The Light

On the last morning, the engineer who came to install the new equipment was younger than Mara had expected, and apologetic in a way she hadn't expected either. "It'll still turn," he said, of the lamp, like that was the part she'd been worried about. "Automatically. Same pattern you've been running." "I know how a light works," she said, not unkindly. He left before dusk, and she climbed the stairs one more time out of habit rather than necessity, and stood at the glass while, for the first time in eleven years, she watched the beam start up without her hand anywhere near it. It turned. It was patient. It was, if she was honest, exactly the same light. She just wasn't sure yet what she was, now that it didn't need her to be there to watch it happen. She decided she'd stay and find out anyway. Someone should still be able to say a person was standing here, the night the light went on by itself.