The Never Happy Ending Chronicle

She had counted seventeen thousand sunsets from the gallery rail, and not one of them had brought the ship she was waiting for. The lamp still needed tending. The foghorn still sounded at intervals she knew better than her own heartbeat. But the harbor was empty, had been empty since the autumn of the year she could no longer name with certainty.

The keeper's log, leather-bound and salt-stained, recorded every vessel that passed within sight of the light. She had filled four volumes since her appointment. The fifth lay open on the desk below, its pages still white, still waiting. Some stories do not end; they simply stop being written.