第5章 第2節 戻ってきた味方
Redemption and a melody that maps the coast
On the shore, Sam wrapped Thomas in a dry coat from the boat.
The old man's eyes opened, and he searched for his daughter.
"I have done a terrible thing," Sam said, kneeling in the sand.
He was the young man who had smiled at Nora in the café.
Now his face held nothing but .
Edwin had threatened his mother and sister for years.
"He owns the house that keeps my family warm," Sam explained.
To protect them, he had become Edwin's in the town.
He had watched Nora, and he had reported where she went.
"But I have never told him about the chapel tape," he added.
Nora looked at the man who had both betrayed and shielded her.
She found that she could not hate him.
"Then help me finish this," she said, and Sam agreed at once.
Nora hummed the broken lullaby, the one melody she would never forget.
In the house, one note had been changed on purpose.
That single wrong note was a map her mother had left.
Sam knew the coast better than anyone who lived there.
He listened to the tune and understood it at once.
"The notes match the old sea markers," he said slowly.
Each note pointed to a light along the shore.
The final, changed note pointed straight to the lighthouse.
"That is where he has kept her," Nora whispered.
For twenty years, her mother had been hidden behind that light.
Nora rose, helped her father stand, and turned toward the cliffs.