Lighthouse Keeper

  It's 387 steps to the top. I know this because I'd counted them every evening at twilight for fourteen years. I could get to the top in my sleep. In 2006, they installed a switch at the bottom of the stairs. Then I only had to climb once a week to clean the windows or change the bulbs.
  Natalie left in '07 and took Gemma with her. She said it was too isolated and no place to raise a child, that Gemma needed other children to play with. I stayed.
  In '08 the hurricane took out most of the beach. I rode out the storm in the lighthouse tower. The generator needed tending, of course. It was my duty. The light stayed on for forty-eight hours straight. The governor thanked me in person for my diligence. The state even gave me a raise.
  Gemma graduated high school last year. She asked if she could come live with me. She said she missed the solitude and the beach and me. Mostly me. She met a surfer I don't approve of, but he's opening a T-shirt shop on the boardwalk. I guess I could learn to like him if it means Gemma stays on the island.
  Last week my left knee gave out on the seventy-eighth step. I had to descend the rest of the way on my bottom, like a toddler. "Knee replacement," the doctor said. "No more stairs."
  I'm too young to retire.

(I thought this fit well on a hurricane weekend with Joaquin passing by the coast of NC.)