to recover. The tide took her. We built a memorial stone, up on the headland where she used to sit and watch for the boats. It's not here, with the rest of the dead. Alistair couldn't bear it."

"He had her memorial placed somewhere else?"

"It was his idea. He said she belonged to the light, not to the ground." The woman's voice softened. "He was never the same after. None of us were. But him especially."

Freya's throat tightened. "Did you know her well?"

The woman was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, "She was a good girl. Always had been. Even when she was small, she'd run down to the shore to help any boat that came in trouble. She never could stand to see anyone hurt. It was that nature that killed her in the end."

The old woman's eyes met Freya's, and in them Freya saw something she recognised. Not accusation, exactly. But a weight. A grief that had been carried so long it had become part of the body.

"She went out in a storm," Freya said. It wasn't a question.

"Aye. A yacht ran aground on the eastern rocks. A family from the mainland. Eilidh took the small boat out before anyone could stop her." The woman shook her head slowly. "They found the family clinging to the wreck. Picked them up, brought them in. But she was hit by a wave that turned her boat. By the time the men reached her, she was gone."

Freya thought of Alistair in the storm two nights ago, standing on the cliff with his oilskin soaked through, watching the sea. She thought of the radio in his hand, and the lie he told. She thought of the ultrasound machine hidden in a storeroom, donated in Eilidh's name, never used.

"Was there nothing anyone could do?" Freya asked.

The woman's mouth twisted. "They say she went under before help arrived. But there are those who say the men waited too long. That if they'd gone out sooner, they might have saved them both." She looked at Freya, her eyes sharp. "Alistair was one of the men who went out that night. He was first in the boat, as always. He never forgave himself for not being faster."

The words landed in Freya's chest like stones. She remembered Alistair's face in the storeroom, the way his hands had trembled as he'd uncovered the machine. His guilt wasn't just the burden of losing a sister. It was the weight of believing he could have saved her.

"Is there a path to the memorial?" Freya asked quietly.

The woman pointed east, toward the headland that jutted out beyond the village. "Follow the coastal track. It's about twenty minutes. You'll see it when you come to the gorse."

Freya nodded. "Thank you."

The woman didn't move from the gate. She watched as Freya walked out of the graveyard and onto the track that led along the headland, her pale eyes never leaving her.

The path was narrow, cut into the hillside by generations of feet. It climbed gently, skirting patches of bracken and clusters of wind-stunted trees, before opening onto the headland itself. Here the ground was rough, covered in heather and gorse, and the wind picked up, pressing against Freya's back as she walked.

She saw the stone from a distance. It stood about chest-high, a rough-hewn slab of local granite, set into a small clearing that looked out over the eastern rocks. As she drew closer, she could see the inscription carved into its face:

*EILIDH MARIE MACLEOD* *1990 - 2019* *She was the light that guided us home*

Freya stopped a few feet away, reading it twice. She reached into her pocket without thinking, her fingers closing around the compass. It was warm from her body heat, the metal smooth against her palm. She drew it out and looked at the maker's mark, the date that matched Eilidh's birth year.

At the base of the stone, half-hidden in the grass, was a small iron ring. Someone had placed a wildflower in it recently—a stem of sea pink, still fresh. Alistair must have been here. Perhaps not yesterday. Perhaps today, before the village woke.

Freya crouched down, setting the compass on the grass beside the flower. For a long moment she just knelt there, the wind pulling at her hair, the sea crashing against the rocks below. She thought of her own past. Of the hospital corridor, the doctor's face, the words that had rearranged her entire world. She thought of the film she'd never finished, the one she'd abandoned after her mother died, the one about the hospice nurses she'd been supposed to make but couldn't.

She understood now why she'd taken this assignment. She'd told herself it was just work, just another story to tell. But it was never just a story. It was the need to be close to something that was ending, to understand how people carried on when the thing they loved most was taken from them.

She picked up the compass and slipped it back into her pocket.

The sea kept beating against the rocks. The gorse kept swaying in the wind. And Freya stayed there, on her knees before a stone that bore the name of a woman she'd never met, and she let herself feel the weight of it. All the things that had been left unsaid on this island for three years. All the truths that had been buried to keep people from breaking.

She didn't know what her film was going to be anymore. But she knew it wasn't going to be about the light.

It was going to be about what it cost to keep it burning.