The Logbook
The keeper of the light at Harrow Point forgot everything at midnight. It had been that way for as long as the logbook said.
So every morning she woke, found the book open on the table, and read herself back into being. You keep the light. The lens wants cleaning on Thursdays. The gull with one foot is called Admiral and is not to be trusted with bread. The supply boat comes when the flag is red. You like the blue cup.
She liked the blue cup. She checked, every morning, and she did.
The early pages were long and anxious, written in a hand that underlined things. DO NOT forget the oil. Later the entries got shorter and calmer. She had learned something the anxious hand didn't know yet: she didn't need to write everything, only what was true and what she'd want. The book got better as she got braver about leaving things out.
One winter a man came off the supply boat and asked her about a promise she'd made him in the autumn. She looked in the book. There was nothing. He grew angry and said she had sworn it. She read the autumn pages again, slowly, in front of him. Then she said: "It isn't in the book. I can't promise it happened, and I can't promise it didn't. Tell me what I said, and I'll write it down now." He told her. It was a small thing, a lamp-wick for his daughter, and she kept it.
That night she added a line: The book has gaps. When someone remembers what you don't, believe them a little, and write it down. Then, after a moment, a second line: Be someone whose book is worth trusting.
In spring a girl from the village came to learn the light. She found the old entries funny, and she found one, near the back, that the keeper didn't remember writing and was glad she had:
The light doesn't remember the ships either. It just shines every night as if this were the first one. Turns out that's enough.