Christmas at Lighthouse Point

The lighthouse lamp failed twelve days before Christmas, and the first person to notice was the woman everyone in Emerald Harbour had learned not to pity. Mara Keane stood at the end of the pier with a box of donated paper angels under one arm, a municipal clipboard under the other, and the taste of old panic at the back of her throat. Across the black water, Lighthouse Point should have been breathing its steady white pulse over the bay—three seconds of light, three seconds of dark, the town’s oldest reassurance.