He did not take it immediately.
“You can hold it.”
She touched the lighthouse again.
“Where did you get yours?”
The biker looked toward the harbor entrance.
“Your father.”
The Mother stared.
The girl’s fingers stopped.
“What?”
The biker smiled sadly.
“The one you’re wearing belonged to me.”
Silence.
The Mother looked from one pendant to the other.
The biker pointed toward the chain around the girl’s neck.
“I gave him mine that night.”
The girl touched it.
“Why?”
The biker took a breath.
Because that was the part nobody knew.
Not even the Old Vendor.
Eleven years earlier, he had arrived at the harbor after midnight.
Not for rescue work.
Not for charity.
Not because anybody expected him.
He had been riding north after a funeral.
One of his closest friends had died in a construction accident.
The biker did not want to go home.
So he rode.
Hours.
No destination.
Rain began near Portland.
He kept going.
By the time he reached Tidewater Point, wind had become violent.
A barrier blocked the harbor road.
He ignored it.
His younger self ignored many things.
He stopped only because someone screamed from near the breakwater.
A fishing skiff had struck rocks.
Two men were in the water.
One reached shore.
The other disappeared.
The biker removed his jacket.
Ran.
The man who reached shore shouted that his friend had been thrown farther out.
The biker saw movement between rocks.
He climbed down.
Water hit hard.
Cold.
Black.
He found the second man wedged between granite and broken timber.
Alive.
Barely.
The biker hauled him upward.
The man screamed when his ribs moved.
The biker nearly lost footing twice.
Somehow, they reached a flat section above the waterline.
The injured man grabbed his vest.
“My Wife.”
The biker told him:
“Save your breath.”
“My Wife is pregnant.”
“Okay.”
“First baby.”
“Okay.”
“She’s scared.”
The biker remembered being angry.
Not at the man.
At the helplessness.
“Ambulance is coming.”
The man shook his head.
“You don't know that.”
“I do.”
“You don't.”
The biker removed the small lighthouse pendant he wore.
His own father had given it to him.
Old harbor superstition.
A lighthouse meant you found the way home.
He pressed it into the injured man’s hand.
“Then hold this until you do.”
The man looked.
“What?”
“Means you're not done.”
The injured man laughed once.
Then coughed blood.
The biker stayed.
Ambulance arrived.
Paramedics took over.
Before they loaded the man, he caught the biker’s arm.
Removed another chain from around his own neck.
Another lighthouse.
Same design.
Volunteer harbor crew pendant.
“Trade.”
The biker frowned.
“Why?”
“So you have to come back.”
The biker took it.