To the Lighthouse

The house by the bay was neither grand nor modest, but it was theirs—whitewashed walls, creaking floors, and windows that sighed when the wind pressed too hard. For thirty summers, the Andersens had returned to this place, where the sea met land in a gentle hush, and the old lantern tower blinked in the distance like a slow, thoughtful eye.

It was Ida’s favorite place. As a girl, she had collected shells on the sand, fallen asleep on sun-warmed towels, and listened to her father hum as he painted at the easel he always set up by the window. Time felt slower here. Or maybe it simply lingered longer, like salt on skin.

This year was the first without her mother.

They arrived in early July, the same as always. The house felt unchanged. The floor still groaned in the hallway, the screen door still squeaked, and the old sofa still sagged in the middle. But the absence sat heavier than the ocean air. It was in the way her father set down his bag too quietly, or how her little brother Thomas stared at the empty chair during dinner.

On the second morning, Ida took a walk down the shoreline. The lighthouse stood in the misty distance, just as it always had. It wasn’t tall, nor striking, but she had always loved it. As a child, she had imagined it was watching over them. As a teenager, she’d written poems about it. Now, at seventeen, she simply walked toward it—unsure why.

The sand was damp beneath her feet, and gulls cried in the wind. She passed the dunes and a cluster of rocks where wildflowers grew in defiance of the salt. Her footsteps left prints that the tide would erase.

When she returned, her father was at the easel.

He hadn’t painted since her mother died.

He said nothing as she approached, just kept moving the brush. She stood beside him. On the canvas was the lighthouse, but the colors were dark, greys and purples bleeding into one another like bruises.

“Why do you always paint the lighthouse?” she asked quietly.

He paused. “Because it’s always there.”

Ida nodded. Somehow, that made sense.

That afternoon, her grandmother arrived. She brought pastries, a bag of lemons, and a quiet tension with her. She was a small woman with silver hair and sharp eyes that missed little. Ida remembered her as strict, but now she seemed softened, wrapped in the same quiet grief they all carried.

They had tea on the porch. The sun painted stripes through the slats. Thomas dozed in a hammock, and her father returned to his painting.

“I found your mother’s sketchbook,” Ida’s grandmother said, placing it gently in her lap. “In the attic. I thought you should have it.”

Ida opened it slowly. Inside were pages filled with delicate pencil lines—flowers, faces, the shoreline, and little notes in the margins.

One sketch showed the lighthouse. Beneath it, in her mother’s slanted writing:

“Always just out of reach, yet always guiding.”

Ida traced the words with her fingertip. It didn’t make her cry. It made her ache in a quieter, deeper way.

Over the next few days, the weather turned. Fog rolled in heavy and damp. The house felt more distant from the world, wrapped in silence. Her father still painted. Thomas built sandcastles he refused to let anyone touch. And Ida found herself going back to the lighthouse, each time a little farther.

She began sketching, using her mother’s book. She drew the water, the sky, the wildflowers, and even the cracks in the rocks. She didn’t show anyone. Not yet.

One evening, after dinner, Thomas said, “Can we go to the lighthouse tomorrow?”

Ida looked at her father, expecting him to deflect. Instead, he nodded.

“Let’s take the boat,” he said. “Just like we used to.”

The morning was clear, the fog finally lifting. The three of them rowed slowly across the bay. The lighthouse grew larger with each stroke. Its chipped white paint and rusted railing came into view. They docked near the rocks, carefully climbing the worn path up to the tower.

The door was unlocked, as always. Inside, it smelled of sea and dust. They climbed the spiral stairs together, the sound of their footsteps echoing against the walls.

At the top, the wind rushed through the broken windows. The view was endless—the water, the sky, the curve of the land. The house was just a dot in the distance.

They stood in silence. No speeches. No grand reflections. Just the sea and the wind.

Then her father took something from his pocket. A small photo—her mother, laughing in the sun, hair whipping in the wind.

He placed it gently on the windowsill, weighted with a shell.

Ida stepped closer, tears finally finding her.

“I think she would’ve liked this,” she whispered.

Her father nodded. “She’s here. Always has been.”

They stayed until the light shifted. Until the sun touched the horizon. Then, together, they rowed home.

That night, the house felt warmer. The silence still lingered, but it no longer pressed so hard. Ida opened her sketchbook and began to draw again. This time, not the lighthouse.

She drew her family.

Together, by the sea.

Guided, always, by a light that never truly went out.