CHAPTER FIVE: THE NIGHT THE LIGHTHOUSE STOPPED
Helen sat with her hands in her lap while Megan fetched two glasses of water.
For several minutes, neither woman mentioned the tree.
“The hospital show was supposed to be our last performance before we opened a permanent workshop,” Helen finally said.
“We had worked out an arrangement with the children’s ward to let young patients paint little cardboard houses.”
She could still recall the smell of tempera paint and the sound of carts rolling down polished corridors.
The children had chosen names for the miniature village’s shops.
One boy called the bakery Moon Bread because the windows glowed after the lights dimmed.
A girl insisted on a crooked green door for the smallest house.
“She said straight doors were boring,” Helen remembered.
Megan almost smiled.
“Then Solomon changed the motor?”
“He wanted the show to impress a businessman who had promised him funding.”
Solomon’s new motor forced the scenery through its movements too quickly.
Helen and Iris asked to stop the performance, but he called them nervous and told them to stand away from the controls.
Nadia refused to arrange the figures because several balance points were wrong.
By then, parents and patients were already waiting.
“He accused us of sabotaging him,” Helen said.
“He had spent the morning telling guests he had invented everything.”
A hospital volunteer offered to postpone the event, but Solomon pressed ahead with his unfinished arrangement.
The stage juddered twice after the opening music.
The little bakery hit the lighthouse.
Three painted figures toppled, and a narrow pane in the stage cabinet cracked.
No one in the audience was injured.
The children were frightened by the noise, and a small boy started crying because his cardboard house had fallen.
Helen climbed onto the platform to stop the motor.
“I reached the switch before it damaged the rest,” she said.
“But the sponsor had seen enough.”
The businessman withdrew his support that afternoon.
Solomon blamed the young women who had built the miniature scenery.
His voice filled the hospital corridor so loudly that nurses came out of their rooms.
“He said we had ruined the company’s future,” Helen continued.
“I remember standing there with paint on my sleeves, trying to understand why I was suddenly the enemy.”
Megan listened without interrupting.
“Did Nadia sabotage the show?”
“Not the way Solomon said.”
Helen took another sip of water.
“She changed those cams during rehearsal, after he had refused to slow the motor.”
“But the show still went wrong.”
“Yes.”
Helen’s fingers tightened around the glass.
“And I knew that Nadia had done something.”
“You knew before the show?”
“I saw her near the mechanism.”
Helen looked directly at Megan.
“I said nothing when Solomon accused her, because I thought her decision had ruined us.”
Megan sat back.
That was the first thing Helen had said that sounded like a confession rather than an explanation.
“Then I let him announce publicly that Nadia had damaged company property,” Helen continued.
“She asked me to tell them he had changed the motor against our advice.”
“And you refused.”
“I told her she should have discussed the cams with me first.”
The words sounded painfully small now.
The company dissolved within weeks.
Iris left for a painting job in another state.
Nadia went back to her family’s tailoring shop.
Helen carried the pieces she believed were essential home in a shoebox.
She buried them beneath a sapling on a night when the streetlights had gone out.
“Why bury them?” Megan asked.
“Why not keep them in a closet?”
“Because I was afraid Solomon would accuse me next.”
Helen rubbed the edge of the envelope.
“And because looking at them made me feel sick.”
Megan considered the frightened young woman Helen had once been.
Then she looked again at the ugly axe cuts in the maple.
“You hurt people because you were afraid,” Megan said.
“And today you hurt my tree because you were afraid again.”
Helen did not argue.
“Yes.”
A bicycle bell rang on the sidewalk.
Two children rode past the damaged trunk, slowing to look at the wood chips.
One whispered something to the other.
Megan waited until they had gone.
“We aren’t digging anything until a tree specialist sees this,” she said.
“But the auction is tonight,” Helen protested.
“Then we solve the immediate problem without wrecking something else.”
Helen looked at her with a mixture of irritation and relief.
“You sound like Iris.”
“I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
Megan’s phone rang.
The caller identified himself as Rowan Pike, an arborist from the city’s contracted tree-care service.
He said a man named Everett Sloan had asked for an emergency removal assessment at Megan’s address.
“I haven’t requested removal,” Megan said.
Rowan sounded surprised.
“Then somebody gave us misleading information.”
He offered to stop by that afternoon to inspect the damaged trunk instead.
Megan accepted.
When she ended the call, Helen was standing beside the maple, staring at the wounds she had made.
“Everett has started,” Helen said.
“Then we had better stop reacting exactly the way he wants.”
