The envelope showed up on a Tuesday, sea-blue and soft at the corners. The handwriting belonged to Theo, Mara's best friend from when she was eleven. Twenty years of silence, and now one line inside: "I found the map of Saltreach in my mom's attic. The lighthouse is still unfinished. Want to build it?" Mara sat down hard and read it three more times.

Mara put the letter in a drawer and tried to forget it. But that night she pulled out an old shoebox and found a crayon drawing she'd made at ten: a striped lighthouse, two stick kids waving from the top. On the back, in her kid handwriting: "OURS." She didn't sleep at all.

By morning Mara had decided. She wrote back four words: "Yes. When and where?" Theo replied in seconds, like he'd been waiting by his phone. He sent an address in Saltreach and one line: "Bring the drawing if you still have it." She did. She packed it carefully on top of everything else.

Mara reached Saltreach by sundown. Theo was waiting at the address with a lantern and the same nervous grin. She held the crayon drawing up beside the dark, empty cliff. "Still want to build this?" she asked. They started the next morning, and over one long summer the tower finally rose. When the light first swept the water, it matched the picture exactly.