Free Flight to Paradise (Flight Trilogy, Book 1) by Mike Coe

asked, looking up at the jet streaking through the sky.
    “Some things I’ll miss, but it’s time to move on. The Navy has been good to me. I don’t know where I would be today if it weren’t for the Navy.”
    The thunderous sound of the jet subsided.
    “I’ll bet you can’t guess the one thing the Navy gave me I am most thankful. I call it my pearl of all pearls.”
    “What?”
    “You.” He looked at her and smiled. She smiled back, putting her arm around his waist and pulling him close while they walked. “If it weren’t for the Navy, I never would have found you.”
    The old Point Loma lighthouse was originally built in 1854, but in the 1960’s the National Park Service refurbished the interior to its historic 1880’s appearance, as a reminder of a bygone era.
    The lighthouse had a short life. The seemingly good location concealed a serious flaw: fog and low clouds often obscured the beam. When it was decommissioned in 1891, a new light station was built at the bottom of the hill.
    It was not the lighthouse Ryan wanted Emily to focus on but rather the life of the “keeper” of the house and his family.
    Climbing the steps and entering the front door of the small, white, two-story house took them back in time, over 100 years. Life for the keeper and his family was simple and lonely.
    A descriptive message mounted on the wall behind a protective layer of acrylic stated it was not uncommon for several weeks to go by between visits to town by horse-and-buggy over steep and rutted dirt roads.
    The keeper’s school-age children attended Mason Street School in town, the first public school in Southern California. But instead of being picked up by a local “buggy pool”, the five-mile journey was made across the San Diego Bay in a rowboat. While away at school, the children would stay with relatives who lived in town.
    The raw simplicity experienced by the keeper and his family presented a sharp contrast to modern day life, especially to the life Emily had grown accustomed. Ryan used the visit to the lighthouse to encourage Emily to focus on the simple and lonely life the keeper and his wife had willfully accepted—a life he would soon ask Emily to accept as his wife.
    “You’ve seen all this before, haven’t you?” he asked. He was specifically talking about the interior of the lighthouse where the keeper and his family lived.
    “It’s been a long time. The few times I’ve come up here, I mostly walked the trail or hung-out over by the monument. You know…with my good friend J.R.” She smiled, nudging him with her elbow. “But to be honest, the time you and I came up here on our first date six-months ago, that was the first time I’d seen this place in years.”
    “Really?”
    “It’s just no fun coming up here unless you’re with someone special.”
    He wondered how many other guys she had introduced to J.R.
    “It’s always fun to bring someone up here for their first time, like you.” She gently poked her finger into his stomach followed by a hug.
    It was as if she could read his thoughts. It gave rise to an unjustified premonition. Could she possibly know his motives and just be playing along? Surely not. He dismissed the presage and continued with his plan.
    “Do you think you could live like this?” he asked, looking at the simple, tiny room: a fireplace beneath an oak mantle; a wooden rocker sitting ghostly to one side; thin translucent drapes covered the small window diffusing the light.
    “This would be a prison,” she said, looking around the room. “How could anyone live out here on this rock in total isolation from the rest of the world for weeks at the time?”
    Not exactly what I had hoped to hear , but at least she is being honest .
    They climbed the spiral stairs in the center of the small house. Two bedrooms were located on the second level; one at each end of the house. The cozy master bedroom had a double bed with a solid oak headboard and a barley-twist footboard. A