By the last Sunday in August, summer had begun to change in ways that were easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention.
The afternoons were still warm, boats still moved in and out of the harbor, and the hydrangeas beside Emma’s house were holding on to their color, though some of the petals had begun to fade around the edges. Nothing about the morning suggested that summer was over. It wasn’t. But when Emma stepped onto the back porch with her coffee, the air felt different against her bare arms, cooler than it had only a few weeks earlier.
She stood there for a while, listening to the quiet sounds of the morning. Somewhere beyond the trees, a screen door closed. A gull called from the direction of the harbor, followed by another farther away. The leaves overhead shifted in a breeze carrying the familiar smell of salt from the water, and beneath the maple near the edge of the yard, Emma noticed a single yellow leaf lying in the grass.
She smiled at it.
There would be plenty of hot afternoons left before anyone on the island was willing to call it fall.
Emma finished her coffee and went inside, leaving the back door open behind her so the breeze could follow.
She had been thinking about the lighthouse path for most of the summer. People had mentioned it often enough that she’d begun to feel slightly embarrassed that she had never walked it. Mabel had told her the view was worth the climb. Clara had once said that if Emma wanted to understand the island, she ought to see it from the lighthouse at least once.
Each time, Emma had meant to go.
This morning, there was nowhere she needed to be.
An hour later, she parked near the northern edge of town where the paved road narrowed beside a weathered wooden sign.
BELLWARD LIGHTHOUSE TRAIL
1.4 MILES
Emma adjusted the canvas bag over her shoulder, slipped on her sunglasses, and started walking.
The first stretch led beneath a canopy of pine and oak, where the shade made the morning feel several degrees cooler. Pine needles softened the ground beneath her shoes, and every so often a root crossed the trail, polished smooth in places by years of footsteps. Sunlight found its way through the branches in uneven patches, moving across the path whenever the wind stirred the trees above her.
She could still hear the island behind her at first, the closing of a car door somewhere near the road, the faint rumble of an engine, someone calling to someone else. Within several minutes, those sounds disappeared.
The trail narrowed as it curved between scrubby pines and thickets of bayberry. Ferns grew in the damper places where the ground dipped, while farther ahead the trees began to thin enough for Emma to catch brief flashes of blue between the branches.
The ocean appeared and disappeared as she walked.
At one bend she could see only a narrow strip of it, bright beneath the late-morning sun. A few minutes later the trail rose, and suddenly there was nothing between her and the water except tall grasses bending along the bluff.
Emma slowed.
The water on this side of the island was different from the protected harbor near town. There were no docks or sailboats rocking quietly against their lines. The Atlantic stretched beyond the bluff, deep blue beneath the open sky, broken by long lines of white where the waves folded toward shore. She could hear them now, the steady rush of water against rock followed by the softer pull as it slipped back toward the sea.
The breeze was stronger here, carrying salt against her lips and lifting strands of hair away from her face.
Beach roses grew wild beside portions of the trail, though most had gone past their early-summer bloom. A few pink flowers remained among the leaves, and small red-orange hips had begun appearing where blossoms had been weeks before. Goldenrod showed farther along the bluff, its yellow stems rising between grasses beginning to lose some of their summer green.
She hadn’t noticed any of this in town.
There, summer still seemed firmly in place.
Out here, she could see it beginning to change.
The trail climbed once more, and when Emma reached the top of the rise, she saw the lighthouse.
It stood on a rocky point extending into the water, white against the blue of the sky, with a dark lantern room at the top. Beside it sat a small keeper’s cottage with gray shingles weathered pale by years of salt and sun. A low stone wall followed part of the property, and beyond it the land dropped sharply toward dark rocks where waves struck hard enough to send white spray into the air.
Emma stopped without meaning to.
She had seen photographs of the lighthouse before, postcards in Clara’s shop and framed prints in several businesses along Main Street, usually taken at sunset or beneath dramatic storm clouds.
None of them had captured the sound.
The waves were louder here, rolling toward the rocks with a deep, gathering rush before breaking below her. Wind moved continuously through the grasses, and gulls circled overhead, their cries disappearing into the open air.
A small wooden sign near the entrance explained that the lighthouse and keeper’s cottage had been preserved by the island historical society and were open to visitors during the warmer months. The place had clearly been cared for without being made new. The shingles remained faded, the brass hardware had dulled, and even the white paint on the lighthouse carried the faint marks of weather.
Emma climbed the three steps to the keeper’s cottage.
The door was heavy wood, worn smooth around the handle and rougher near the bottom where years of wind and salt had left their mark. When she pulled it open, the hinges gave a low creak, and the coolness inside felt immediate after the sun.
Photographs covered the whitewashed walls. Men stood beside fishing boats, their faces serious beneath wool caps. Women and children gathered near houses Emma didn’t recognize, laundry lifting behind them in the wind. An old map hung beneath glass, its shoreline familiar even though much of what Emma knew wasn’t there yet.
Emma moved closer.
The map had been drawn in 1872.
Near its center, in small faded lettering, were two words.
Bellward Isle.
Emma stared at them.
She had heard the name countless times since coming here. It appeared on signs, postcards and the ferry schedule, and somewhere along the way she’d stopped thinking much about it.
But she’d never wondered where it came from.
A display case stood against the opposite wall. Inside were objects that had belonged to lighthouse keepers over the years: a brass oil lamp, a weathered compass, a heavy ring of iron keys and an open journal, its pages yellowed and the handwriting dark and slanted.
A card beneath the glass explained that the journal had belonged to lighthouse keeper Nathaniel Ward, who tended the light during the middle decades of the nineteenth century.
One entry had been enlarged beside the case.
Fog before sunrise. Could not see the eastern rocks from the cottage. Bell sounded through the morning watch. Heard two vessels beyond the point before either came into view.
Emma continued reading.
Before modern navigation, fishermen approaching the island in heavy fog often relied on the lighthouse bell to guide them toward the harbor. Old maritime records described sailors listening for the bell and steering bellward—toward its sound and the safer water beyond the point.
Eventually, the phrase became attached to the island itself.
Bellward Isle.
Emma read the words again.
Outside, another wave struck the rocks, loud enough that she could hear it through the walls of the cottage.
People had been finding their way here long before Morning Salt Bakery put tables on the sidewalk or Clara arranged books in the windows of The Quiet Tide. Before the marina, the lantern walks, and Margaret’s house had belonged to Margaret.
Before Emma had ever known the island existed.
She stepped outside, where the wind caught her immediately, cooler now as it came off the water. From the edge of the bluff, Bellward stretched behind her.
She could make out the harbor in the distance and the clustered roofs of town beyond it, softened by the late-summer haze. Somewhere among the trees was Margaret’s house. Somewhere beyond that were the bakery and bookstore, and the familiar sidewalks she had walked so many times over the past several months that she no longer thought about where she was going.
Emma rested her hands against the warm stone wall and stayed there for a while, watching the water move toward the rocks below.
Eventually, she turned back toward the trail.
The sun was higher now, warming the path where the trees opened toward the water, and summer still surrounded her. Cicadas hummed from the scrubby pines farther inland, their steady sound carrying across the warm afternoon air. The ocean glittered through the grasses. A swallowtail butterfly moved lazily among the remaining beach roses.
But Emma noticed other things now, too.
Goldenrod opening along the bluff. Red hips forming where June’s roses had once been. Brown pine needles scattered across the path.
When the breeze moved through the trees overhead, a yellow leaf loosened from a branch and drifted slowly across the path in front of her.
Emma watched it settle among the pine needles before continuing toward town.
Behind her, the lighthouse remained on the point, keeping watch over Bellward Isle just as it had for generations.
Ahead, the first rooftops of town had begun to appear beyond the grasses, and Emma recognized them easily from a distance, though she remembered a time in the spring when she couldn’t have told one street from another. Emma could see the harbor farther off, sunlight catching across the water, and somewhere beyond it the streets and storefronts that had become so familiar she hardly had to think about where she was going anymore.
She glanced back once toward the lighthouse before the curve of the path carried it from view. The afternoon was warming, and there would still be more summer days ahead, but she could feel the season beginning to shift around her in small, almost unnoticeable ways.
Emma turned toward town and continued down the path, carrying with her a story she hadn’t known that morning about an island she was beginning to know by heart.
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