The Language of Sand by Ellen Block

her.
    After they’d earned their respective degrees, they moved into a three-room apartment together. They were both low on the totem poles at their new jobs, scrimping on food and essentials to get by. Abigail had been employed by an online research company. Paul worked at a think tank. Since their positions’ potential outweighed the starting pay, they were willing to make do. Plus, Abigail’s father slipped her cash when she would let him. He was so proud that she’d chosen to pursue a career in lexicography, he would tell people it was the equivalent of having the eldest son in a Catholic family enter the seminary. Flattered, Abigail made it clear to her father that she wanted to make it on her own. He acquiesced by sending smaller checks less frequently. She didn’t mind going without as long as she had Paul.
    One night, as they walked to their favorite Chinese take-out restaurant to order the cheapest entres on the menu, Paul pulled Abigail aside.
    “I’ve got an idea. I think we should rob the place, take the money, then run off to Las Vegas and get married.”
    Abigail knew he was kidding, but he wouldn’t drop it. Paul dragged her into the tiny shop and dug a pointed hand into his pocket, pretending to conceal a weapon. “Follow my lead.”
    “Paul,” Abigail protested.
    When she wrestled his hand from his coat pocket, he produced a velvet ring box. Paul got on one knee and opened the box, revealing a delicate engagement ring.
    “I could never love anyone more than I love you, Abigail. Never. Will you marry me?”
    The cooks and clerks looked on expectantly. Abigail was speechless. She wiped her eyes and managed to get out a single word: yes.
    Paul was everything she wasn’t—spirited, fearless, unflappable. He was capable of the unexpected, and being with him made her feel as if, maybe, someday she might do something unexpected herself.
    Abigail would never hear her husband’s voice again, a fact that echoed in her heart as she clung to the iron handrail and allowed her gaze to fall into the well of the lighthouse, disregarding her earlier warning. The stairs wound downward, uncoiling away from her like her memory.
    She climbed the remaining steps to the top of the lighthouse, which was crowned by the lamp room, a circular turret walled with windows that created an enormous lantern. Access to the lamp room was gained through a trapdoor-style hatch. The massive lamp squatted in the middle of the room, encased in thick plates of glass, each covered in raised concentric grooves, similar to those of a record. While running her hand along the glass and circling the lamp’s pedestal, Abigail tripped over a tin pail she hadn’t noticed, sending it clattering around the room cacophonously.
    “If I wasn’t awake before, I am now,” she said, righting the pail and setting it aside.
    The view from the lamp room was breathtaking. The ocean stretched infinitely to the east while the silhouette of the island’s trees and marshes sprawled to the west. As the sun bulged over the horizon, it radiated golden light into the clouds, tinting the undersides pink. This was the quintessence of a sunrise.
    Abigail stepped onto the parapet, mindful not to let the door to the lamp room close, in case it locked. She couldn’t afford to get trapped out here. She was a newcomer on Chapel Isle, and hardly anyone was aware she’d taken up residence at the lighthouse. Who would think to look for her? Who would miss her?
    The sentiment of missing was constant for Abigail. She missed her husband. She missed her son. She missed the life she was going to have with them. She was already beginning to miss the person she’d left behind on the mainland, the woman she had been before she went from Abigail to Abby.
    A low railing encircled the lighthouse’s parapet, too low to hold. She skimmed it with her fingertips, grappling with the impulse to categorize the sunrise, to apply adjectives to it, sculpting it into a class and rank.