Three Little Words. Carrie Alexander

when the road was washed out and we had no electricity. My grandfather was a widower by then, so life at the lighthouse had become rather rough and undomesticated. Perfect for a ten-year-old boy.”

      Growing up, Tess had longed for a normal life with fancy guest soaps, home-baked chocolate-chip cookies, seasonal holiday decorations and waxed floors scattered with rag rugs. The sort of domestication she observed at friends’ houses, when her own mother could barely summon the strength to climb out of bed and go to work. When she’d discovered the boisterous closeness and comfort at the Johnsons’, she’d believed that she had finally come home.