The official report said accidental drowning. Valerica, age ten, had said nothing. But she’d watched the tide pull his footprints away, and something inside her had calcified into stone. She drove nine hours to the coast, past towns that blurred into salt-stained memory. The lighthouse stood exactly as she remembered: whitewashed, skeletal, its beacon long dark. The door wasn’t locked. Inside, the air tasted of rust and old rain.
And for the first time since she was ten years old, Valerica Steele believed. valerica steele dad
Valerica Steele had never believed in ghosts. The official report said accidental drowning