Page 67 of Hidden Tide

If I do, everyone in the room will see exactly what I’m feeling.

Keating gives me a moment before the technician opens Ivy’s card.

“My Ivy,

You have always searched beyond what your eyes can see. Some truths are hidden until we look at them through the proper lens. When the time comes, trust your sisters. Place what I gave you at the center, where every light becomes one.

Love always,

Grandpa.”

A drawing appears beneath the words.

A circle divided into five sections.

Four triangular pieces surround a narrow piece in the center.

Below the drawing are the numbers Ivy remembered.

Keating studies them. “Those aren’t coordinates.”

“No,” Ben says. “They’re angles.”

I move closer.

Five pieces of glass.

Five positions.

Each one turns the light in a different direction.

The compass points home.

The northern star touches the sea.

Dawn first touches the water.

The setting sun meets the sea.

Every light becomes one.

“It’s an alignment pattern,” I say.

Keating looks at me. “For what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I do,” Thomas whispers.

He picks up the old photograph of the Blackwater lighthouse.

The tower stands high above the cliffs. Its lantern room is dark, but the photograph was taken close enough to show the metal framework inside.

At the base of the lantern room is a circular table.

Five narrow arms extend from its center.

“The lighthouse had an emergency navigation table,” Thomas says. “It was installed beneath the lens after a storm damaged the original mechanism. The arms could be adjusted to redirect the light by hand.”