Chapter twenty: The uninhabited property was bad enough...but then... The rustic house...? The reality of her new home hit Aster hard.
Chapter twenty-one
Kenneth James took Aster to the lighthouse at Georgina Point Heritage Park. Over the water... Way off in the distance... She could barely see the mainland. How her heart yearned for home. But she knew she could never return. What was the use of dreaming? She found Kenneth James admiring some old tree. Its green leaves were slowly changing colours—like all the other trees. But it was unlike the others. This tree had been slit in half. A small child would have been able to crawl inside and stand, sheltered, in the middle.
“Badly damaged but still growing,” Kenneth James told her, “An example of Mayne Island resilience.”
Playing tour guide, Kenneth James shared, what he, apparently, thought were, interesting historical facts. The lighthouse was built in 1969, the lightkeeper's residence in 1940, and the light station, even further back, in 1885.
Yawn.
But she was somewhat interested in the lighthouse. A lighthouse had been featured in that movie she liked. Where there stairs? How many? And at the top, how much of the sea was visible? Was there a light in the house? How was it lit?
Kenneth James grabbed the doorknob and turned it but... It was locked.
“Well, surely we can visit the residence?” Aster judged the white house with a red roof as an ideal location for a museum.
“Back in the day community meetings were held there. But that was before they discovered mercury poisoning.”
Mercury poisoning? Aster’s interest in that park had been quenched.
