Hard Light

The causeway to Point Briar Light floods before Saskia Veld can finish arguing with the weather. She is thirty-three, ice-blond, and paid to make a Fresnel lens tell the truth about winter—structural notes, coastal load, glass that has outlasted softer contracts. The storm does not care about her clipboard. Neither, it turns out, does the man who opens the cottage door.

Cruz Almanzar keeps the light on a government contract: radio checks, diesel, iron stairs, and a blunt kindness that does n...