Keeper of the Light

“I’m just helping Lacey with her biology.” Olivia felt as though she owed Nola some sort of explanation. “Alec had an emergency at the animal hospital.”

“Oh.” Nola looked a little lost. She patted a strand of her pale hair back into place above her ear. “Well, I brought this pie over for him. You’ll let him know, Lacey?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll leave it on the kitchen counter. It’s his favorite, strawberry rhubarb.”

Nola left the room, and neither of them spoke again until they heard the back door open and close downstairs. “She’s my best friend’s mother,” Lacey said. “I think she wants to be my mother, too.”

“You mean…marry your father?”

“Exactly.”

“Would you like that?”

“Yeah, about as much as I’d like to die in a stampede of elephants.”

Olivia laughed.

Lacey drew little circles in one corner of her homework paper. “I don’t think my father will ever get married again.”

“No?”

Lacey shook her head. “He loved my mom too much.”

Olivia looked up at the row of dolls. They were a little spooky-looking, with their huge, watchful eyes. “It’s nice you have all these dolls to help you remember her,” she said. “Do you have a favorite?”

Lacey stood up and walked over to the other side of the room to take one of the dolls—a beautiful black-haired toddler—down from the shelf. She plopped back on the bed and set the doll in Olivia’s lap just as they heard a car pull into the driveway.

“Dad’s home,” Lacey said, but she didn’t move from Olivia’s side.

“Olivia?” Alec called from the den.

“We’re up here,” she and Lacey chorused, and Lacey giggled.

They heard him climb the stairs and then he appeared in the doorway, unable to mask his surprise at finding the two of them looking like lifelong buddies, Lacey clutching her biology book, Olivia with the raven-haired doll in her lap.

“Well… Hello.” He smiled.

“How’s the dog?” Olivia stood up. “She’ll survive.”

“Olivia helped me with my homework.”

“And Nola stopped by with a pie for you,” Olivia said. She had a pleasant sense of belonging in this house, standing there in bare feet, a welcome guest in the bedroom of Alec’s daughter. “It’s your favorite,” she said. “Strawberry rhubarb.”

“She worked her fingers down to bloody stumps hulling those strawberries just for you, Dad.”

“Don’t be catty, Lacey,” Alec said, but there was laughter behind his smile. He looked at Olivia. “Want some pie?”

“Yes.” Lacey jumped up from her bed. “I’ll go cut it.”

Alec looked after Lacey as she raced out of the room and down the stairs. He turned to Olivia. “She’s acting like a human being,” he said. He ran his fingers down her arm and squeezed her hand before letting go. “What did you do?”

Olivia’s mood was light on the way home. She was humming when she pulled into her driveway, smiling as she walked up the front steps. But she nearly stumbled over an enormous floral arrangement sitting on the deck. The fragrance of the flowers filled her head as she knelt down to read the card propped up against the vase.Wish you were here so I could give these to you in person. I love you, Liv,Paul

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The committee meeting was again at Alec’s. Paul would have preferred to meet almost anywhere else, but he supposed this was some sort of test to see if he could be in Annie’s home without succumbing to his memories again. He had given away two more of the panels that morning, leaving him with just the large one in his bedroom and a few smaller panels scattered throughout his house. This was probably the most difficult thing he would ever have to do in his life, but it was absolutely necessary. He couldn’t go on the way he’d been.

He’d watched Olivia on the news the night before. A reporter was interviewing her in front of the emergency room, discussing the shift in public opinion since Jonathan Cramer’s resignation and the publication of Alec’s letter in the Gazette.

“What we should learn from Ms. O’Neill’s case is how critical the need is for better emergency services in the Outer Banks,” Olivia said. “Whoever becomes director of the Kill Devil Hills Emergency Room should work toward that end.”

She looked very pretty, very sexy in her scrubs, and she sounded bright and in perfect command of the interview. Seeing her in that forum inspired him to write a poem about her—how long since he’d done that?—which he left in an envelope in her mailbox on his way to the meeting.

Now in Alec’s kitchen, he had a sense of déjà vu. Alec was filling baskets with pretzels and popcorn, while Paul poured wine into glasses on a tray. Only this time, he intentionally avoided looking at the blue cloisonné horse on the shelf in front of him.

He glanced over at Alec. “Olivia mentioned that you and she had speaking engagements in Norfolk a few weeks ago.”

“Yes,” Alec said. He was taking napkins out of the cupboard above the sink. “She did a great job.”

“Thanks for writing that letter to the Gazette,” Paul said. “It’s really made a difference for her.”

“It was the least I could do.”

Paul tipped the bottle over another glass. “I know these last few months have been hell for Olivia,” he said. “I haven’t been much help to her. I have a lot of making up to do.”

Alec had started toward the living room with the baskets and napkins, but now he stopped and looked at Paul, a smile coming slowly to his lips. “Take good care of her, okay?” Then he looked past Paul’s head, and Paul turned to see a girl in the doorway between the kitchen and den. “This is my daughter, Lacey,” Alec said. “Lacey, this is Paul Macelli. Dr. Simon’s husband.”

Alec left the kitchen then, and Paul smiled at the girl. She was tall and fair-skinned, with Annie’s blue eyes, but her hair was half black and half red. She eyed him as she took a handful of pretzels from the bag on the counter.

“You’re the one who got my age wrong.” She leaned back against the cabinets.

“What do you mean?” he asked, setting the bottle down. Her hair was absolutely ridiculous.

“In that article about my mother in Seascape. You said I was twelve, but I was actually thirteen. I’m fourteen now.”

Paul frowned. “I could swear your mother said you were twelve.”

She popped a few pretzel sticks in her mouth. “Everybody got on my case about it,” she said, chewing. “I mean, twelve, God.” She gave him a narrow-eyed look of disapproval as she swept past him. “I’m going out, Dad,” she called into the living room, and then she disappeared through the back door.

Paul stared after her. He would swear on a stack of Annie’s stained glass panels that she’d said her daughter was twelve.

He was anxious during the meeting. Alec talked about the progress being made on moving the lighthouse. The track was already under construction, he said, and the site was swarming with engineers and surveyors.

Paul barely listened. Mothers didn’t get confused about the ages of their children. His mother could rattle off all six of their ages at any point in time. There was only one reason he could think of for Annie to have lied about Lacey’s age.

The moment the meeting was adjourned, he thanked Alec and nearly ran out to his car. He drove home in a trance, and once inside his little cottage, began digging through the box of tapes he kept in the spare room. He found the three tapes he’d made of his interviews with Annie and carried them, along with his tape recorder, into his bedroom. He sat down on the bed and skimmed through the tapes with the fast forward button until he found the one he was after. Drawing in a long breath, he leaned back against the wall and pushed the play button.

He could hear the clinking of silverware from another table in the Sea Tern. Then his question. “Tell me about your kids.”

“Well…” Annie’s voice cut through him. It had been so long since he’d heard it. A little husky, and here, a little halting. He thought now that he understood the reason for the slow, careful manner of her speech. “What would you like to know about them?”

“Everything,” he said. “I assumed you didn’t name them Rosa and Guido.”

Paul winced now as he heard himself ask that question, as he remembered the angry look she’d shot him.

“You promised not to…” Annie said, and he interrupted her quickly.

“I’m sorry. Okay. Clay and…?”

“Lacey.”

“Lacey. How old are they?”

“Clay is seventeen, and Lacey is twelve going on twenty.”

Paul pressed the rewind button. “…twelve going on twenty,” Annie repeated.

Paul turned the machine off and closed his eyes. There was only one reason she’d lie. He thought of the girl in Alec’s kitchen, the girl with Annie’s eyes, Annie’s red hair pushing out the black, and once he started thinking, he couldn’t stop.

He’d received his master’s degree in communications when he was twenty-four years old. He suddenly saw his future mapped out in front of him, and there was a gap in it only one person could fill. He hadn’t seen Annie in over four years, not since she’d left him at Boston College to set out on her own. He could not look for a job, he couldn’t commit himself to his own future until he’d made one last attempt to include her in it.

He moved to Nag’s Head in late spring, renting an efficiency apartment two blocks from the water. He auditioned for a role in The Lost Colony, a play on the history of the Outer Banks that ran each summer in Manteo, and easily won a part. He found Annie and Alec’s number in the phone book, but didn’t call. Instead, he drove to the address listed in the directory—a little soundside cottage in Kitty Hawk. He arrived very early in the morning and parked a block away, sipping coffee, his eyes on the house. Around seven, he saw a tall dark-haired man leave the cottage and get into a beat-up truck standing in the driveway. That had to be Alec. Paul felt a mixture of hatred and envy as he watched him drive away. He waited another fifteen minutes to be sure that Alec hadn’t forgotten anything he would need to return for. Then he started his car and drove the block to the cottage, studying himself in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t changed much in the past four years. He still wore the same wire-rimmed glasses. His hair was a little shorter, but that was about it.

He got out of the car and walked quickly to the front door, knocking before he had a chance to change his mind.

Annie opened the door. For a moment, she didn’t seem to recognize him. Then she let out a squeal of delight. “Paul!” She threw her arms around him and he hugged her, laughing with relief. Behind her, a toddler sat quietly watching them from a playpen. Even from this distance, Paul could see the pale blue eyes that he imagined belonged to his father.

He hugged her a fraction of a second too long, and she pried herself free, her face flushed. “Oh, Paul,” she said, holding one of his hands in both of hers. “I’m so sorry for the way I handled things when we split up. Really, it’s haunted me. I’m so glad I’ve got this chance to tell you.” She pulled him into the room. “Come in, come in.” She stood away from him, her hands on her hips, her eyes appraising. “You look good, Paul,” she said.

“So do you.” She looked incredible.

“This is Clay.” She reached into the playpen and pulled the little boy up into her arms.

Paul touched the boy’s hand. “Guido,” he said softly. Annie looked confused, and then she laughed.

“I’d forgotten about that. And Rosa, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, feeling terribly sad. “Rozer.”

Annie looked at her son. “Can’t you say hi, precious?”

The little boy buried his head in the tempting hollow of her throat.

“He’s sleepy,” she said to Paul. She laid Clay back in the playpen and covered him with a light blanket.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Are you on vacation? Who are you with?” She didn’t wait for any of his answers. “I’d like you to meet Alec—unless that would be difficult for you.” She plunked down on the sofa. “Oh Paul, how did you ever forgive me? It was terrible, the way I did it, but I was so mixed up with my father being sick and all.”

“I know.” He sat down next to her on the sofa and took her hand. “I’m here at least for the summer,” he said, and there was a discernible crack in her smile that he tried to ignore.

“The whole summer?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ve got a role in the Lost Colony play.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said, but her voice was uncertain.

“And I’m staying in a little apartment in Nag’s Head.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

And then she seemed to catch on. “Why here? Why the Outer Banks?”

“Why do you think?”

She shook her head and pulled her hand away. “I’m married, Paul.”

“Happily?”

“Very. I’ve changed a lot. I’m not so…wild anymore. I’m a wife and a mother. I have responsibilities.”

“Well, could I see you sometime? Just two old friends meeting for lunch?”

“Not if you want something more from me.” She had folded her arms across her chest and shifted away from him on the sofa.

“I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me, Annie. If that means one lunch during the entire summer, then that’s what I’ll settle for.”

He wrote his number on a notepad on the coffee table, hugged her once more and left, determined to wait at least a week before he tried to see her again.

The play was his salvation. His role was demanding, and the camaraderie of the cast absorbed his time during the day when they were rehearsing. At night, though, he couldn’t stop himself from imagining Annie in her little cottage, contentedly bedding down with her tall, pale-eyed husband.

The Lost Colony opened on a steamy night that made the heavy costumes intolerable, but the crowd of tourists was enthusiastic. Paul felt good when he stepped backstage for intermission. He had just taken a bottle of Coke from one of the backstage hands when he spotted Annie by the dressing rooms, her eyes fixed on him. One of the male cast walked past her, reaching out to touch her hair. She smiled at the stranger, absolving him, as though she understood he had been powerless to keep his hands to himself.

Paul walked over to her. “I’m glad to see you,” he said.

“You were spectacular, Paul,” she said. “These tights really do something for you.” She touched his hip, and a jolt of electricity shot through him. He looked into her eyes and saw that she knew exactly what she was doing.

“Annie…”

“Shhh.” She touched her fingertips to his lips. “After the show,” she said, smiling. “There’s a place we can go. A friend of mine’s. You can follow me. I have a red VW convertible. You’ll see me.”

He did see her, sitting cross-legged on the hood of the VW under a light in the parking lot. He declined the invitation to go out with the rest of the cast to celebrate. Instead, he followed Annie closely in his own car, hypnotized by the way the air lifted her red hair in the darkness. They drove over the bridge into south Nag’s Head and turned onto Croatan Highway, and he hugged the rear of her car for the next fifteen miles. Where the hell was she taking him? She finally pulled into a sidestreet, where she stopped her car and turned around to call to him.

“Park here and get in my bug,” she said.

He obeyed her and had barely shut the VW’s door before she made a U-turn and was out on the road again.

“Where does your friend live?” he asked as they passed through Southern Shores.

“You’ll see.”

They drove another few miles between dark, shadowy dunes. Paul hunted for a light on the horizon, but aside from the swath of light cut by Annie’s headlights, they were in total darkness.

“Where’s Alec tonight?” he shouted against the wind.

“Working on the mainland. He does a lot of work with farm animals these days.”

“Where’s your little boy?”

“Neighbor.” The car bounced in a rut and he held on to the armrest.

“Where the hell are we going, Annie?”

She pointed into the darkness ahead of them and in a moment he saw a flash of light.

“A lighthouse?”

“The Kiss River Light. We’re going to visit the keeper.”

He fell silent, surrendering. He would let her be his guide.

She turned onto a dirt road and they bounced through the darkness for a few minutes before coming to a clearing. Annie pulled into a small area of packed sand close to the light and closer still to a large white house. Paul got out of the car and looked up at the dizzying tower above them just as the beam of light brushed over his eyes.

“It’s phenomenal,” he said.

“I know. Come on.” She took his hand and they walked up the brick path to the house. Lights were on in a few of the downstairs windows, but he couldn’t get a good look inside.

Annie knocked briskly on the door and after a moment it was opened by a tall, elderly woman dressed in a long dark skirt and white blouse.

“Come in, Annie,” she said, stepping aside.

“This is Paul Macelli, Mary. Paul, this is Mary Poor, the keeper of the incredible Kiss River Lighthouse.”

Paul nodded solemnly at Mary. What the hell was going on? Were they going to spend the evening talking with an old woman?

Annie kissed Mary’s cheek. “Do you need anything, sweetie?”

“No, no.” Mary waved her hand. “You go on up.”

Annie grabbed Paul’s hand and led him up the stairs to a small bedroom with a quilt-covered double bed. She closed the door and swung around to kiss him. “Oh, God, Paul you were so beautiful on that stage. I’d forgotten.” She started unbuttoning his shirt, but he caught her hands.

“Annie, I don’t understand…”

“Shh.” She pulled her own blouse, still buttoned, over her head and took off her bra. “Hold me,” she demanded, and he held her, the sun-filled scent of her hair achingly familiar, and the bare skin of her back warm against his hands. Every few seconds the white light of the beacon flooded the room, catching the red of her hair, the creamy whiteness of her skin, but otherwise it was too dark to see.

“Touch me,” she whispered. “Everywhere.”

He stripped off his own clothes and laid her down on the bed to carry out her order. Her body was more alive than he’d ever known it, and he did not like to think that he owed her new fervor to her husband. She wrapped her legs around him. “I need you close to me, Paul,” she said. “As close as you can get.”

He slipped inside her, briefly aware of the bed creaking, of the old woman downstairs, but surely Mary Poor knew what was going on up here. He put the sounds out of his mind and focused on Annie. He was with her, inside her, after all this time. She rocked with him, but when he slipped his hand between their bodies to touch her, she shook her head.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said.

He was insistent. Persistent. And finally she came, the spasms of her body propelling him over the edge.

He started to roll off her after a few minutes, but she held him fast. “No,” she said. “Stay close.”

“I love you, Annie.”

“Hold me.”

“I am. I’m right here.” He concentrated on holding her tightly enough to still the trembling in her body. Then he did roll off her, halfway, so that when the light filled the room he could see her face. “I don’t understand this arrangement, Annie,” he said. “The old woman…”

“Mary. She knows I need to see you. I visit her a lot when Alec works. I’ve told her all about you.”

“Can we meet again?”

“We have to. Afternoons might be better. Can you make it in the afternoon?”

“Of course. But let’s meet at my apartment.”

“No,” she said. “It has to be here. People might see me with you. A lot of people know me, Paul. I’m too familiar a face. Way out here, we’re safe.”

And so it continued. It was Paul’s most blissful summer, with the possible exception of the summer he had spent with her in New Hope. She would let him know in the mornings, by hanging a red scarf from the corner of the little front deck of her studio, whether she could meet him that day. She asked him never to come into the studio—she didn’t want to have to explain his presence to Tom Nestor.

A few times during the summer, he would see her from a distance with Alec. He spotted them together in the grocery store, and once throwing a frisbee on the beach. She laughed a lot with Alec, the dimples deep in her cheeks, and Paul would not be able to get the image out of his mind until he was with her again.

The scarf hung from the deck more often than not. Annie and Paul met at Mary’s house and spent the afternoons in the upstairs bedroom. They spoke often of the past, but never of the future. He was careful of his demands on her, but by the middle of the summer he could no longer tolerate the clandestine nature of their relationship. He wanted more.

“I think it’s time you left Alec,” he said one afternoon, after they had made love.

Annie’s head shot up from his shoulder. She looked stunned by his request. “I’ll never leave him, Paul. Never.”

“Why not? I could support you better. And Clay. I’d adopt Clay. I could…”

“Don’t talk that way!” She sat up. “You said you’d take whatever I was willing to give. This is it.”

“But I love you.”

“And I love Alec.”

For the first time, he was furious with her. He pushed her aside and got out of the bed, but she quickly grabbed his arm. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did.”

“You hardly ever see him. He’s gone all the time, leaving you with a baby and…”

“Because he worries about money. It’s the only kind of work he can get right now. If we wanted to live in a city, he wouldn’t have to work so hard, but we want to live here. So that’s the price we have to pay.”

He looked down at her. “You’re using me.”

“No.”

“You are. I’m just filling a need when Alec’s not around, right? Good old Paul.”

“Don’t say that.” She began to cry, reaching for him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and he put the argument aside.

She held his hand when she walked him out to his car that night. “I’ll never leave Alec, Paul. If you want me on those terms, you can have me. Otherwise, don’t come here again.”

Of course he continued to come, enduring the knowing nod from Mary Poor, the telltale creaking of the bed. He never lost the hope that Annie would reconsider. The Lost Colony play closed on Labor Day and he got a job as a waiter in Manteo. It was hardly what he’d been trained to do, but he could not leave. Then things suddenly, abruptly changed.

For several days in a row, the red scarf did not appear. He worried she was ill, or angry with him, and he had made up his mind to call her when he spotted the scarf hanging once again from the corner of the deck. He drove to Kiss River that afternoon, greatly relieved.

“She’s upstairs,” Mary Poor said when she met Paul at the door. Paul could never look this woman squarely in the eye. He felt disliked by her, his presence merely tolerated. “She’s not feeling well.”

Annie looked terrible. Her hair was tied back and the skin around her eyes was puffy. There were lines in her face he had never noticed before, at the corners of her mouth and across her forehead.

“What’s wrong?” He touched her forehead for fever, but it was cool. “Poor Annie. You look awful.” He tried to draw her into his arms, but she pulled back.

“We can’t make love,” she said, sitting down on the bed.

“Of course not. Not with you feeling so bad.”

“No, that’s not it.” She was agitated. Hot-wired. “We need to talk.”

Alec must have found out. This would be it, then. Things were finally coming to a head and in the next few minutes, Paul would learn either that he had won or lost.

Annie kneaded her hands together in her lap. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

“What’s happened? Does Alec know?”

“No. I’m just…disgusted with myself.” With that she jumped up from the bed and ran down the hall to the tiny upstairs bathroom. He heard her getting sick. He thought then of how she wouldn’t let him use rubbers because they could interfere with his pleasure. She’d assured him, though, that he didn’t need to worry, that she had replaced the strange bevy of birth control devices she’d used in college with a diaphragm. Exactly how foolproof was a diaphragm?

Her skin was damp and gray when she returned to the room. He forced her into his arms, and she clung to him, weeping.

“You’re pregnant.” He spoke quietly into her hair.

“No!” She pulled away, wild-eyed. “Please Paul, just leave the Outer Banks and don’t come back.”

“I won’t go. Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Please.” She started sobbing, far too loudly. She pleaded with him to leave, all the while clutching his arm. He heard Mary Poor’s slow footsteps on the stairs, and he grabbed Annie’s hands to try to calm her as the door swung open.

Mary walked into the room, and suddenly she did not seem the old woman Paul had thought her to be. She stood very tall, a light burning in her blue eyes. “Get out now and stop upsetting her,” she said. She sat down on the bed and pulled Annie’s head against her shoulder, and Annie clung to her. “Hush, Annie. You’ll make yourself sick again.” Mary looked up at Paul. “Get out,” she said, her voice soft now, not unkind, and Paul felt his own tears starting.

“Don’t I have a right to know why?”

“Leave now,” Mary said.

Annie clung more tightly to Mary, drawing her knees up, trying to fit all of herself into the protection of the old woman’s arms, and Paul had no choice but to leave. He returned to his apartment, where he packed up his belongings. He left the Outer Banks that same night, after taping his family’s address and phone number in Philadelphia to the door of Annie’s studio.

Twelve going on twenty. Of course she’d been pregnant. What other reason could there have been for her secretive behavior and his sudden dismissal? If she had told him during the interviews that Lacey was thirteen, he would have done the math. He would have figured it out.

Oh, Jesus. He opened the drawer of his night table and pulled out the stack of photographs the Gazette photographer had taken of Annie at her home. There was one of Lacey and Clay that had not been used in the article, and Paul stared hard at the young girl. She looked like Annie. He needed to see her again. He needed to search her face for traces of himself and his sisters. He needed to know for certain, and there was only one person alive who could tell him.

He inserted another tape into the recorder and pressed the play button, leaning back against his headboard, eyes closed, to lose himself in Annie’s voice.

CHAPTER FORTY

Olivia was moved by the poem. It reminded her of the poems he’d written about her in Sweet Arrival. She could imagine Paul reading it to her in the voice he saved for his poetry, the voice that could still other voices in a crowded room and draw all eyes to him. She remembered the pride she’d felt listening to him at readings, and the wrenching sort of love his carefully crafted verses elicited in her. No wonder he missed Washington. There were many people there who appreciated his gift.

The doctor’s office had called her earlier that afternoon to tell her that the results of the amniocentesis were completely normal—and that she was carrying a boy. Only when she felt the wild surge of relief wash over her did she realize how frightened she’d been that something might be wrong. Now she could think of little except the baby.

She read the poem over several times, even though the first reading had convinced her that the old Paul, the Paul she had married, had returned. It was time to tell him about the baby. Time to accept him back, to do her best to forgive him and begin moving toward the future again.

She dialed his number, but reached only his answering machine. Alec had mentioned a lighthouse meeting tonight. Most likely he was there.

“I love you, too, Paul,” she said, after she heard the tone on his machine. She rested her hand on her stomach. “Please call me when you get in. I have something important to tell you.”

She worked on the stained glass panel at the kitchen table, waiting for the call, which never came. The phone didn’t ring at all until after she had gone to bed, and she knew before she picked it up that it would be Alec, not Paul, on the line.

“Was Paul at the meeting tonight?” she asked him, after a few minutes of small talk.

“Yes. He was first to leave, though. Seemed like he was in a hurry.”

“He wrote a poem about me and left it in my mailbox. I think he might truly be ready to come home and start over.”

There was a short silence on Alec’s end. “I think you’re right. He said something about needing to make up to you for the hell he’s put you through.”

“He said that?”

“Something like it.”

She smiled. “I’ve decided to tell him about the baby.”

“It’s about time.”

“It’s a boy, Alec. I got the amnio results and everything’s fine.”

“That’s wonderful.” He sounded a little flat.

“Paul’s always talked about having a son. He grew up surrounded by females.” She sighed. “I’m nervous about telling him, though. Once I do, there’s no turning back. I left a message on his machine to call me.”

“Oh,” Alec said. “Then I’d better let you go.”

“No. Please don’t get off.” She bit her lip as another few seconds of silence filled the line.

“I spoke to Tom,” Alec said finally. “He said to tell you he’s sorry for his behavior, and he’d like to teach you again.”

“Really? That’s great. Thank you.”

“Do you have all the tools you need now?”

“I could use a soldering iron. Did Annie have one?”

“A couple of them.”

She closed her eyes. “Oh, God. Paul will have a fit when he finds out I’m doing stained glass.”

“Why?”

She clutched the phone. She had slipped, forgetting that Alec did not know the whole story. “I’m not a very artistic person. He’ll think I’m wasting my time.”

“It’s not a waste of time if it’s something you enjoy.”

There was one more brief, loaded silence before Alec spoke again. “If you don’t see Paul tomorrow night, you’re welcome to come over here and use the soldering iron or whatever.”

“All right,” she said, but she knew she would see Paul. She had to. Suddenly she wished she could split herself in two. “Oh, Alec,” she said, “you’ve been the very best of friends.”

“You sound as though we’ll never see each other again.”

“No, I don’t want that to happen.” She knew it would have to be that way, though, that she would have to cut herself off from Alec. It was too dangerous. She might confide in him when she should be confiding in Paul. She might compare Paul to him, and there was enormous risk in doing that, in the possibility she would find Paul lacking. At some point she would have to break away from Alec completely. But not right now. Not yet.

“Alec?” she asked. “Are you in bed?”

“Yes.”

“What are you wearing?”

He laughed. “I’d better get off the phone and let your husband take care of you.”

With that he was gone. Olivia lay awake a while longer, waiting for the phone to ring a second time, but it never did.

Paul didn’t call the following day either. She wondered if he might have lost her number at the ER, but even if he had, it wouldn’t be that difficult to track her down. By late afternoon she was certain his machine had somehow eaten her message and she left another. Then she tried his office.

“He’s not in today,” the receptionist said. “He took it as a personal day.”

When seven o’clock came with still no word from Paul, she drove over to Alec’s.

“Maybe he had to go out of town?” Alec suggested. He was sitting at his desk, sorting slides of the lighthouse for a presentation he needed to make the following week, while Olivia studied the directions for the soldering iron resting on the work table.

“That must be it,” she said.

“Hi, Olivia.”

Olivia turned to see Lacey in the doorway. She wore short denim shorts and a tank top that hugged her small breasts and exposed her midriff.

“Hi, Lacey. How did you do on your biology homework?”

“I got an A. Or I guess you got an A.”

“Not true,” Olivia said. “You did the work yourself. I just got you pointed in the right direction.”

“I’m going out.” Lacey looked at her father.

Alec glanced up from his slides. “Have fun,” he said.

Lacey turned to leave the room, the denim snug across her small, rounded bottom.

“What time does she need to be in?” Olivia asked, when she heard Lacey close the front door behind her.

Alec shrugged. “When she stops having fun.”

Olivia stared at him. “What if that’s five in the morning?”

Alec turned around at the challenge in her tone. “It won’t be. She rarely pushes her limits.”

“But how do you know she’s okay? I mean, how do you know when to start worrying?”

“Haven’t we had this discussion before?” he asked. “Lacey’s learning to make her own choices and take responsibility for her own actions.”

“Is that Alec talking or Annie?” Olivia knew by his stunned expression that she’d taken the debate one step too far. She sighed. “I’m sorry, Alec. It’s really none of my business.”

He stood up and pulled a book from the shelf by the window, and he touched Olivia’s shoulder lightly before sitting down again. “It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t understand. I think it’s impossible for anyone who didn’t know Annie to understand.”

It was slow in the ER the next day and Olivia spent much of the morning obsessively checking her answering machine at home, but there were no calls from Paul. She tried his work number again, and this time the receptionist told her he’d called in sick. She called his home, beginning to worry. There was no answer, but there was little she could do about it until she got out of work.

She had just finished stitching the eyebrow of a hang gliding novice when Kathy told her there was a girl in the waiting room who was asking to see her. Olivia walked into the reception area to see Lacey leaning against the waiting room wall, thumbing through a magazine.

“Lacey?”

Lacey looked up at her and stood at attention, her arms stretched out to the sides. “See?” She grinned. “I’m alive and well. Dad said you were worried about me going out last night, so I thought I’d stop by and show you I’m still in one piece.”

Olivia smiled. “How did you get here?”

“Bicycle.”

“Where’s your helmet?”

Lacey rolled her eyes. “God. You’re, like, obsessed with this safety stuff. Chill out.”

Olivia opened the door between the waiting room and the reception area. “Come in,” she said. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Coffee?” Lacey followed her into the hall. “I’m fourteen, Olivia. Aren’t you afraid it’ll, like, stunt my growth or something?”

Olivia led Lacey into her office, where she poured them each a cup of coffee and closed the door.

“So,” she asked as she watched Lacey empty three packets of sugar into her cup, “did you have fun last night?”

Lacey shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. “I guess.”

“What time did you get in?”

“I don’t know.” She held up her left arm. “I don’t own a watch. My mother didn’t believe in them.”

“How can someone not believe in watches?”

“You didn’t know my mother.”

“How do you ever get up for school on time?”

“I just do. My mother said you develop an internal clock, and it’s true. Every once in a while I’d be late, but none of my teachers ever cared. They knew my mother.” She dumped another packet of sugar into her coffee, then returned her eyes to Olivia. “My father has to take Clay to Duke on Friday. He has to stay overnight, so he wants me to stay at Nola’s, but I was wondering if…” She wrinkled her nose. “This is, like, forward of me, but could I stay with you while he’s gone?”

Olivia was taken completely off guard. “You hardly know me, Lacey.”

The girl blushed. “Well, but, I mean, you’re nice and I don’t think my father would mind since obviously you’re not going to let me run the streets until morning, right?” She grinned again and Olivia could not help but smile back. It would interfere with any time she might have to spend with Paul, but she could not possibly turn down a fourteen-year-old girl who needed something from her.

“I’d be delighted to have your company,” she said. “But we need to clear this with your father first.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“You’ll ask him.”

Lacey giggled.

“Let him know it’s fine with me, Lacey.”

She drove to Paul’s cottage as soon as she got out of work. His car was in the driveway, but there was no answer when she knocked on the door. That worried her. She tried the knob, and the door opened easily. She stepped into the living room, pulling the door closed behind her. The house was quiet.

“Paul?”

There was no response. The room looked bigger without the stained glass in the windows. It relieved her to see the clear windows, the deep evening blue of the ocean in the distance.

She walked into the kitchen, calling his name, her apprehension mounting. Where was he? She headed toward the bedrooms in the back, not certain which was his and a little afraid of what she might find.

The door to the first bedroom was open, and when she stepped inside she was immediately surrounded by color. One of the windows was still hung with a stained glass panel of two vivid tropical fish. The double bed was half made, the spread and sheets twisted into a knot. Two pillows were propped up against the headboard. The room smelled of food, an odd mixture of scents. A half-full carton of Chinese food sat on the night table, next to a wine glass tipped on its side and an empty bottle of chardonnay. A dirty plate and crusty fork rested on the top of a pizza box in the middle of the floor.

Olivia’s pulse began to race. Something was certainly wrong. Paul was fastidious. Except for the stained glass, she would never have guessed this was his room. Could he have rented it out to someone else?

Then she saw the pictures strewn across the bed. Annie, all of them. Olivia picked one up and scowled. She was sick of that face, the red hair, the pert nose, the pale freckled skin. A tape player rested in the midst of the photographs. There was one tape inside it and two stacked next to it. She picked one of them up and read the label. Interview with ACO, #1. She shook her head. Three tapes and dozens of pictures for a simple magazine article. She hit the play button on the machine. There was laughter, then a few seconds of silence before Paul asked:

“Do you ever use the lighthouse in your work?”

“Kiss River?” Annie asked, her voice surprising Olivia with its depth, its huskiness. “I have, yes. It’s a very special place to me. It’s where I first met Alec.”

Olivia heard Paul sharply suck in his breath. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

“Yep. I sure did.”

There were another few seconds of silence.

“Jesus, Annie, how could you—”

“Shut up, Paul.”

Olivia turned at the sound of the front door opening. She quickly stopped the machine and stood waiting by the bed. She heard him walk through the house. He must have seen her car; she would not be a complete surprise to him. In a moment he stood in the doorway of the bedroom. He did not look well. His green T-shirt was wrinkled and stained; his hair hung limply over his forehead. The sunlight filtering through the stained glass turned his face a sickly yellow, and she wondered how she must look, bathed in the colors of this room. He stared at her for a long moment, then looked down at his bed.

“Your car was here, but there was no answer when I knocked,” she said. “The receptionist at the Gazette told me you were sick, so I was worried when you didn’t come to the door.”

He cleared his throat. “I was walking on the beach,” he said.

She gestured toward the bed. “I see you’ve been having a little…Annie fest.”

His lips started to move, but he didn’t answer.

“You’re not through with her.” Her voice was soft, and she heard the weariness in it. “You’re never going to be through with her.”

“I just need a little more time,” he said.

Olivia stalked past him, walking briskly through the hall and the living room, not stopping until she reached her car. She rammed the keys into the ignition, and her tires squealed as she pulled out onto the road. Once on the highway, though, she slowed down, focusing on the heavy summer traffic, reminding herself that inside her slept her normal, healthy son.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Lacey was talkative as she helped Olivia make up the bed in the guest room. A little nervous, Olivia supposed. A little high-strung, which for some reason reminded her of the old lighthouse keeper’s advice to feed Paul kale and sea salt.

Alec had called her the other night to apologize for Lacey’s forwardness. “I’m sure you’d rather spend the time with Paul,” he’d said, and Olivia, who had just returned from Paul’s cottage, fought tears as she described what she had found there.

“He’s wallowing in the memories of her, Alec,” she said. “He’s surrounded himself with take-out food so he doesn’t have to budge from his room and he can stare at her pictures for hours on…”

“Olivia?” Alec had interrupted her.

“What?”

“Please give me your permission to talk with him.”

“No.”

“He sounds like he needs help.”

“I know, but he won’t take it.”

“What if I just stopped by his house on the pretense of talking about the lighthouse?”

“Please don’t, Alec.”

Alec had finally given in, but not before he told her that he wished things were settled between her and Paul. “For my sake,” he’d said, his voice quiet, solemn, “if not for yours.”

Lacey tucked the blanket into the foot of the bed. “I’m thinking of getting my nose pierced,” she said, looking over at Olivia, waiting for a reaction. Her red and black hair was beginning to remind Olivia of a checkerboard. “What do you think?”

“I think it sounds revolting.” Olivia lifted the spread from the armchair to the bed. “Would your father let you?”

“My father will let me do anything I want, haven’t you figured that out yet?”

The bed was finished and Olivia looked across it at her house guest. “Let’s go get some dinner,” she said. “You can choose the restaurant.”

Lacey selected the Italian Palace, a family-style restaurant with pasta dishes that, to Olivia’s surprise, were better than passable. “This is my favorite restaurant,” Lacey said, her eyes half closed in a mock swoon over the taste of her lasagna. Then she suddenly sat up at attention. “My father gave me the money to pay for this,” she said.

“Well, that was nice of him, but hardly necessary.”

“He said I’m not supposed to take no for an answer.”

“Okay.” Olivia smiled and lifted her water in a toast. “Here’s to your father.”

Lacey grinned as she tapped her water glass against Olivia’s.

“I have a stained glass lesson with Tom tomorrow morning,” Olivia said. “Would you like to go with me?”

“Sure,” Lacey said. “I haven’t seen Tom since I cut my hair. He’s gonna freak.”

“Tom doesn’t have much room to criticize someone else’s hair, does he?” Olivia asked.

Lacey laughed. “I guess not.” She took a swallow of her Coke. “What’s your sign?” she asked.

“My sign?” Olivia frowned, confused for a moment. “Oh. Aquarius.”

“Oh, that’s excellent!”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I’m a Cancer. You know, the sign of the crab. A water sign, just like yours. You fit in really well with my family. My mother thought water signs were best. My father’s a Pisces—”

Like Paul, Olivia thought.

“—and my mother was an Aquarius, just like you, only she was a weird Aquarius and you’re—well, it’s hard to believe you’re the same sign. Clay, unfortunately, is a Scorpio. I don’t know how that happened. But anyhow, when my mother discovered she was pregnant with me and realized I’d be a water sign, she celebrated by taking a long swim in the ocean, even though it was, like, almost winter and the water was really cold.”

Olivia smiled as Lacey paused to take another bite of her dinner. This kid was wound up.

“My mother wanted more children than just us two,” she continued, “but she said it wasn’t fair to the environment. She believed that two people should only replace themselves, or we’d all run out of food and water. She and Dad talked about adopting some handicapped kids, but they never did. I’m sooo glad.” Lacey rolled her eyes again. “I’m very different from my mother. I’m really selfish. I didn’t want to have to share my parents with another kid. Sharing them with Clay was bad enough.”

“Do you and Clay get along?”

“I mostly ignore him. He’s been a complete prick this summer because now I, like, go to some of the same parties as him and he hates having his little sister around.”

Olivia frowned at her. “You are a little young to be hanging around with graduating seniors.”

Lacey smirked at her. “Graduating seniors,” she said, mimicking Olivia’s voice. “God, Olivia, sometimes you sound like an old lady.”

“Well, that’s what Clay is, right? A graduating senior? When do those parties get over?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…I understand you don’t have a curfew. So what time do you usually get home?”

“One or two.”

“Lacey. That’s outrageous. You’re fourteen years old.”

Lacey gave her an almost patronizing smile. “It’s summer, Olivia, and summer school’s over. It’s not like I have to get up early in the morning or something.”

“Did you stay out that late when your mother was alive?”

Lacey poked her fork in the lasagna. “I…no,” she said, pursing her lips. “I didn’t need to, but she wouldn’t have gotten on my case if I did.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t need to?”

Lacey looked up at her. “I liked being home then. My parents were fun. My friends practically lived at my house, they liked being around my parents so much.” She tightened her lips again. “You should have known my father then. He was really funny, and he always had ideas for what we should do. Once he got us all up in the middle of the night and drove us to Jockey’s Ridge and we climbed out on the dunes in the dark and then laid down in the sand to watch the stars. He was always doing things like that. He used to take me and my friends up to Norfolk for concerts. Nobody else’s father would ever do that. He was so cool.” She looked out the window at the darkening parking lot. “He’s changed so much. That’s part of why I stay out late. I don’t like being around him, ’cause he reminds me of how fucked up everything is.” She looked over at Olivia. “Excuse me for saying that. Fucked up, I mean.”

Olivia sat back from the table. “I want to buy you something,” she said. “What?”

“A watch.”

“You’re kidding.” Lacey smiled uncertainly. “Why?”

“Someone your age should have one.”

“My mother…” Lacey stopped herself. “Could I pick it out?”

“Yes, but it comes with a contingency.”

“What’s a contingency?”

“Something you’ll have to do in order to get the watch.”

Lacey looked intrigued. “What?”

“You’ll have to call me every night at midnight, no matter where you are, to let me know you’re okay.”

“What?” Lacey laughed.

“That’s the contingency.” She knew she was undermining Alec, but perhaps Alec needed to be undermined.

“I’ll wake you up,” Lacey said.

“Yes, you probably will, but I’ll fall back to sleep knowing you’re safe.”

Lacey stared at her solemnly. “Why do you care whether I’m safe or not?”

Olivia studied her own plate for a moment. Her manicotti had hardly been touched. She looked up at Lacey again. “Maybe you remind me a little of myself at your age,” she said.

“Well,” Lacey set down her fork and looked coyly at Olivia. “There’s a contingency about me calling you.”

Olivia smiled. “What’s that?”

“I’ll call you if you’ll stop working at the Battered Women’s Shelter.”

Olivia was touched by the unmistakable concern behind Lacey’s request. She shook her head. “I like working there, Lacey. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m not very much like your mother. I don’t think I would ever have the courage to risk my own life to save someone else’s.”

They stopped in the drug store on the way back to Olivia’s to look for a watch. Lacey tried on six or seven, carefully avoiding those in the higher price range, before finally selecting one with a glittery silver face and a black band adorned with silver stars.

They picked up a carton of ice cream and, once back at Olivia’s, built themselves huge banana splits. They carried the sundaes into the living room, where they sat cross-legged on the floor to eat them. Sylvie curled up, purring, in Lacey’s lap as they dug into the ice cream. Every minute or so, Lacey raised her left hand to study her watch.

“I can’t believe that you’re fourteen years old and that’s the first watch you’ve ever owned,” Olivia said.

“If my mother was buried, she’d be rolling over in her grave right now.”

Olivia cut off a chunk of banana with her spoon. “Was she cremated?” she asked.

“Yes. Well, of course, first every little speck of her that could be used by someone else got donated. Then what was left was, you know…” Lacey waved her hand through the air. “Clay and my father threw her ashes into the ocean at Kiss River.”

Olivia shuddered, the imagery almost too much to bear.

“I didn’t go to the funeral,” Lacey said.

“How come, Lacey?”

“I wanted to remember her like she was alive.” Lacey’s face suddenly darkened. She looked down at Sylvie. “I don’t get why some bad people can live to be a hundred years old and someone as good as my mother dies so young. She hated—what do you call it when you go to the electric chair?”

“Capital punishment?”

“Yeah. She hated that, but if I could see the man who killed her and I had a knife, I’d slice him up.” Her hands were balled into fists as she spoke, and Sylvie opened one eye to observe the unprotected bowl of ice cream on the floor in front of her. “I could do it,” Lacey said. “I could kill him and I wouldn’t ever feel bad about it.”

Olivia nodded, certain Lacey meant what she said.

“I keep imagining what it must have felt like to have that bullet shoot into her chest.”

“Your father told me you were with her when it happened. That must have been terrible for you.”

Lacey poked at her ice cream. “I was standing right next to her,” she said. “I was in charge of the green beans, and she was in charge of the salad. This man rushed in and started yelling at this lady in the food line. Mom could never stay out of anything. She stepped right in front of the lady and said, ‘Please put the gun away, sir. It’s Christmas.’ And he shot her. Bam.” Lacey winced, and a visible shiver ran through her arms. “I keep seeing her face. Sometimes when I’m in bed at night, that’s all I can see. Her eyes got real wide, and she made a little noise like she was surprised, and where the bullet went through her shirt, there was a little speck of blood.” She looked up at Olivia. “I blamed you for a long time, because I was so sure she’d be all right. I couldn’t imagine her dying. Then it seemed like once you got to her you made things worse. My father says you didn’t, though. He said you tried really hard to save her.”

“He’s right, Lacey. I did.”

Lacey ate a few more mouthfuls of her sundae before looking at Olivia from under a shock of two-toned hair. “Do you like my father?” she asked.

“Very much.”

Lacey lowered her eyes again. “He’s been a little better since he started…being friends with you,” she said. “He used to walk around like he was sleepwalking or something. He hardly ate anything and he didn’t care what he wore and all his clothes got too big for him. He looked like a scarecrow, and all he’d do was carry around his stupid old pictures of the lighthouse and stare at them every chance he got. He used to sleep with my mother’s old sweatshirt.”

Olivia ached for Alec. She was embarrassed by this glimpse into his dark and private world.

Lacey took the last bite of her banana, now swimming in a chocolate soup. She swirled her spoon around in the bowl with her stubby fingers and their chewed-off nails. “I met your husband at the lighthouse meeting the other night,” she said, glancing up at Olivia. “I thought he looked kind of nerdy. No offense.”

Nerdy? Olivia supposed that a forty-year-old man with wire-rimmed glasses and cerebral good looks would probably strike a fourteen-year-old as nerdy. “No offense taken,” she said.

“Do you think my father’s handsome?”

Olivia shrugged noncommittally, aware she was treading on dangerous ground. “I suppose so.”

“My mother used to say he was hot. They were, like, completely and totally in love.” Lacey moved her wrist back and forth, her watch sparkling in the light from the table lamp. “Nola would love to get into my father’s pants,” she said, her eyes glued to the watch.

“That’s sort of a crude way to say she’s interested, don’t you think?”

Lacey grinned at her. “I think you’re kind of prissy. I mean, if you think my father’s handsome, don’t you sometimes wonder what it would be like to go to bed with him?”

Olivia struggled to keep the shock from her face. She leaned forward and spoke slowly. “What I think, or what your father thinks, or what Nola thinks about that sort of thing is very personal, Lacey. It’s not your place to speculate about it.”

Lacey’s eyes filled in a half-second’s time. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, crimson patches forming on her throat and cheeks. Her lower lip trembled in a way Olivia could not bear to watch. She set her own bowl of melting ice cream on the floor and moved forward to take Lacey in her arms. Lacey held her tightly, her delicate shoulders shaking with her sobs.

“It’s okay.” Olivia kissed the top of her head. She remembered being held this way a lifetime ago by Ellen Davison, who never pressed her to tell her why her body ached and bled, who never once suggested she go home again. She remembered the surprising strength in Ellen’s slender arms, strength that let her know she could finally turn her burden over to a grown-up who would keep her safe.

“My father hates me,” Lacey wept.

“Oh, no, honey. He loves you very much.”

“There was just that drop of blood on her shirt, so I told him she’d be all right. He was so scared. I wasn’t used to that—I’d never seen him look scared of anything before—and I kept telling him not to worry. He believed me that she’d be okay. He blames me for getting his hopes up.”

Olivia felt Lacey’s fingers on her back, clutching her blouse.

“It could have been me,” Lacey said. “I was thinking the same thing my mother was, that I should just jump in front of that lady. Maybe he wouldn’t have shot a kid, and then nobody would’ve gotten hurt. I think my father wishes I’d been the one to get shot. For the longest time after she died, he wouldn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t even look at me and he kept calling me Annie.” Lacey stiffened beneath Olivia’s arms. “I hate him. He forgot my birthday. He thinks Clay’s so wonderful because he’s smart and got a scholarship to Duke and everything and I ended up having to go to summer school. He just wishes I’d go away. He wouldn’t care if I stayed out all night long. He wouldn’t care if I never came home.”

Olivia’s own tears fell onto Lacey’s hair. It was Alec Lacey should be talking to, Alec who needed to listen to his daughter’s fears. It was Alec who needed to tell her he would do everything in his power to make her world right again.

But Alec wasn’t here, and perhaps he wasn’t capable of listening to Lacey yet, or of coping with fears that were so much like his own, and so Olivia pulled Lacey more tightly into her arms. She would hold her for as long as it took to make her feel safe.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Every time Alec glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw the lines across his forehead and the deepening crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. Maybe he’d spent too much time in the sun over the last few years. Or maybe he was just getting old.

He’d left Clay at Duke a few hours earlier and he had not expected the crush of emotion that came over him as he said good-bye to his son. There had been other students in the lounge of Clay’s dorm, and so he’d hugged him loosely when what he really wanted to do was hold him close. It had been a one-sided hug, anyway. He could see the light in Clay’s eyes, the excitement he felt at this new chapter in his life about to begin. Only one of them was truly going to miss the other.

He turned off the highway into Manteo as a light rain started. He drove past the Manteo Retirement Home in its blue splendor, thinking that he should call Mary Poor soon to arrange the tour of the keeper’s house. On a whim, he turned the car around and stopped in front of the Home. Might as well do it now.

As he got out of the car, he noticed the small antique shop across the street, where a few antique dolls sat in front of the window on ancient-looking chairs. A gray-haired woman was moving some of the dolls inside, out of the rain. Olivia was right. This must be the store where Annie had found Lacey’s dolls.

There was no one sitting on the broad front porch of the Retirement Home. He rang the bell and a young, blond-haired woman answered.

“I’m looking for Mary Poor,” he said.

“Come in.” The woman stood back to let him pass. “She’s in the living room working on a crossword puzzle, as usual.”

She led him into a room where several elderly women were watching television. Mary Poor sat apart from them in a wing chair in the corner, holding a folded newspaper under the beam of light from a floor lamp. “Mary?” the blond woman said. “There’s a gentleman here to see you.”

The old woman rested the paper in the lap of her blue skirt as she looked up into Alec’s face, a surprising sharpness in her blue eyes. She was wearing tennis shoes.

“Mrs. Poor?” Alec held out his hand. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Alec O’Neill. Annie’s husband.”

The woman squinted up at him for a moment before shaking his hand. “So you are,” she said. “So you are.”

Alec sat down in a second wing chair, noticing with some admiration that Mary was working the puzzle in pen.

“I stopped by to ask if you’d be able to give some of us on the lighthouse committee a little tour of the keeper’s house. I guess you know we’re putting together a booklet on the lighthouse. Paul Macelli’s been talking to you, and it’s really coming together, but I think he should get a firsthand look at the house so he can describe the rooms, and I’ll take some pictures.” He looked at the thin skin covering Mary’s blue-veined, fine-boned hands. “Would it be possible? I mean, are you able to get around?”

“Well enough, well enough,” Mary said. “When would this be?”

“Sometime in the next few weeks. That will give Paul time to write it up and me time to develop the pictures before we have to get all the material to the printer.”

“You just call when you want me, and I’ll get one of the girls to drive me over.”

“That’ll be great. Thanks.” He glanced over at the television, then back at Mary’s face. “How are you? Is there anything you need? I know Annie used to bring you things.”

The old woman smiled. Her teeth were beautiful, and Alec wondered if they were her own. “She was one for giving things, all right,” Mary said. “I miss that little girl.” She pointed to the window behind Alec’s head, and Alec turned to see a stained glass panel of the Kiss River Lighthouse, its beam of light cutting through the dark blue ribbons of a night sky. It was stunning in its simplicity, and for a moment he was speechless.

“I’ve never seen that one before,” he said finally. “It’s beautiful.”

“She gave it to me years ago and I brought it along when they moved me here.”

He stood up for a closer look, hypnotized by the dazzling white of the glass lighthouse. He thought he had seen all of Annie’s work and he felt as if he’d just discovered another dimension of the woman he thought he’d known so well.

Mary followed his gaze to the window. “You’ll call me, then?” she asked.

He forced his eyes back to hers once more. “Yes,” he said, reluctantly turning to leave. “I’ll be in touch.”

He stopped by Olivia’s to pick up Lacey. He watched them hug on the front deck, a prolonged hug that made him feel oddly excluded.

“Thanks, Olivia.” Lacey picked up her duffel bag and headed toward the Bronco.

Alec smiled up at Olivia. “Thanks from me, too,” he said. “Any word from Paul?”

She shook her head. “I was very glad for Lacey’s company.”

He got into the Bronco and pulled out onto the road, while Lacey pushed the buttons on the radio, finally settling on a mind-numbing cacophony.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” She tapped her palms on her thighs in time with the music, and he noticed the watch.

He touched her wrist. “What’s this?” he asked.

She lifted her arm to look at the glittery face of the watch. “Olivia bought it for me,” she said. “I’m supposed to call her at midnight on the nights I go out.”

He frowned. “What for?”

“Just to let her know I’m okay.”

“That’s crazy. You’ll wake her up.”

“It was a contingency.” Lacey’s voice started to rise. “She would only buy me the watch if I agreed to call her.”

“Why do you want a watch all of a sudden? You’ve never wanted one before.”

“You wear one. What’s the big deal?”

He didn’t want to fight with her. In a few minutes they would walk into the house and feel Clay’s absence. They only had each other now.

He pulled into their driveway and turned off the ignition. He lifted her wrist so he could study the watch. “It suits you,” he said.

She pulled her hand away and made a face at him. “What is that supposed to mean?” She reached into the back seat for her duffel bag and got out of the Bronco, walking ahead of him toward the front steps.

“Lace.”

She swung around to glare at him.

“I like the watch on you. That’s all I meant.” He looked at her across the hood of the Bronco. “It’s just you and me, now, Lacey,” he said. “Let’s not start out on a sour note.”

“You started it. I was perfectly happy just listening to the radio. You’re the one who wanted to talk.” She stalked up the steps and into the house.

He called Olivia at nine, from the den, too annoyed with her to wait until ten-thirty. He didn’t want to feel all that close to her tonight.

“I’m upset about the watch,” he said.

“It wasn’t expensive.”

“It’s not the money.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “It’s not even the watch, actually. It’s this bit about her calling you at midnight. I’m capable of taking care of her, Olivia.”

Olivia didn’t answer right away. “She needs some…guidelines, Alec,” she said finally. “She needs to know you care enough about her to want to know what she’s doing.”

He shook his head. “I know the way this house has always been run strikes you as weird, but I’m not about to change it. If I started changing the rules on her now, she’d take off. She needs the familiar—the same structure she had when Annie was alive.”

“What structure? The two of you allowed her to do anything she wanted. She’s a child, Alec. She needs a parent.”

“So you’re taking it on yourself to be one for her, is that it? You spent one night with her, Olivia. That doesn’t make you her mother.”

Olivia was quiet and Alec closed his eyes, regretting his words. He was, he knew, a little jealous of her sudden, easy relationship with his daughter.

“I’m getting off,” Olivia said.

“Olivia, I…”

“Let’s just drop it, all right? Good-bye.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Lacey called her at midnight, four nights in a row, twice from home, twice from someplace else. Olivia woke up when the phone rang, groggy and a little nauseated, but she wasn’t about to tell Lacey not to call.

“My father says I don’t have to call you,” Lacey said on the first night. She was at a friend’s house, and Olivia could hear laughter and loud music in the background.

“Well, he’s right,” Olivia said. “You don’t have to, but I’d like it if you did so I don’t worry about you.”

“Okay,” Lacey said, easily. “I will.”

Alec had called her a couple of times since the night they’d argued about the watch. He’d apologized for blowing up, and she’d allowed the subject to die. Still, it had soured the air between them, just a little, just enough to keep her from feeling too close to him again. And that, she thought, was fine.

On the fifth night after Lacey started calling her, Olivia woke up automatically at midnight, reaching for the phone before she realized it hadn’t rung. Maybe Lacey had stayed home. Probably she had fallen asleep, safe and sound in her own bed. Olivia watched the neon-green numbers change on her night table clock. Finally, at twelve-thirty, the phone rang. She picked it up to hear Lacey sobbing on the other end, speaking unintelligibly. Olivia sat up in bed to give the girl her full attention.

“I think you’ve had too much to drink, Lacey.”

Lacey cried for a moment into the phone. There was a ripple of laughter in the background. “I’m scared,” she said finally.

“Of what?”

There was another pause while Lacey struggled for control. “I haven’t gotten my period.”

“Oh. How late are you?”

“I’m not sure. I lost track.”

“Where are you, Lacey? I’m coming to pick you up.”

Lacey didn’t resist. She gave Olivia a muddled set of directions to a house near Kiss River and said she would wait for her out front.

The road was nearly deserted, and Olivia was relieved when she finally spotted the beacon ahead of her in the darkness. She drove on slowly, knowing the horses were out here somewhere. She found the intersection Lacey had told her about and turned onto a road of packed sand, praying her car would not get stuck. She could just imagine being stranded out here in the middle of the night.

Lacey’s directions had been poor, but after a few hundred yards on the sand road, Olivia heard music. She followed the sound to a small white house, where Lacey sat alone on the concrete front stoop. She looked up as Olivia pulled into the grassy driveway, then started walking toward the car.

Olivia opened the door for her. She was clearly drunk, and her clothes smelled of beer and tobacco. It took her three attempts to get into the car, where she closed her eyes and rested her head back against the seat.

Olivia leaned over to snap Lacey’s seat belt in place. “Have you had anything besides beer?” she asked.

“Uh uh.”

“Have you gotten sick?”

Lacey nodded, her eyes opening to half mast. “Three times,” she whispered.

“Let me know if you’re going to get sick again so I can pull over.”

“Mmm.” Lacey closed her eyes again. She slept for most of the drive to Olivia’s house. Olivia set her up in the guest room, deciding there would be time in the morning to pursue Lacey’s concern about her late period. She went back to her own bedroom and called Alec.

“It’s Olivia, Alec. I’m sorry to wake you.”

“No problem,” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “What’s up?”

“I have Lacey here with me.”

“Why?”

“She was at a party and had too much to drink and she called me, very upset. So I picked her up and brought her here.”

She heard the heaviness of his breathing. She pictured him sitting bare-chested on the edge of his bed, rubbing his face, trying to wake himself up.

“I’ll come get her,” he said.

“No, don’t. She’s asleep. I’ll bring her home in the morning.”

“I don’t want you to have to go to all that trouble.”

“It’s all right. I’m off tomorrow. Go back to sleep, Alec. We’ll talk more about this in the morning.”

Lacey was pale and red-eyed the next morning. She sat at the table in her foul-smelling jeans and T-shirt, dumping spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee. She was sober and very quiet. Olivia put a plate of toast in front of her and sat down on the other side of the table.

“When you called last night, you said you were concerned that your period was late.”

Lacey looked up, startled. “I said that?”

Olivia nodded.

Lacey groaned and leaned back in the chair. “I can’t believe I told you that.”

“Do you know when you were due?”

Lacey shook her head back and forth against the chair, her eyes closed.

“Have you had sex since your last period?”

Lacey made a face, her cheeks reddening. “I can’t talk to you about that,” she said.

“Well, just tell me if there’s a possibility you could be pregnant.”

She nodded.

“We’ll go into the ER this morning and get a test done.”

Lacey opened her eyes and looked directly at Olivia. “Oh, God, Olivia, what if I am? I’d have to have it. I don’t think I could ever have an abortion. My mother would have killed me. She hated abortions. She said they were murder.”

“But you and your mother are different people.”

Lacey looked surprised by that thought. “Still,” she said, shaking her head, “I don’t think I could do it.”

“Let’s wait and see what we’re dealing with, Lacey. We don’t need to borrow trouble.”

They waited in Olivia’s office while Kathy Brash ran the test. Lacey did not want to talk. She sat in the chair by the window, playing with the cord from the blinds, and she jumped when the phone rang.

Olivia picked up the receiver.

“Negative,” said Kathy.

Olivia thanked her and got off the phone. She looked across her desk at Lacey.

“You’re not pregnant.”

Lacey covered her face with her hands and started to cry. “I was so scared,” she said. “It was just about all I could think of. I almost told you when I stayed over that night. I wanted to, but I thought you’d think I was a slut or something.”

Olivia shook her head. “I don’t think any less of you, Lacey.” She leaned forward on her desk. “Look at me,” she said.

Lacey lowered her hands to her lap and looked at Olivia.

“You have to tell your father.”

Lacey’s red eyes opened wide. “Tell him what?”

“That you thought you might be pregnant.”

“But I’m not. Why should I get him all upset? There’s absolutely no reason for me to tell him.”

“There’s a very good reason. He’s your father. He needs to know how serious things are with you.”

“What if I don’t tell him?”

“Then I will.”

Lacey jumped from the chair. “I thought I could trust you.”

“You can trust me to do whatever I feel is best for you.”

“Oh, God, you’re a bitch.” Lacey dropped to the chair again. “He’ll kill me, Olivia. He’ll…” She shook her head, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

Olivia stood up. “He needs to know, Lacey.” She took her car keys from her purse. “Let’s go.”

Lacey followed her with a heavy air of resignation. She stared out the window of Olivia’s car on the drive to Southern Shores, shooting occasional, evil-eyed looks in Olivia’s direction. “But I’m not even pregnant,” she’d growl. “I thought I could trust you.”

Lacey let herself into the house ahead of Olivia and brushed past her father on the way upstairs to her room. Alec looked expectantly at Olivia.

“Could we go in the den?” she asked.

He nodded, leading her into the den and taking his usual seat at the desk. She sat down at the work table.

“She was afraid she was pregnant,” Olivia said.

Alec looked surprised for an instant, then shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said.

“She’s not. I had her tested this morning at the ER. She knows I’m telling you this and she’s not happy about it, but I thought you needed to know.”

He nodded. “Christ.” He looked up at the ceiling, and when he spoke there was anger in his voice. “Okay, Annie,” he said, “so what would you do now?”

Olivia stood up. “Forget what Annie would do or what Annie would think or what Annie would feel. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Annie was wrong?” Olivia grabbed her purse from the work table and stalked to the door of the den, where she turned back to look at him. “Your barely fourteen-year-old daughter who’s been raising herself all these years thought she was pregnant. Forget about Annie. Lacey needs you right now. She needs Alec.”

She let herself out the front door, nearly knocking Tripod over in her rush to leave. From her car, she looked up at the window she knew was Lacey’s, wondering if in the last hour she had lost both Alec and his daughter.

Alec sat alone in the den for a long time, aware of the stillness in the house. She’s afraid of what it will be like when it’s just the two of you. Wasn’t that what her school counselor had told him? He rose to his feet and started up the stairs.

He knocked on the door and pushed it open. Lacey sat cross-legged on her bed, clutching a dark-haired china doll to her chest. She looked horrid, her two-toned hair uncombed, her cheeks tear-streaked. She smelled like stale beer.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said.

He sat down on the bed and pulled her into his arms, and for the first time in far too long she didn’t struggle to get away from him. She wept against his shoulder, her back shivering beneath his hands. He stroked her hair, afraid to speak, afraid his voice would give out.

Finally he drew away from her. He pulled a tissue from the box on her night table and held it to her nose.

“Blow,” he said, and she did. Then she looked up at him, with Annie’s blue eyes, waiting for him to speak.

“You must have been terrified to think you were pregnant,” he said.

She nodded, lowering her eyes quickly, and her tears flicked from her long lashes onto the back of his hand.

“Would it have been that boy’s? Bobby’s?”

She didn’t lift her head. “I don’t know whose it would have been.”

Something rolled over in his gut, and he struggled to keep his voice soft. “Oh, Lace,” he said, pulling her close again. He waited for her tears to stop before he finished his thought. “There are some changes we’re going to have to make,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I want you in at twelve on Friday and Saturday nights and ten on weekdays.”

She pulled away from him, staring at him in bruised disbelief. “Dad. It’s summer.”

“There’s still no reason for you to be out later than that. And I want to know where you’re going to be. I want phone numbers, and I want to meet the kids you’re going out with, too.”

“I knew you’d do this. You’re going to make me into a prisoner. You can’t keep me from having sex.”

“I know that,” he said quietly. “I wish you wouldn’t, though. You just don’t know—you can’t possibly understand what you’re doing. It should be special, Lacey. What’s it going to mean to you when you find someone you really love?”

“It meant something to Mom even though she did it when she was really young. She told me that with you she finally felt complete.”

Alec sighed. It seemed to him that Annie and her openness had a way of sabotaging every move he made with Lacey.

“Well, if you’re going to do it, you need to do it responsibly.” He stood up, frustrated. “But it’s really not a good idea to start on the pill so young. And you shouldn’t smoke if you take it…and, damn it, Lacey, why? You’re only fourteen. Is it because Jessica does it?”

“No.”

“Are you afraid the boys won’t like you if you say no?”

She looked down at her doll. “I don’t have any idea in the world why I do it.”

Her tone made him feel enormously sad. He took a step toward her bed and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Maybe you need to think about it a little, Lace, instead of just doing it.” He walked to the door and turned to face her again. “You can have anything you need in the way of birth control,” he said, “but please do me a favor and give it some thought. You’re too valuable to just give yourself away.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

There was no way out of it—Paul would have to speak to Mary Poor. His work was beginning to suffer. Sal Bennett, the editor of the Gazette, chastised him for being late with one article, inaccurate on another.

“Are you having some personal problems?” Sal asked, and Paul knew the obsession must show in his face. His thoughts were full of Annie, and of the girl he was coming to think of as his daughter.

He’d tried twice to get a look at her. He’d lurked in her neighborhood like a mad rapist, following her once to the beach, another time to the movies, where she’d sat with a boy who managed to slip his hand under her shirt sometime during the first hour, eliciting in Paul an unfamiliar paternal fury.

He’d held off on going to see Mary, hoping that by some sign from Lacey, some distinctive mannerism or familiar inflection in her voice, he would know the truth. Asking Mary required courage he did not have, but now that his job was being threatened as well as his sanity, he knew he could no longer put it off.

He found Mary at the retirement home, sitting as usual in one of the rocking chairs on the porch, the folded newspaper on the arm of the chair. She looked up as Paul sat down next to her.

“Where’s your recording machine?” the old woman asked.

“I don’t have it with me today,” Paul said, tapping his fingers on the arm of the rocker. “This isn’t an interview. I just have a few things I need to get straight with you.”

Mary rested the paper on her knees. “Such as?”

“Such as, exactly how well do you remember me?” He lowered his voice. “I mean, I guess you remember that I was Annie’s…friend, long ago.”

Mary nodded. “I can’t remember yesterday, sometimes, but I remember fifteen years ago well enough.”

“Then…do you remember the last time I was with Annie at your house at Kiss River? The day you kicked me out?”

“Yes.”

Paul sat on the edge of the chair, turning to face her. “I need to know…was she pregnant then? Is that why she wanted me to leave? She has a daughter who’s fourteen years old. Lacey. Is she my child?”

“What difference does that make? Annie’s husband is Lacey’s father now.”

“It makes an enormous difference. She may be the only child I’ll ever have, and she should know who her real father is.” He looked into the old woman’s clear blue eyes. “She’s mine, isn’t she?”

Mary lifted the paper to the arm of her chair again. “Think what you want,” she said, turning her attention back to the crossword puzzle.

Paul watched her for a moment before getting to his feet. He didn’t leave the porch, though, and after a while Mary looked up at him again.

“I can’t get free of her,” he said quietly. “Annie’s ruining my life.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Mary watched Paul Macelli drive away, knowing this was not the last time she would see him. He would not be able to rest until he knew the truth, and maybe one day she would have to tell him.

She could understand someone’s need to do all they could for a daughter. She had felt that way about Annie, and it had led her to aid and abet her in a way she had come to regret. You’re my savior, Mary, Annie had said to her more than once, but the truth was, she’d done Annie far more harm than good.

She remembered well the day she banished Paul from Kiss River, and she remembered even more clearly the events that occurred a few days after his leaving.

There’d been talk of a storm back then—a brutal one—and some of the residents of the Outer Banks had already packed up their most treasured possessions and moved inland. Mary listened to the radio off and on during the day, and by late morning they had withdrawn the warning. “Looks like it’s going to miss us completely,” said the meteorologist, a mixture of relief and disappointment in his voice.

Mary stared disgustedly at the radio as she put the kettle on to boil. Why did she even bother to listen? She opened the back door and stepped outside. The sky above the dunes was white, with no sign of the usual gulls or pelicans or geese, and the sea oats stood arrow-straight in the still, heavy air. The ocean had that ominous swollen look, the nearly black water billowing into waves that broke high up on the beach. Mary sniffed the air and shook her head once more. They were fools, she thought, all of them. Tomorrow they would defend themselves, talking about how unpredictable storms could be, how there was simply no way they could have known.

Inside once more, Mary brewed herself a pot of tea and set about preparing for what she knew was coming. Caleb had taught her what to do, just as he’d taught her how to read the wind and the water. Mary filled the lanterns with kerosene and set them on the kitchen table. She took three jugs from the cupboard and carried them upstairs, where she filled them with water and left them on the dresser in her bedroom. Then she placed the old rubber stopper in the drain of the clawfoot bathtub and turned on the faucet, all the while thinking of Annie. When she woke up this morning and opened her bedroom window, she knew the storm was well on its way, and she’d called to warn her.

“Don’t go today, Annie,” she’d said. “The storm will hit while you’re driving back.”

“They’re saying it’ll miss us.” Annie’s voice was soft, a little frightened, although Mary knew it wasn’t the storm she feared. “I have to go while I’ve got my courage up,” she said.

Mary offered to go with her, but Annie laughed at the suggestion. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” Mary could just imagine the burden a seventy-seven-yearold woman would have been on her today, but every time she thought of Annie trying to drive home in the state she’d be in, she wished anew that she’d refused to take no for an answer.

The rain started around four that afternoon, while Mary was struggling to board up windows. She had done it by herself all the years since Caleb’s death, but she was not as strong as she used to be, and she had only enough plywood for those downstairs windows that faced the ocean. That would have to do, she thought, exhausted from the work. She brought the hanging plants in from the porch and carried her old photograph albums up to the second floor. She checked all the windows, cracking a few, remembering Caleb’s voice as she did so: “Houses can explode during a hurricane,” he had said to her that first year they were married, and he’d gone on to tell her stories of houses that had done exactly that.

Mary made one last tour of the yard for anything she might have neglected to batten down before returning to the house, securing the front door behind her. Then she sat down in the rocking chair in front of the fireplace to wait.

She turned the radio on after a while, smiling ruefully as the meteorologist admitted his error and once again advised his listeners to evacuate, but her smile faded as she thought of Annie. Where was she now? Perhaps she’d heard the new warnings and would find someplace on the mainland to spend the night. Mary hoped so. She had suggested Annie take a room so she wouldn’t have to drive home, but Annie’d refused to even consider the idea. “I’ll be too anxious to get home to Alec and Clay,” she’d said. Mary didn’t see how she would be able to face her husband and child tonight. “I can do it,” Annie reassured her. “I’ll just say I have a bellyache and take to my bed for a day or two. Women do this all the time.”

She knew Annie, though. She knew it was not the physical pain that would crush her spirit.

The wind picked up suddenly. It whistled through the upstairs, and rain began to spike against the plywood on her windows. The lights inside the house flickered but stayed on. Mary stood in front of the window next to the fireplace and watched the world darken in a few seconds’ time, dark enough to trick the lighthouse into thinking it was dusk, and the beacon suddenly flashed to life. She could make out the frothy whitecaps of the ocean, swelling ever nearer to the lighthouse, licking hungrily at the dunes.

Then she saw the headlights of a car bouncing through the rain and darkness toward the house. The car pulled up within a few feet of the front porch, and only then could she make out that it was Annie’s. She grabbed her slicker from the coat rack and struggled to push open the front door. The wind ripped it from her hands and flung it against the house with a bang, and she had to grab hold of the railing to keep from being blown off the porch herself.

Annie was crying as Mary pulled the car door open. She managed to wrap the slicker around the younger woman’s shoulders and pull the hood up over her head as they ran from the car to the house. Mary tugged the front door shut, breathless from the effort. When she turned around, Annie was already sitting on the couch, hunched over, clutching the wet slicker around her. She was sobbing, her face buried in her hands. Mary left her alone as she went into the kitchen to put the kettle on once more. She took two cups out of the cupboard just as the lights went out, leaving the house as dark as the world outside.

“Mary?” Annie called from the living room. She sounded like a child.

“I’m lighting the lanterns,” Mary called back, fumbling on the kitchen table for the matches. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

She left one lantern glowing in the kitchen and carried the other into the living room. She looked out the window, but all she could see was blackness. Even the beacon could not tell her how close the water was, how soon they should move upstairs.

“I couldn’t go home,” Annie said. Her face was gray in the lantern light and her teeth chattered as Mary helped her take off the slicker. “I just couldn’t face Alec.”

“I should call him to let him know you’re all right,” Mary said.

Annie looked at the phone on the desk in the corner. “Maybe I’d better,” she said. “He’d think it’s weird if I don’t talk to him.”

Mary moved the phone to the sofa so Annie didn’t have to get up. She had to dial the number for her, Annie’s hands were trembling so fiercely.

“Alec?” Annie said. “I stopped by to make sure Mary was all right, but it’s gotten so nasty that I think I’d better just stay put.”

Mary watched Annie’s face. Her voice would not give her away, but if Alec could take one look at the pain in her eyes, he would know instantly what she had done. It was good she had not gone home.

“Can I speak to Clay?” Annie asked. “Oh. Well, that’s good. Maybe he’ll sleep through the whole thing… Yeah, we’re fine, just sitting here, drinking tea.” She laughed, but tears were streaming down her cheeks and she wiped at them ineffectually with the back of her hand. Mary felt the threat of her own tears, and she breathed deeply to hold them back. “Alec?” Annie said, twisting the phone cord around her fingers. “I love you so much.”

Annie hung up the phone and curled herself into a ball in one corner of the couch. She was shivering convulsively. Mary found a wool blanket in the chest in the downstairs bedroom and wrapped it around her. She brought Annie the tea, holding the cup while she sipped. Then Annie looked up at her.

“Oh, God, Mary,” she said. “What have I done?”

Mary sat down next to her. “Maybe there’s a lesson in this,” she said. “For you and me both. I’ve made it too easy for you. I’ve let you live out my own dreams, which were never meant to see the light of day. I’m just as guilty as you are.”

“Shh, Mary. Don’t talk about guilt.” Annie shook her head, kneading her hands together in her lap. There was no color at all in her face. “It hurt so much,” she said. “They said it wouldn’t be bad, but it was horrendous, and I deserved every single solitary ounce of the pain.”

“No, you didn’t,” Mary said. “You…”

Something crashed against the outside wall of the house and Annie jumped. “I don’t like this,” she said. She drew the blanket tighter around her shoulders as the wind whistled eerily through the room.

“We should go upstairs,” Mary said.

Annie was slow on the stairs, in more pain than seemed normal for such a thing. Mary settled her into the small bedroom she had come to think of as Annie’s. She watched as her young friend climbed into the bed, fully clothed and still shaking, covering her ears against the sound of the wind as it screamed through the upstairs rooms. She was beginning to babble, not making much sense at all, and her skin felt hot to the touch. Mary soaked a washcloth in cool water and bathed Annie’s face and hands. She would lace her next cup of tea with Southern Comfort.

“It’s stopped,” Annie said suddenly, sitting up in the bed to listen. Indeed, the rain had stopped. The wind was still, and when Mary looked out the window, she could see stars.

“Yes,” Mary said, shivering herself. She would let Annie believe what she wanted, although she knew it was only the eye of the storm passing over them. Soon it would all begin again.

By that time, though, Annie was asleep. Mary kept watch by her bed, sitting up the entire night, listening to the house strain at its roots.

Annie’s color was better in the morning, and the fever had broken. Mary left her sleeping while she surveyed the damage. Rain had swept under the doors and through the cracked windows, but otherwise everything inside was in one piece. The electricity was still out, and her phone had died sometime during the night. Outside, she found the crushed metal lid to a garbage can resting against her front porch. The shape of the beach had changed overnight, the sea oats closer to the water, the pitch of the sand steeper. The lighthouse looked unscathed, although she would have to check the lantern room later.

When she returned to the kitchen, she found Annie mopping the rainwater from the floor.

“Here,” Mary said, taking the mop from Annie’s hand. “You shouldn’t be doing that.”

Annie sat down weakly at the kitchen table, folding her white hands in her lap. “I dreamt last night it was Alec’s,” she said quietly.

Mary stopped mopping to look down at her. “Annie, you felt very certain it was Paul’s.”

Annie closed her eyes, nodded.

“Now, I admit I don’t know much about this topic,” Mary said, leaning on the mop, “but that diaphragm you’re using to keep from having babies just isn’t fail-proof enough for—” she hesitated, hunting for the words “—for someone like you.”

Annie ignored her. “I’m going to get pregnant again as soon as I can.”

Mary looked at her squarely. “You can’t bring that baby back.”

“I know,” Annie said in a small voice. “But I’m going to try. And this one will be Alec’s for sure.” She must have seen the doubt in Mary’s eyes, because she added, “I swear it, Mary. This one will be his.”

The crossword puzzle had fallen from Mary’s knees to the porch, and she did not bother to pick it up. She thought about Paul Macelli, still burdened by things that had happened so long ago. She thought of Annie, and of herself, and she knew that whatever lesson the three of them had learned back then had been all too quickly forgotten.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

There were a dozen yellow roses waiting for Olivia in the emergency room when she arrived for work Friday morning.

“Are they from Paul?” Kathy asked her, as Olivia opened the card.

You were right, and I was wrong—Alec.

Olivia smiled. “No,” she said, slipping the card into the pocket of her white coat. “They’re not.”

It had been just twenty-four hours since she’d left Alec and Lacey alone to hash out their differences without her. And without Annie. When Alec didn’t call her last night, she figured that either things had not gone well or he was angry with her for her tirade. It relieved her to see that neither was the case.

Mike Shelley called her later that afternoon. He wanted to take her out to dinner after her shift, he said. “Not a date,” he added, laughing. “My wife’s standing right here, ready to intervene. I just have something I want to talk with you about. Is seven okay?”

“Fine,” she said, wondering exactly what she was agreeing to.

He took her to a small seafood restaurant in Kitty Hawk and waited until their entrees were served before satisfying her curiosity.

“The personnel committee’s made its decision,” he said.

“Oh?” She could not tell from the tone of his voice whether she should smile or frown.

“It was hairy there for a while, but I think deep down each of us knew who we wanted. We held off making a decision until the whole Annie O’Neill fiasco had died down. We were all impressed with the way you handled that situation, Olivia. As Pat Robbins on the committee said, Olivia Simon knows how to keep her wits about her in and out of the ER.”

She smiled at him. “You’re saying I’ve got it if I want it?”

“Yes,” Mike said. He looked at her quizzically. “Do you have some doubts about taking it?”

Olivia looked down at her plate. “I’ve appreciated how you’ve stuck by me through everything, Mike. I want to be thrilled. I am thrilled, but at the same time…”

“What?”

“It’s my husband. He doesn’t want to stay here.”

“I thought…you’re separated, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I keep hoping…” She shrugged. “Well, I guess this will be the big test. I’ll tell him I’ve got the offer and see what happens. Maybe he and I need a crisis—we just plod along, not together, but not totally apart either. I suppose this will move us in one direction or another. May I have a few days to decide?”

“Absolutely.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’m not one of those people who thinks you should put career over family, Olivia, regardless of what sex you are. So whatever you decide, I’ll understand.”

“Thanks.”

“At the same time, though, you’re the one the ER needs. It’s going to expand—it’s got to—and we need someone there who can handle the changes.”

She felt a hunger in her that had been missing for a long time. There was a challenge in front of her, tempting her, waiting for her to grab it. She wished she could say yes and be done with it.

“Mike, there’s one more thing you should know.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m pregnant. The baby’s due in January.”

Mike’s eyes widened. “Wow.”

“I don’t intend to take much time off, if everything goes well. Maybe I should have told you before, but I…”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t change anything with regard to the offer.”

She smiled, relieved. “Good.”

“Well.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’m supposed to bring you home with me for some dessert when we’re through with dinner, on order of the director of my household. Okay with you?”

“I’d love it,” she said.

For the first time, Paul was looking forward to the meeting at Alec’s. It might give him a chance to really get a look at Lacey, and sure enough, she was standing in the kitchen with her father and Nola when he arrived. She was drinking a Coke from the can, and she looked at him with more than a passing interest when he walked into the room. Could she possibly know? Was there a chance Annie had told her something?

He said hello to the three of them, unable to take his eyes from Lacey’s face. He tried to imagine her without the Halloween hair. She was Annie, through and through. He could see no one else in her features; certainly there was no trace at all of Alec.

“Wine’s already in the living room, Paul,” Alec said as he walked past him, with Nola close on his heels.

“I’ll be there in a second,” Paul said. “I just want to get a glass of water.” He reached toward the cabinet over the sink and looked at Lacey, who had boosted herself onto the countertop. She was wearing a short, hot-pink T-shirt and white shorts. Her feet were bare. “Glasses in here?” he asked.

“Next one,” she said. “To your right.”

He filled the glass with water and took a long drink. Then he leaned back against the counter to study her. “I checked the notes I made when I interviewed your mother, Lacey, and for some reason she did say you were twelve.”

Lacey wrinkled her nose. “That is totally weird,” she said.

“Maybe she was a little nervous about being interviewed.”

The girl shook her head. “She never got nervous over anything.” She swung her bare legs out in front of her and studied her pink toenails. “Your wife is really nice,” she said.

He frowned at her. “How do you know… Oh. You met her at the hospital the night your mother died.”

“Yeah, but that’s not really how I know her.” Lacey took an annoyingly long drink from her can of soda, and when she finally set the can on the counter, there was a coyness in her smile. “Actually,” she said, “I talk to her every night.”

“To my wife? To Olivia?”

“Yeah. She insisted. See, what happened was, one night I slept over her house and…”

“You stayed at her house?”

“Uh-huh, and then she said I had to call her at midnight every night, and she somehow talked my father into making all these rules for me.” Lacey grinned, rather happily. “She’s positively wrecked my life, but she’s kind of hard to stay mad at.” She held up her hand to show him a black and silver watch. “She bought this for me.”

“Paul?” Alec called from the living room. “We’re about to get started.”

“I’ll be right there,” he called back, but he didn’t make a move toward the door. “Why did you sleep over her house?” he asked.

“Because my father had to take my brother to college and was going to be gone all night. So Olivia is, like, really close friends with my father and she said I could stay there.”

Paul stared at the cloisonné horse on the other side of the room. “I didn’t realize she was friends with your… I guess she’s helped him with the talks he gives on the lighthouse, right?”

“Well, they only did that once.” Lacey held the can to her lips again, leaning back to swallow the last of the soda. “They go out sometimes,” she continued. “You know, to dinner or whatever, and sometimes she comes over here at night to use my mother’s stained glass stuff.”

“Your mother’s…?”

Lacey let out an exasperated sigh. He must be sounding as dense as he felt. “Her stained glass stuff,” she said. “You know, her tools and things.”

There was laughter from the living room. Paul set the empty water glass in the sink, his hand shaking badly. He struggled to make his face unreadable as he turned back to Lacey.

“But Olivia doesn’t work with stained glass,” he said.

“God, you must not have seen her in a while. She takes lessons at my mother’s studio every Saturday morning from Tom Nestor. He’s the guy who…”

“I know who he is.” Paul tried to picture Olivia at Annie’s work table in the studio. He tried to imagine her out to dinner with Alec, laughing with him, telling him…what? She’d been here at Alec’s house. Annie’s house. Playing mother to Annie’s daughter.

“Paul?” It was Nola this time, an irked quality to her voice.

“I’d better go,” he said.

“Yeah,” Lacey grinned. “You don’t cross Nola Dillard and live to talk about it.”

He knew the moment he sat down on the sofa that he could not stay. His confusion was turning to anger. What the hell did Olivia think she was doing?

Alec was talking about the upcoming tour of the keeper’s house, now scheduled for the following Tuesday.

“Alec?” Paul interrupted him, standing up, and everyone raised their eyes to him.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said, “but I’m going to have to leave. I’m not feeling well. I thought I could make it through the meeting, but…” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you want to lie down for a while?” Alec asked.

“I have some aspirin,” Sondra Carter offered.

“Is it something you ate?” Nola asked.

“No.” He began backing away from them, the color rising in his face. “I’m sure I’ll be all right once I’m out in the fresh air.”

They were quiet as he walked the few steps to the front door and let himself out. Once outside, he wondered what they were saying about him. Probably not much. They would probably just get on with the meeting, and later Alec would call him to make certain he was all right. That would be exactly like Alec. He wondered what kind of sympathy and understanding he’d been giving Olivia these past couple of months.

He drove south toward Kitty Hawk, fifteen miles over the speed limit, trying to think of what he would say to her when he finally saw her face-to-face. Anything he said was sure to come out as a growl. There was no way he could do this calmly.

The house was dark when he arrived, her car gone. Damn. He was ready. He was bursting to have this out with her.

He sat down on the front deck. Where was she? Who was she off with tonight? Maybe she was at the Battered Women’s Shelter. He could go over there. He closed his eyes, smiling ruefully at the image of yet another irate husband creating a stir at the shelter.

He sat on the deck for nearly an hour before he gave up and drove home to his little cottage in South Nags Head. He would find her in the morning. Saturday morning. Lacey had told him where she would be.

Olivia arrived home around ten. She thought of calling Paul to tell him about Mike’s offer, but she needed time to think it through herself. Besides, she did not look forward to talking to Paul these days.

She had just gotten into bed when Alec called.

“The roses are beautiful, Alec,” she said. “Thank you.”

“I really owe you for your help with Lacey,” he said. “It changed things overnight. She’s talking to me, and I suddenly feel as though I have some control in my house.”

“She’s basically a good kid.”

“I know that.” He sighed. “This morning she told me she doesn’t want to do anything about birth control, that she doesn’t want to have sex again for a while. I don’t know if that’s realistic, though. Once a kid starts, how does she stop?”

“If she’s getting more from you, maybe she won’t need so much attention from guys at parties.”

“I hope you’re right.” He was quiet for a moment. She thought she could hear him stretching, turning, and she knew he was in bed. “Well,” he said, “how are you doing?”

“I was offered the director position tonight.”

“You’re kidding! Why didn’t you call me the second you heard? That’s fantastic, Olivia.”

She could see the moon from her bed. It was nearly full and surrounded by stars. “I’m afraid to tell Paul. It’s going to bring things to a head.”

“He didn’t stay for the meeting tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“He just came for a few minutes and then left. He said he wasn’t feeling well.”

“Did he say what was wrong?”

“He didn’t offer any details. When are you going to tell him about the job?”

“Sometime tomorrow. I need to think about what I really want before I talk to him.”

Alec was quiet for a moment. “I wish you’d take it,” he said. She heard him draw in a long breath and let it out again. “Olivia,” he said, “are you in bed?”

“Yes.”

“You know…sometimes I want to say things to you that I’m not sure I should say.”

“Like what?”

“Well, that I appreciate you and admire you. That I miss you when I haven’t seen you for…”

Her beeper went off, and he stopped talking.

“I heard that,” he said. “I’d better let you go.”

Olivia closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I have to go to the studio tomorrow to pick up the oval window and make an enlargement of a print. Could you have lunch after your lesson?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”

She hung up the phone and called the ER. There’d been a fire in one of the soundside cottages in Kitty Hawk. Three burn victims were coming in. Expected time of arrival: ten minutes.

She quickly got out of bed and pulled on her pink and white striped jersey dress. She brushed her teeth, ran a comb through her hair. It wasn’t until she was in her car on the way to the ER that she allowed herself to think about Alec.

She wished he’d gotten to finish what he’d started to tell her.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow at lunch.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Through the studio door, Olivia saw Alec and Tom standing by the work table. Tom was taping the small oval window between two pieces of cardboard, and Alec was laughing. They looked up when she opened the door.

“Morning, Olivia,” Tom said, as he set the packaged window down on the table. “I have to give Alec a hand in the darkroom, so go ahead and get set up here and I’ll be back in a minute.”

Alec didn’t say a word to her, but he didn’t need to. The warmth in his smile said enough.

Olivia sat down at the table and pulled the piece of glass she’d been working on from her tote bag. She would need Tom’s help on this. She’d already destroyed two pieces of glass trying to make this particular shape.

She cut out the pattern piece with her three-bladed scissors and had just glued it to the glass when Tom came out of the darkroom. He sat down next to her, and laughed when she told him the problem she was having with the cut.

“Well, you’re trying to do something impossible here,” he said, pulling a piece of scrap glass from the pile on his desk. He showed her a different way to score the glass, and she was attempting to follow his instruction when the studio door suddenly burst open. Olivia looked up to see Paul charging toward her, his face red, his eyes angry, and she dropped her hands from the glass to her lap.

“I don’t believe this,” Paul said, his voice far too loud. “I heard you were doing this, but I thought it couldn’t possibly be true.”

She glanced toward the darkroom. Alec must have heard Paul’s voice, because he opened the door a few inches. Olivia could just make out the frown on his face.

“Stained glass, Olivia?” Paul had his hands on the work table, and he leaned toward her, his face inches from hers. “The Battered Women’s Shelter? Taking care of Annie’s daughter? What are you trying to do, turn yourself into her?”

“Paul…” Olivia stood up, trying to think of the words that would put an end to his outburst, that would erase what he had already said, but her voice wouldn’t work. Everything in the room seemed frozen. Next to her, Tom had stopped breathing, and Alec stood fast in the doorway of the darkroom, his hand locked on the knob. Only Paul moved, his arms thrashing in the air, his face tinted blue one minute, yellow the next.

“I hear you’re great friends with her husband,” he said. “Are you sleeping with him too, Olivia? Are you doing it in Annie’s bed?”

“Stop it, Paul.” Olivia’s voice was a whisper compared to his. “You have no right to…”

Paul stalked toward the door, but whipped around once more to face her. “You think I’m nuts,” he said. “What you’re doing is sick, Olivia. Really crazy.” He turned on his heel and stamped out of the studio, slamming the door behind him. The stained glass panel hanging from the door swung loose for a moment, and Olivia cringed as it crashed against the door knob, splintering several of the small pieces of glass..

She sat down again as a stillness filled the studio, a silence so complete that when she began turning her ring on her finger, she could hear the faint chafing sound it made against her skin.

Alec pushed the darkroom door open and stepped into the room. “It was Annie,” he said. “The other woman, right? Paul’s obsession?”

She looked up at him. His smile was gone. There was an iciness in the faded blue of his eyes. “Yes,” she said.

“You told me you were trying to be more like her, like the other woman. You used me, Olivia.”

She shook her head.

“Paul used me too, didn’t he? He got to see Annie’s house and…the oval windows, and the pictures in the den. Jesus.” Alec pounded his fist on the work table. “He picked my brain about her. You did too.” He raised his voice an octave to imitate her. “‘What was she really like, Alec?’ You had me spilling my guts to you.”

“Alec, I know it must look that way, but…”

“Well, I’ll tell you something, Olivia.” He was standing right in front of the table, and she forced herself to look up into his eyes. “If you were trying to be like Annie, you’ve failed miserably. You’ll never be anything like her, and I’m not just talking about your lack of artistic talent.” He lifted the graph paper on which she had carefully drawn the design of hot-air balloons and crumpled it between his fists before throwing it to the floor. “I’m talking about the way you lie and deceive and manipulate. Annie was always open, always honest. She couldn’t have lied if her life depended on it.”

She could see nothing except the anger in Alec’s eyes. The rest of the room had blurred, darkened.

Alec picked up the wrapped oval window from the work table and looked down at Tom. “I’ll come back for the enlargement tomorrow,” he said. “Right now I need to get out of here.”

Olivia watched him leave, and then she was alone with Tom, uncertain how to break the silence.

“You know,” he said, his voice very soft after Alec’s rage, “I knew Paul had more than a casual interest in Annie. I’d be in here sometimes when he’d come in to talk to her, and it would be obvious. Annie thought it was my imagination, but I, uh…” He ran his big hand over his face, as though he suddenly felt very weary. “Well, let’s just say I understood how Paul felt.”

He pulled a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it before he continued. “After she died, he couldn’t stop buying her work. He spent a small fortune. I’d try to slow him down, but he had one thing on his mind, and that was Annie. I didn’t think you knew, though, so I kept my mouth shut about it.”

He took a drag on the cigarette and looked toward the front door. “In all the years I’ve known Alec, I’ve never seen him that angry. I should remind him that he’s the one who asked you to go to lunch with him. I was a witness, remember? It wasn’t like you went after him.”

Tom’s voice was soothing, the odor of tobacco in his hair and on his clothes, suddenly comforting. She wanted to rest her head on his shoulder, close her eyes.

He stood up to retrieve the crumpled graph paper Alec had thrown on the floor. “So,” he said, as he sat down again, spreading the paper flat on the table. “Are you still interested in stained glass or was that just an attempt to be more like Annie?”

Olivia turned her eyes away from the simplistic design. It suddenly looked like a drawing in a coloring book. She stood up and began packing her belongings into the tote bag. “I was interested,” she said, “but I guess I’m not very good at it.”

“He’s just angry, Olivia.” Tom stood up, too. He lifted the tote bag to her shoulder, squeezed her hand. “Even Annie had to start somewhere.”

She drove directly to Alec’s house, and she could not have said if she was relieved or chagrined to see the Bronco in the driveway.

Lacey answered the door. “Olivia!” She grinned.

“Hi, Lacey. I need to see your father.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Lacey said. “He came home a while ago with a real attitude.”

“I know, but I need to talk to him.”

“He’s around the side,” Lacey pointed out the door. “He’s putting in the little window.”

She thanked Lacey and walked around to the side of the house. Alec was working on the window, at about the height of his chest. He glanced toward her as she approached, but that was all it was—a glance—and he said nothing to make the next few minutes easier on her. Last night he had told her he missed her, he admired her, and he had been about to tell her more. He had to feel like a fool.

She stood next to him in the sand. “Please let me talk to you,” she said.

He didn’t answer. He was caulking around the small, delicate window, and he didn’t bother to take his eyes from his task. “Oh, Alec, please don’t be angry with me.”

He looked at her. “Can you possibly blame me?”

She shook her head. “I want to explain, but it’s…so complicated.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to believe a word you say, anyway.” He ran his finger over the caulk.

“I couldn’t tell you,” she said. “In the beginning, there didn’t seem much point to it and I thought it would only…disturb you. Then you started working with Paul. How could I possibly tell you then?”

He didn’t answer, and she continued. “Yes, I wanted to understand Annie better. Paul idolized her, you loved her, Tom Nestor thought the sun rose and set on her, the people at the shelter—everyone—adored her. I wanted to understand what she had that I didn’t. I wanted to know what made her so special in Paul’s eyes that he would…that after nearly ten years of a good marriage he could suddenly forget I existed.”

Alec looked out at the sound, where a speedboat was pulling a water skier smoothly across the water, close to the pier. Then he took a rag from his jeans pocket and focused on the window again, carefully wiping a smear of caulk from the yellow dress of the woman in the glass.

“Annie seemed like such a wonderful person,” Olivia said, fighting for his attention. “I did want to be more like her. I wanted to be generous and talented. That’s why I started working at the shelter, but now I truly enjoy it, Annie or no Annie. And that’s why I started doing stained glass, but I enjoy that, too, even if I’m not turning out any masterpieces.” She gestured toward the oval windows. “I’ve never had a…a hobby before. I’ve never take the time to…” She dropped her hand to her side, frustrated, as Alec crouched down in the sand to clean the nozzle of the caulk gun. Had he heard a word she’d said?

“I didn’t ever use you, Alec. Not intentionally. You came to me first, remember? And I know Paul wasn’t using you, either. He’s always been fascinated by the Kiss River Lighthouse. He had no idea you were involved on the committee, and he almost quit when he found out.”

Alec suddenly stood up and looked her straight in the eye. “You told me bold-faced lies, Olivia,” he said. “You said the woman Paul was interested in had moved to California.”

“What could I say?”

“The truth, maybe, or was that out of the question?” He wiped his hands on the rag. “The night Annie was in the ER…” He closed his eyes, and deep lines appeared between his brows, as if he were in pain. She touched his shoulder, but he shook her hand away as he opened his eyes again. “You knew who she was that night, didn’t you?” he asked. “You knew while you were working on her. You knew she was the reason Paul left you.”

“Yes,” she said, “I knew who she was, but Paul didn’t leave me until that night. He went crazy when I came home and told him that she died.”

“You can’t tell me you didn’t feel some joy right then? That she was dead?”

Olivia sucked in her breath, and the tears she’d been holding in for the last hour spilled onto her cheeks. “Is that the kind of person you think I am?” She turned to leave but he caught her arm, his fingers pressing hard against her wrist.

“I don’t have any idea what kind of person you are,” he said. “I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do. You know things about me I’ve never been able to tell anyone except Paul. I’ve felt close to you. I’ve felt…attracted to you.” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “Paul once told me that his relationship with Annie was hopeless because she loved you too much,” she said. “I’m not sure if I’m any closer to understanding why Paul fell in love with Annie, but I understand why Annie would love you, Alec. I understand that completely.”

She turned to leave, and this time he let her go.

She was in bed at ten, but she could not sleep. The baby was as restless as she was tonight. His featherlike flutters seemed frenzied, unending, and every time she changed position in the bed, he let her know of his displeasure.

She’d heard nothing from Paul, and she was not yet ready to initiate a conversation with him herself. But Alec. What more could she do—short of hurting him with the truth of Paul and Annie’s brief liaison—to make him understand? Ten-thirty came and went, and she lifted the receiver of the phone to her ear to be certain it was working.

At quarter to eleven there was a knock on her front door. She slipped her robe over her cotton nightgown and walked downstairs to the dark, silent living room. She turned on the front light and peered out the window to see Alec standing on the deck, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

She pulled open the door. His smile was uncertain. “I was going to call you,” he said, “but thought I’d stop over instead.”

She stepped back, and he walked past her into the living room. She closed the door and leaned back against it, tightening the sash of her robe.

“I was overwhelmed this morning, Olivia,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

It was so dark in the room she could only make out the whites of his eyes, the white stripes of his rugby shirt. She didn’t want to turn on a light, though, didn’t want him to be able to read her face all that easily tonight.

“I was wrong to keep things from you,” she said. “I’ve been walking a fine line between you and Paul. I omitted a fact or two when I spoke to you, and then another fact or two when I spoke to him. Then, suddenly, it all snowballed on me. I am not deceptive, Alec. I’m not generally a liar.”

He was quiet for a second or two. “No,” he said. “I don’t think you are.”

Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and she saw the sadness in his smile.

“How did Paul know?” she asked. “How did he figure out what I was doing?”

“Lacey, I think. He was talking to her before the meeting last night. That’s probably why he left right away.” He ran a hand over his chin. “Poor Annie,” he said. “She was so down for those few months before she died. Now I’m wondering if Paul was part of the reason—if he was hassling her in some way.”

Olivia caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I think he may have been, Alec.”

He frowned. “Do you think he was trying to get her to sleep with him?”

She shrugged, looking away from him, as though considering the possibility. “I guess only Paul could answer that question.”

Alec walked to the front door and looked out toward the street. “Why didn’t she tell me he was bothering her?” he asked, his voice rising. “I asked her over and over again what was wrong. I hated it when she’d get like that. It scared me, she seemed so…lost inside herself.” Alec seemed lost himself. He was no longer in this room with her. “I asked her to let me help her, I begged her, but she…” He shook his head. “Oh, hell,” he said tiredly. “What does it matter at this point?”

Olivia rested her hand on the back of the rattan chair. “Why don’t you sit down?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to sit down.” He took a few steps toward her and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her head against his shoulder. He smelled of his familiar aftershave, and she closed her eyes. They stood that way for a long time. Minutes. She felt a little dizzy with her eyes closed, a little high, and she let the feeling build, let it consume her until she needed to hold on to him to keep herself upright.

After a while, Alec lowered his hands to her hips and pulled her gently against him, against his rock-hard erection. She thought of freeing it, taking it in her hands, her mouth. She locked her fingers behind his back to keep them from drifting down to his belt.

“What is it about this room?” Alec spoke softly in her ear. “It always seems to have this effect on me.”

She untied her robe and opened it so there was one less piece of cloth between her body and his, and when she pressed against him once more, she could feel her own heartbeat pulsing low in her belly. Maybe she should say something. Maybe she should tell him she wanted this, she wanted him. No doubt Annie had been a verbal lover.

“Olivia,” he said. “Where’s your bedroom?”

She drew away from him and took his hand, leading him up the stairs, down the hallway, and by the time they’d reached the dark refuge of her room, she had lost control. She sat down on the edge of her bed and turned to unzip his jeans, drawing her hands inside and bringing his erect penis to her lips.

Alec caught his breath. “Christ, Olivia.” His fingers combed through her hair, down the nape of her neck and up again, while she worked feverishly at his body. She barely heard him when he asked her to stop. The request was gentle, almost polite, and he repeated it as he pulled away from her.

She was shaking, uncertain if she had done something wildly inappropriate in his eyes, or if he was about to leave her again. He would tell her they were both too vulnerable. Walk out her door. She looked up at him. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

He sat down next to her on the bed, his arm around her shoulders. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “You just surprised me. I wasn’t expecting…that, exactly, and it’s been a very long time for me. If you were to keep on doing what you were doing, it would all be over in seconds, and I’m not that anxious to get this over with.” He stroked his fingers over the skin beneath her eyes. “Why are you crying?”

She touched her fingertips to her eyes and felt the wetness. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

He leaned over to kiss her, softly—too softly; she could not tolerate moving this slowly—and she deepened the kiss with her tongue as she turned to straddle his thigh.

Alec ran his hands under her nightgown, up her thighs. He leaned back to look up at her. “Are you always like this?” he asked. “Or is it just that you’ve gone without for too long?”

“I’m always like this,” she said, tugging his rugby shirt out of his jeans.

He laughed, shifting her off his thigh and back to the bed. He stood up, and she watched him as he undressed. Her curtains let in the pool of moonlight reflected off the sound, and she could see the distinct lines on his body, separating dark from light, the public Alec from the private. His stomach was tight and ridged with muscle, and she imagined his erect penis was still glistening from her attempt to please him.

She rose to her knees on the bed and took off her robe, but when she reached for the hem of her nightgown, he caught her hands.

“Leave it on,” he said, closing his arms around her.

He didn’t want to see her body. She imagined how her rounded belly would look to him in the white light of the moon.

Alec bent down to take the hem of the nightgown in his own hands. He lifted it up, his palms running slowly over her thighs and hips. The cotton caught softly on her nipples as he raised the nightgown over her breasts, then over her head, until she stood as she had weeks earlier, naked and ready in his arms. He began kissing her again, and now there was a hunger, a heat in his mouth that she welcomed, that she shared. He stroked her body as they kissed, his hands skimming over her shoulders, her breasts, her hips. He slipped his hand between her legs, and despite the fact that he had seemed driven only seconds earlier, his fingers were tender as first they probed, then began stroking her, so softly that she groaned and pressed against his hand for more.

“Sit down,” he said, and she lowered herself to the bed. He laid her back on the blanket and then knelt by the side of the bed, drawing her legs over his shoulders and letting his mouth finish the work of his hands. She understood immediately what he had meant about it being over too quickly. It had been so long since she’d been touched this way, this intimately. Her orgasm was sudden, and almost unbearably intense, bringing with it a fresh rash of tears she didn’t understand.

He lifted her more fully onto the bed and was quickly inside her, pinning her beneath him in a way that gave her one brief, irrational moment of panic, that made her wonder if he was still angry. No. The thrusting of his body was careful and controlled, and it felt good. Very good. He moved in a way that was new to her, with a depth and pressure that took her straight back to a climax and renewed her weeping as she wrapped her legs around him to spur him on to his own release.

The stillness of the room was nearly overwhelming after the frenzied activity of the last few minutes. She tried to keep the sound of her tears out of her breathing. She did not want him to know. He had touched her everywhere. He had explored her body in intimate ways, yet he had carefully avoided her stomach, carefully avoided the evidence of her husband.

She turned her head to kiss his jaw. He was so still, so quiet.

He lifted himself from her before she was ready to lose him, briefly touching his lips to her forehead as he slipped out of her and rolled onto his back. His semen seeped from her body to the blanket, and the cool air of the house hit the dampness of her skin and made her shiver.

“Alec?” she said softly.

He found her hand in the darkness and held it on his stomach. “I didn’t leave a note for Lacey,” he said. “I should probably get going.”

He sounded empty. She closed her eyes. “What was this all about?” she asked quietly, forcing the words past the tightness in her throat. “Why did you come here tonight? Was it vengeance? Were you using me because you thought I used you?”

He raised himself up on his elbow to look at her. The reflected moonlight filled his eyes, made them look like translucent glass, blue marbles. “Did you feel used?” he asked. “Is that how it felt to you?”

She shook her head. “But you seem very distant. You seem…let down, as though it was Annie you wanted and Olivia you got, and I just don’t measure up in bed any more than I did in her studio.”

“Olivia,” he said, his voice a quiet reprimand. He smoothed her hair back from her face.

She drew the edge of the blanket over her breasts. “When Paul and I made love back in April, he told me he had to imagine I was Annie before he could…feel anything. I thought maybe that’s what you were doing, and then…”

Alec interrupted her. “Oh, Olivia,” he said, smiling. He shifted a little on the bed so there was more blanket for her, and he tucked it beneath her shoulders. “Do you ever have it wrong. Want to hear how wrong you have it?”

She nodded.

He lifted her hand to his lips, and the moonlight shimmered in the gold braid of his wedding ring. “For the past month or so, when I try to think about Annie, you always get in the way. I’d try to remember making love to her, and the only image I get in my mind is of that night in your living room.”

“Then why are you suddenly so distant? Why do you want to leave?”

He didn’t answer right away.

“Is it the baby?” she asked.

He nodded. “Partly, yes.” He sighed and rolled onto his back again, looking up at the ceiling. “Everything’s wrong about this, Olivia. Everything. Here we are, making love in your husband’s bed. He could come over here any second. What would I do then? Hide in the closet? Climb out the window?”

“Paul and I are separated, Alec.”

“It makes me feel…sleazy.”

Olivia winced. She did not feel sleazy. She felt no guilt at all.

“Paul still loves you. You can see that, can’t you? If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have been so angry when he saw you in the studio,” Alec said. “He wouldn’t care that much. It’s Paul who should be here in this bed with you, not me. This is just plain wrong.” He let go of her hand. “But that’s still not all of it.”

He stood up and began to dress. Olivia pulled herself up to sit against the headboard of the bed. When he’d zipped his jeans he sat back on the bed and looked over at her. “Annie’s been gone such a short time,” he said. “Just eight months. After nearly twenty years, eight months is nothing. I’m still too much…Annie’s husband, and I feel as though I’m betraying her somehow.” He chuckled, but the clear blue of his eyes had clouded over. “This sounds a little…I don’t know, melodramatic, I guess, but a few years ago Annie had to have surgery and she thought she might die. She asked me to promise that if she died, I wouldn’t get involved with anyone for at least a year. She needed to know she was so well-loved that I couldn’t even consider seeing someone else.” He smiled at the memory. “Well, of course I never thought she’d die. Even if she did, I couldn’t imagine being able to care enough about another woman to get involved again for a very long time. When I came over here tonight, I put memories of Annie out of my mind, but when we finished making love, it just hit me. Wham.” He looked out at the sound. “I can see her face. I can remember her asking me…” He shook his head quickly, then looked over at her. “See what I mean?” He smiled. “It’s just too soon for me, Olivia.” He stood up again, picking up his rugby shirt from her dresser, and Olivia wiped the tears from her face while his back was turned.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he straightened the collar of his shirt. “I didn’t mean to use you any more than you meant to use me.” He sat on the edge of the bed again to put on his tennis shoes. “I’m going to call Paul tomorrow, just to clear the air. He and I are into this lighthouse thing too deeply for either of us to just walk away from it. And I want you to tell him about the baby. Please, Olivia. For my sake, all right?” He finished tying his shoes and looked over at her. “Because once he knows, it will straighten him out. He’ll want you back. We both know that, and once you’re back with him, I’ll be able to get on with my life without thinking about you every damn minute of the day. Will you tell him?”

Her voice was thick when she answered. “As soon as he’s calmed down enough to hear it,” she said, knowing she would not want to tell him even then, because Alec was right. Once Paul knew, he would want her back, but she was not at all certain that she wanted him.

“Make that very soon, okay?” Alec stood up and walked to the door, where he stopped and looked back at her. He had stepped out of the moonlight and he was no more than a shadow in the doorway.

“I’ve been thinking lately that maybe Annie was wrong about some things,” he said softly. “She was such a powerful person—such a charismatic person—that I went along with her whether I agreed with her or not. It was just…easier. I always found her endearing—her wackiness, her disorganization, the way she could never get anywhere on time. You are entirely her opposite, Olivia. There’s no way you could ever be like her, don’t you see that? I’ve appreciated all those things in you that are unlike her. Sex with you was different. I knew it would be. You actually like it.” She could not see him, but she heard the smile in his voice. “I feel guilty that I appreciate that in you, because then I have to admit that maybe things weren’t as good with Annie as I tried to make myself believe they were.” He paused. She heard the air conditioner come on, felt the cool shaft of air on her throat.

“I’m rambling,” Alec said. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think I at least owe her the year I promised her. And you owe it to Paul to tell him he’s going to be a father.” He paused again, and she hugged her knees to her chest. “You’re very quiet,” he said.

“I love you, Alec.”

She followed his dark shadow as he walked toward her, as he slipped back into the light, real again. He leaned down to kiss her, his lips light and warm against her own. Then he turned and left the room.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Lacey was asleep when he got home. She had been sticking to her curfew. Friday night she didn’t even go out. Olivia had been right. Although Lacey offered verbal protests, she seemed to welcome the restrictions on her freedom. He’d hear her on the phone, complaining to her friends. “My dad won’t let me stay out that late,” she’d tell them, a sort of perverse pride in her voice.

It was nearly one. Really too late to talk to Paul, but he would not be able to sleep until he did. He needed to have this discussion behind him. He went to the den for his address book and sat down at the desk to dial Paul’s number.

“Hello?” Paul sounded wide awake. Alec heard music in the background. Something instrumental. Classical.

“It’s Alec, Paul, and it’s one o’clock in the morning, so let me start by apologizing if I woke you up.”

“I’m awake,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

Alec laughed. “That’s an understatement.” He flipped idly through the pages of his address book while he spoke. “Look,” he said, “you need to know that I was at the studio when you came in this morning. I heard everything you said.”

There was silence on Paul’s end of the phone, and Alec continued.

“I wish you’d been honest with me,” he said. “You had a thing for Annie. I would have understood. She was very easy to have a thing for.”

“Did…had Olivia already told you that?”

“No. She’d told me you left her because you were in love with someone you couldn’t have. She never told me who it was.”

“Did she… What did she tell you? I mean, did she explain to you that it was just…”

“Relax.” He felt sorry for Paul. “She told me it was platonic, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Paul was quiet for a minute. “You were lucky to be married to her,” he said. “I’m jealous of you for that.”

“You have nothing to be jealous about. Olivia’s a wonderful person. She’s pulled my family back together.” He remembered Paul asking Olivia if she had slept with him. He hoped the question did not come up now.

“I don’t understand what got into her, with the stained glass and all,” Paul said. “That’s so unlike her. She really went off the deep end.”

“If you think she’s behaved strangely, maybe you need to take a look at yourself. You left her because you had a crush on a dead woman, for Christ’s sake.” He looked at the picture of Annie on the wall above his desk. She was sitting on a split rail fence, winking at him, grinning. “Have a little compassion, okay?” he continued. “Olivia was so upset when you walked out that she would have tried anything to get you back.”

Paul sighed. “I haven’t been able to get Annie out of my mind.”

“Annie’s dead, Paul, and I’m the widower. You have a wife who’s alive and beautiful and who still cares about you. You’re throwing away something that’s real for something that doesn’t exist.”

“I know that,” he said quietly.

He’d come to the S’s in his address book, and he let his fingers pause there, on Olivia’s name. “There’s something Olivia needs to tell you,” he said.

“What?”

“Just talk to her. Tomorrow.” He yawned, suddenly tired. “And by the way, don’t forget that Mary Poor’s giving you and Nola and me a tour of the keeper’s house Tuesday morning.”

“You still want me on the committee?”

“Of course.”

Paul hesitated. “Someone else could write up the part about the keeper’s house.”

“No one on the committee writes the way you do. I’ll see you about nine then?”

“All right.”

Alec was exhausted when he got off the phone. He fell into bed, but could not sleep. Olivia’s scent was still on him, and for some reason every time he closed his eyes he saw her in the emergency room, telling the man with the lacerated arm that the ER was not a McDonald’s. The memory made him laugh out loud.

He should never have gone to her house tonight. He knew what would happen—he’d intended it to happen. He hoped Olivia could have her soul-baring talk with Paul without throwing in that minor detail. It was one thing to covet a man’s wife; it was quite another to sleep with her.

He woke up tired in the morning, his sleep interrupted by nightmares about the lighthouse and fantasies of Olivia. He got out of bed and frowned into the bathroom mirror. It had been a while since he’d seen those dark circles around his eyes. He looked like someone out of a horror movie, someone haunted.

Downstairs, he took Annie’s tool case from the closet in the den and carried it into the kitchen, setting it by the back door. Then he poured himself a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee.

He had to see the lighthouse today. He needed more pictures of it before they moved it, because once it was moved it wouldn’t be the same. The view would be different. The air around the gallery wouldn’t smell the same. It wouldn’t feel the same.

He opened the drawer next to the refrigerator and took out the stack of lighthouse pictures. It had been many weeks since he’d looked through them. He propped them up against his juice glass and sat down to eat.

“Dad?”

He looked up to see Lacey in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Hi, Lace,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure. Why?”

“You look…I don’t know.” She sat down at the table and hugged her arms across her chest. Her eyes fell to the photographs on the table. “Why do you have them out?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, lifting the top picture, one he had taken from inside the lens itself. The landscape was upside down in the curved glass. “I was looking through them to see if I’ve missed anything. I want to make sure I’ve got every angle of it before they move it.”

Lacey scrunched up her face. “You have every possible angle anybody could ever have, Dad.”

Alec smiled. “Maybe.”

Lacey took an orange from the fruit bowl in the middle of the table and began rolling it back and forth between her hands. “Do you want to do something today?” she asked.

He looked across the table at her, surprised. “What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Anything. You can choose.”

“Do you want to go to the lighthouse with me?”

“Dad.” She looked bruised, and he thought she was going to cry. “Please don’t start going there all the time again. Please.”

“I haven’t been in a long time, Lacey.”

“I know. So why do you have to go today?” She did start crying now. She raised her feet to the chair and hugged her legs to her chest. The orange rolled off the table and she didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I get up this morning and all of a sudden everything’s, like, gone back the way it was.”

“What do you mean, back the way it was?”

Her eyes had found Annie’s tool case by the door. “Why is that there?” she asked, pointing.

“I’m going to drop it by the emergency room for Olivia.”

“She can come here to use it.”

He shook his head. “She can’t come over here anymore, Lace. She needs to spend her time with her own family, not with us.”

“She doesn’t have a family.”

“She has Paul.”

Lacey made a disdainful noise. “He’s an asshole.”

Alec shrugged. “Regardless of what you think of him, he’s still her husband.”

“I thought you liked her.”

“I do like her, Lacey, but she’s a married woman. Besides, Mom hasn’t been gone all that long.”

“Mom’s dead.” Lacey glared at him. “She’s burned up into fifty million little ashes that the sharks probably ate for dinner the night after her funeral. She’s nothing but shark shit, now, Dad.”

If he’d been sitting closer to her, he would have slapped her. So it was just as well the table was between them. Her cheeks reddened quickly. She had frightened herself.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was small and she kept her eyes glued to the table. “I’m really sorry I said that, Daddy.”

“She was a very special person, Lace,” he said, gently. “She can’t be replaced.”

Lacey was quiet for a moment. She drew invisible lines on the table with her fingertips. “Can I still call Olivia?”

“Sweetheart.” He set down the picture. “You have a reasonable curfew now, so I really don’t see much point to you disturbing her every night, do you?”

“But…when would I get to talk to her?”

She looked waiflike, with her funny hair and red nose, and her big, sad blue eyes. “I’m sorry, Lace,” he said. “I let things get out of hand and you got caught in the middle. Why don’t you call her…not today, though, she has some things to work out today…but in a few days, and then you and she can arrange how and when you can talk. You’re welcome to talk with her if she’s willing, but I’m not going to be seeing her anymore.”

Olivia was taking a quick lunch break in her office when Kathy brought in the tool case and set it on her desk.

“Alec O’Neill left this for you,” she said.

Olivia nodded. “Thanks, Kathy.”

“And there’s a compound fracture on its way in.”

“Okay. I’ll be right there.”

She set down her peach as Kathy left the room, and opened the case, spreading it flat. The tools were neatly arranged, as she had left them the last time she was at Alec’s. Tucked into one of the pockets was a white envelope with her name on it, and inside she found a note in Alec’s handwriting.Tools are for you, for as long as you want them. Put them to good use. I spoke to Paul last night—he knows you need to talk to him. Lacey’s upset to learn you aren’t coming over anymore. I told her she could call you in a few days. Hope that’s okay with you. I wish you the best, Olivia.Love, Alec

She was not going to cry again. Absolutely not. Still, she needed a minute to herself. She hit the lock on her office door and turned to lean her back against it, eyes closed, arms folded across her chest, and she stood that way until the distant sound of the ambulance siren brought her back to life.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

A young girl was standing on the sidewalk in front of the retirement home. Mary had just finished the crossword puzzle when she looked up from the rocker to see the girl shading her eyes and looking, Mary thought, directly at her. The girl started up the walk, and Mary dropped the folded newspaper to the floor.

“Are you Mrs. Poor?” the girl asked when she reached the porch. She had very odd hair. Bizarre. Red on top and black at the ends. Mary knew who she was. She recognized the vibrant red the girl had tried to cover up. She knew that fair, freckled skin, and those wide blue eyes and deep dimples.

“Yes, young lady,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

The girl pointed to the rocker next to Mary. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

“Well, now, I wish you would.”

“My name is Lacey,” she said, sitting down. “I’m Annie O’Neill’s daughter… Do you remember her?”

Mary chuckled. “As well as I remember my name,” she said. “You look like your mama, don’t you?”

Lacey nodded, then touched her hair. “Except for this,” she said. She glanced out at the waterfront and then returned her eyes to Mary, leaning sideways in the chair. “This is going to sound pretty weird, I guess, but I know my mother used to talk to you when she had a problem, so I was wondering… Well, I just thought I could, like, try it, too.”

“What kind of problem can a young girl like you have?”

“It’s really complicated.” Lacey looked at her uncertainly, thinking, no doubt, that Mary was older than she’d expected her to be, too old to help a young girl out of a predicament.

“You don’t happen to have a cigarette, now, do you?” Mary asked.

“What?” Lacey looked stunned. Then she stood up and pulled a crushed pack of Marlboros from the pocket of her shorts. “I don’t really think I should give you one,” she said, holding the pack away from Mary. “Aren’t you, like… I mean… Isn’t it bad for your health?”

“No worse than for yours.” Mary held out her hand, and Lacey rested the beautiful tube of tobacco on her fingers. Mary lifted the cigarette to her lips, inhaling deeply as Lacey lit it for her. She began to cough—hack, actually—until tears ran down her cheeks, and Lacey patted her worriedly on the back.

“I’m all right, child,” Mary was finally able to say. “Oh, that’s lovely, thanks.” She gestured toward the rocker next to her. “Now sit down again and tell me your problem.”

Lacey slipped the cigarettes back in her pocket and sat down. “Well.” She looked at the arm of the chair, as though what she had to say was written there. “My father got really depressed after my mother died,” she said. “He’d just sit around the house and stare at pictures of the Kiss River Lighthouse all day long, because they reminded him of Mom, and he didn’t go to work and he looked awful.”

Mary remembered the year following Caleb’s death. Lacey could have been describing her back then.

“Then my Dad started being friends with a woman named Olivia, who was also the doctor who tried to save my mother’s life in the emergency room the night she was shot…”

“She was?” Mary remembered the young woman who’d dropped magazines off at the home. She’d had no idea Olivia was a doctor, much less the doctor who’d tried to help Annie. And married to Paul Macelli, wasn’t she? Good Lord, what a mess. She drew again on the cigarette, cautiously this time.

“Yes.” Lacey had taken off her sandals and raised her feet to the seat of the chair, hugging her arms around her legs. It was a position Annie might have squirmed her way into. “Anyway,” she continued, “she’s married to Paul Macelli, the guy who’s been talking to you about the lighthouse. But she’s really in love with my father.”

Mary narrowed her eyes. “Is she now?”

“Oh, definitely. I can tell by the way she talks about him and stuff. And the thing is, he really likes her too, but he says he won’t see her anymore, partly because she’s married, even though she’s actually separated, but mostly because he thinks it’s too soon since my mother died for him to feel that way.” Lacey stopped to catch her breath. “She’s not much like my mother,” she said, “and that bothers him, I guess. I really loved my mother, but everybody talks about her like she was a goddess or something.”

Lacey looked up as Trudy and Jane walked out onto the porch. Their eyes bugged out when they caught sight of Mary’s cigarette. Mary nodded to them, and they seemed to understand she wanted time alone with her young visitor. They walked down to the end of the porch and sat in the rockers there.

“Well, anyway,” Lacey said, “so now my Dad’s gone back into this little cocoon he was in before he got to be friends with Olivia. He looks bad, and he thinks about the lighthouse all the time, and I can’t stand being around him. He gets so weird. And Paul. I don’t understand why Olivia would like him more than my father. He’s so dorky.”

Mary smiled. She was not sure what dorky meant, but she was certain the girl’s assessment was accurate.

“Excuse me for saying that. I guess he’s, like, a friend of yours since you’ve been talking to him about the lighthouse and all.”

“You can say whatever’s on your mind, child.”

Lacey lowered her feet to the porch and sat back in the chair, her head turned toward Mary. “Did I explain this well enough? Can you see what the problem is?”

Mary nodded slowly. “I can see the problem far better than you can,” she said.

Lacey gave her a puzzled stare. “Well,” she said, “my mother always said you were a very wise woman. So if she came to you with a problem like this, how would you help her?”

Mary took in a long breath of clean air and let it out in a sigh. “If I had truly been a wise woman, I would never have helped your mother at all,” she said. But then she leaned over to take the girl’s hand. “You go home, now, child, and don’t worry yourself over this. It’s a matter for grown-ups, and I promise you I’ll attend to it.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

Mary had a plan. Some might say it was cruel, but she could think of no other way to change the destructive legacy Annie had left behind her. Three people’s lives were in turmoil. Four, actually, if she counted Annie’s daughter. She would have to play the old, eccentric fool—a role she was not fond of, but which she knew how to employ when necessary. It would be necessary tomorrow, when she took the members of the committee on their tour of the keeper’s house. And it would be necessary now, when she called Alec O’Neill to make her demand.

She steeled herself for the phone call, using the private phone in Jane’s room so that no one would hear her and wonder what the hell was going on with old Mary. It rang three times before Alec answered it.

“Hello, Mary,” he said. “We’re all set for nine o’clock tomorrow. Is that still a good time for you?”

“Perfect,” Mary said. “Perfect. Now who did you say is coming along?”

“Myself, and Paul Macelli, and one of the women on the committee, Nola Dillard.”

“Ah, well, I won’t be able to do it then.”

“I…what?”

“I’ll take you and Mr. Macelli and his wife. The doctor.”

“Olivia?”

“Yes. Olivia. The young lady who brought magazines here a few weeks ago. Just the three of you.”

“Uh, Mrs. Poor, I don’t understand. Olivia really has no need to be there, and I believe she has to work tomorrow. Nola, on the other hand, has been a very active member of the committee from…”

“No,” Mary said. “Nola is not invited. I’ll take you and Mr. Macelli and his wife and that’s it. Otherwise there’s no tour.”

“But if she’s working…”

“Then we’ll pick a day for the tour when she’s not working.”

Alec was quiet for a moment. “Well,” he said, “all right. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

Alec hung up the phone, frowning. That was weird. Mary Poor must finally be losing it. He sat at his office desk for a few minutes, debating his options. Then he picked up the phone again and called Olivia.

“This puts you in an awkward position, I know, but could you do it, please? One last favor?”

“Paul’s going to be there?”

“He needs to be there. You, on the other hand… I guess you made an impression on the old woman.”

“Well,” she said, “I suppose it’s good in a way. It’ll force me to see Paul. I’ll finally have to tell him about the baby.”

“You still haven’t done that?”

“I haven’t talked to him at all. He’s left messages for me to call him, but I’ve been avoiding the situation.”

“Olivia.” He wished she would get this over with. “What are you waiting for?”

She didn’t answer.

“It’s none of my business, right?” he said. “Well, would you please call Paul to let him know the change in plans? I have to call Nola and uninvite her.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

“There is no earthly reason for you to go on that tour, Olivia,” Paul said.

She held the receiver between her chin and shoulder as she opened a can of cat food for Sylvie. “I’m aware of that,” she said, “but apparently Mary Poor refuses to do it if I don’t go.”

Paul groaned. “Christ. She’s so damn…controlling. How does she even know you exist?”

Olivia tensed. “I met her one time when I dropped Tom’s old magazines off at the retirement home.”

Paul was quiet for a moment. “Was that something else Annie used to do?” he asked.

“Yes.” She didn’t offer him any more information than that. She didn’t like him just then.

“Why haven’t you returned my phone calls?” he asked.

“I haven’t wanted to talk to you.”

“That’s not what your good friend Alec told me. He said there’s something important you need to talk to me about.”

Olivia set Sylvie’s bowl on the floor. “Well, actually, I do have a lot to tell you—to straighten out with you. Could we go out for an early lunch somewhere after the tour tomorrow?”

“All right,” he said. “You’re not going to show up for the tour with your hair dyed red or anything, are you?”

She gritted her teeth. “You can be very cruel.”

He hesitated again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just feel as though you’ve become a stranger all of a sudden. You’ve been living a life I know nothing about.”

“You’re the one who wanted it that way.”

“I know.” He drew in a weary-sounding breath. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Olivia pulled into the small parking lot near the keeper’s house at nine the following morning. Paul and Alec were already there, leaning against Alec’s Bronco. She felt their eyes on her as she parked next to Paul’s car, and she took a deep, steadying breath. Could there be a more awkward group than the three of them? She smoothed her blue jersey over her new white drawstring pants and got out of the car.

Seeing Paul and Alec side by side was unnerving. Two very attractive men. As she walked toward them, she felt a little of the sleaziness Alec had spoken of the other night. She had slept with both of them.

Alec looked a little tired. He smiled his greeting at her, holding her eyes a moment too long. There was a camera around his neck, a camera case over his shoulder, and he wore jeans and a blue short-sleeved shirt, the dark hair on his chest clearly visible at the open collar. She quickly moved her eyes to the relative safety of her husband.

“Good morning, Paul,” she said.

He nodded stiffly. She didn’t think she had ever seen him look quite so uncomfortable.

She was relieved when the van from the retirement home pulled into the parking lot. Alec helped Mary down from the passenger seat, his hand on the old woman’s elbow. Mary was wearing a white-and-blue-striped dress and white sneakers.

A young blond woman jumped out of the driver’s seat, a paperback book in her hand. “I asked Mary if I could do the tour with y’all, but she said no way.” She grinned. “When Mary says no, you don’t argue. So I’ll be out on the beach.”

Mary watched her young driver strike out for the beach before turning to her uneasy guests. “Good morning, Mr. Macelli. Mrs. Macelli,” she said.

“Hello, Mrs. Poor,” Olivia said, and Paul grunted a barely audible greeting.

Mary turned her gaze to the house. “It’s been a good long time since I’ve set eyes on this place,” she said. “I thought for sure I’d never see it again.” She looked toward one of the bulldozers near the edge of the dune and shook her head. “Well, let’s take a look inside.”

They followed Mary slowly to the front door of the house. She walked with the aid of a cane. She was taller than Olivia had expected her to be, and she looked very old, much older than she’d seemed at the home.

Alec walked next to Mary, with Olivia a few steps behind them, and Paul behind her. Olivia glanced back at her husband once, encouraging him to keep pace with her, but he looked straight through her. He seemed very unhappy about this entire outing, and she figured that her presence was the cause of his dismay.

They walked into the spacious, airy living room of the house. There was a large brick fireplace, faced by two wicker rockers and a wing chair. Paul clicked on his tape recorder, while Mary turned around in a circle in the middle of the room.

“Needs a paint job in here,” she said, lifting her cane toward one of the dingy walls. “I never would have let it get this gray.”

Alec took a few pictures while Paul stood rigidly in the center of the room, holding the recorder in his outstretched palm.

“Well, let’s see. What can I tell you about this room?” Mary asked herself. “It was, of course, the hub of the household. When Elizabeth was young, she and Caleb and I would play games in here at night, and I remember a few nights when this room would be filled with survivors of one wreck or another. We’d keep them for a few nights or so, till they could get back to the mainland.” She looked down at the wicker rocker. “I did many a crosswords in that chair, I can tell you that,” she said.

It was, if anything, slightly cool in the living room, yet Olivia could see that Paul was perspiring. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. She couldn’t imagine that her presence alone was enough to have drained all color from his face. She wanted to ask him if he was ill, but it was too quiet in the room. He wouldn’t want the attention drawn to himself.

They walked into the kitchen. “The damn room I fell and broke my hip in.” Mary touched Alec’s arm. “If it weren’t for that wife of yours, I’d still be lying there on that floor.”

Alec smiled at her.

Mary told them about the hand pump that used to stand in one corner of the kitchen, and the cisterns that collected rainwater to be used in the house. She showed them the pantry and the large downstairs bedroom, along with the tiny bathroom that had been added on in the sixties.

“Upstairs now,” the old woman said, lifting her cane toward the narrow stairway.

Alec and Paul practically carried Mary up the stairs, each of them taking an elbow and nearly lifting her off her feet as they climbed to the second story. They stopped at the first room on the right, a large bedroom with rustic furniture and a quilt on the bed.

“Caleb’s mother made that,” Mary said, pointing her cane at the quilt. She began talking about the room. It had been the bedroom of her daughter Elizabeth, she said, whose boyfriend had set a ladder against her south window one night, and carried her away with him to escape the isolation of Kiss River.

Paul was not well. He closed his eyes as Mary spoke, and his breathing was fast and shallow. Olivia could actually see the staccato beating of his heart in the collar of his shirt. She leaned toward him. “Are you ill?” she whispered.

He shook his head without looking at her, and she took a step away from him. Mary spoke about Elizabeth’s bedroom a few minutes longer, and Alec took some pictures before they moved on to the next room, another bedroom, this one much smaller than the first. Olivia saw the white spire of the lighthouse through the window.

“And this one was Annie’s room,” Mary said. They stood in the hallway, peering inside.

“Annie’s room,” Alec said. “You mean…my Annie?”

“Yes indeed,” Mary said. “The room where Annie brought her young men.”

“Where she…?” Alec frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Mary turned to look squarely at Paul. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Mr. Macelli?”

The Adam’s apple bobbed in Paul’s throat. His face had gone gray, and his fingers shook as he turned off the recorder and hung it on his belt. “I have no idea,” he said.

“Oh, I think you have a very good idea,” the old woman said. “An excellent idea. She loved the way you looked when you’d come over in your costume. You know, from the Lost Colony play.”

Alec turned to face Paul. “What is she talking about?”

Paul shook his head. “God only knows.” He looked at Mary and spoke loudly. “You have me confused with someone else,” he said.

Olivia could barely breathe. She wished she could do something to break the tension crackling in this hallway. She wished she could stop Mary Poor from saying another word, but the old woman was already opening her mouth, already pointing her cane toward the double bed.

“How many afternoons did the two of you spend in that bed?” she asked Paul.

“I’ve had enough.” Paul turned toward the stairs, but Alec caught his arm.

“What’s going on, Paul?” he asked. “I think you’d better tell me.”

Paul faced them again, but he shut his eyes. He took off his glasses, rubbing the reddened patches of skin where they had rested on either side of his nose. He looked miserably at Mary. “Why are you doing this?” he asked the old woman, his voice very soft. “What possible good can it do?”

Mary shrugged. “I guess that’s up to you.”

He hesitated a moment before putting his glasses on again and shifting his eyes to Alec. “I did know Annie at Boston College,” he said.

“Paul,” Olivia said, stunned.

“The truth is,” Paul said to Alec, “I knew her long before you did. We had a relationship. A very serious relationship. We were together for two years before you ever met her, before you even had a clue she existed.” There was a weird sort of pride in his voice. “She was mine long before she was yours. That blue cloisonné horse in your kitchen? I gave it to her. She loved it. She treasured it.” Paul looked at the floor for a moment, as if collecting himself, as if trying to decide what to say next. Olivia didn’t dare look at Alec, but she could hear the raw sound of his breathing.

“We talked about getting married,” Paul said. “About raising a family.” A slight smile played with the corners of his lips. “We even had names picked out for our kids, but then the summer after our sophomore year she met you and broke it off with me. The problem was, I could never get her out of my mind.” He looked pleadingly at Alec, as though surely Alec could understand. “How could anyone know Annie and just forget about her?”

Alec shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “No,” he said. “Please don’t tell me you…” His voice trailed off and Olivia rested her hand on his back. She wanted to hold him, to slip her hands over his ears so he would not hear whatever Paul had left to say.

“Paul,” she said. “Maybe that’s enough.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “I came down here one summer, years ago.” Paul folded his arms across his chest, then unfolded them. He slipped his hands into his pants pockets, took them out again. “I got an apartment and a part in the Lost Colony play.” He was no longer looking directly at Alec. Rather, his eyes were focused on the floor of the small bedroom. “I saw Annie and realized there were feelings left—on both sides. We…a few times we met here.” He glanced up at Alec and nodded toward the bedroom.

“Annie wouldn’t…” Alec looked at Mary. “Is this true?”

Mary nodded solemnly, and for the first time Olivia realized that she was behind this confession. She had orchestrated it.

Alec glowered at Paul, but when he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper. “Bastard,” he said.

“I think…” Paul blinked rapidly and returned his gaze to the floor. “I’ve always thought that Annie might have been pregnant when I left the Outer Banks. She was very upset, and when I interviewed her for the article in Seascape, she lied to me about Lacey’s age.” He looked up at Alec, patches of crimson on his cheeks. “I’m truly sorry, Alec, but I think Lacey may be my daughter.”

Mary made a sudden sound of annoyance. “Lacey’s no more your child than I am,” she said. “Annie got rid of your child.”

Alec’s eyes widened. “Got rid of…?” The anger was beginning to boil up in his voice. “That’s impossible. Annie would never have had an abortion.”

Mary looked at Alec, and Olivia did not miss the compassion in the old woman’s eyes. The sympathy. “She did,” she said, “and it wasn’t easy on her either. She got rid of Paul’s child and one other later on.”

Alec took a step toward Mary. “What the hell are you…”

“Alec.” Olivia closed her hands around Alec’s arm and pulled him tightly against her.

“Lacey is the child of that young man she did stained glass with,” Mary said. “Tom what’s-his-name?”

“What?” Paul exclaimed.

“Oh my God, no.” Alec closed his eyes and leaned against the door frame as though he could no longer hold himself up. He looked at Mary again. “How can you possibly know that? How can you possibly be sure?”

“Annie was sure,” Mary said. “I’d seen her upset more times than one but never like when she realized she had Tom’s baby inside her. She couldn’t have another abortion, she said, though later on she changed her tune about that. But this one was just too close to the first time. It was still too fresh in her memory. So she had the baby. She never told Tom it was his, and I think by the time the little girl— Lacey—was born she’d almost convinced herself it was yours, Alec.”

Mary narrowed her eyes at Paul. “Did you think you were the only one?” she asked. “Did you think you were something special Annie couldn’t possibly resist? Well, let me set you straight then. You were just one of many Annie brought to this bed. She had tourists in the summer, fishermen in the fall, construction workers in the spring. It wasn’t just the PTA or the Red Cross Annie couldn’t say no to. It was anyone who wanted a little part of her spirit.”

Paul looked as though he was about to get sick. He turned on his heel, and they listened to the clattering of his shoes on the stairs. Olivia still clung to Alec’s arm, but he’d turned his head away from her as he leaned against the doorjamb, his hand to his eyes.

Olivia looked at Mary. Every year suddenly showed in the old woman’s face. She looked as though she might collapse there on the landing, as though it was only the slim reed of her cane that was keeping her upright. Olivia let go of Alec and walked into the bedroom, bringing out a straight-back chair. She set it behind Mary, who lowered herself into it with a sigh. Then Mary reached out to take Alec’s hand. His eyes were rimmed with red when he looked down at her.

“Listen to me, Alec,” Mary said. “Listen good, all right? Annie had a need she just couldn’t get taken care of. It was too big for any one man to ever make a dent in, but I know for a fact you were the only one she loved. She hated herself for what she was doing, and I hated myself for the way I helped her. In the last few years, she was winning the battle, not seeing anyone, not bringing anyone over here. It was hard for her. She was fighting her own nature and it was uphill all the way. She was winning too, and proud of herself, until he came back.” Mary nodded toward the stairs where Paul had disappeared.

Olivia rested her hand on Alec’s back again. He gazed numbly at Mary, and she was not certain he could hear the old woman’s words. He was glassy-eyed; the muscles in his back were rigid beneath her hand.

“It was just the one time with Tom, as far as I know, Alec,” Mary continued. “Not an ongoing sort of thing. Annie felt bad about it. Terrible. And she always wanted you to know the truth about Lacey, but she just didn’t know how to tell you.” Mary licked her lips. “Remember when she had that marrow surgery? She nearly told you then, because she was so afraid she’d die without you knowing, which is just what happened in the end, I guess. She didn’t want to hurt you. She never wanted you to suffer because of her weakness.”

Alec extracted his hand from Mary’s grasp. He walked past Olivia and headed down the stairs. Olivia watched him go, as Mary sat back in the chair with a long sigh. She seemed to crumble, her body folding in on itself until she sat several inches lower in the chair than she had a moment ago. Then she looked up at Olivia.

“Did I do a terrible thing just now?” she asked.

Olivia knelt at her side, resting her own hand on Mary’s. “I think you’ve done all of us a tremendous favor,” she said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Olivia had to get Sandy, the young woman from the retirement home, to help her walk Mary down the stairs of the keeper’s house and out to the van. Both Paul’s Honda and Alec’s Bronco were gone by the time she crossed the parking lot on her way to the beach, and a half dozen or so workmen had appeared, milling around the bulldozer and the lighthouse.

Mary didn’t say a word to either of them as they descended the stairs, and the old woman winced each time she took a step with her left leg. She was quiet out in the parking lot as well, and quiet as she climbed into the van. But once the door was closed and Sandy had helped her with the seat belt, she turned to speak to Olivia through the open window.

“You see to it that Alec’s all right,” she said, and Olivia nodded. That had already been her plan.

It was after eleven when she got home from Kiss River, and she walked directly into the study to call Alec. His phone rang for a long time, and she was trying to figure out what message she could possibly leave on his machine when he answered.

“Alec,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t respond for a moment, and when he did, the weariness in his voice was palpable. “I don’t think I can talk right now, Olivia,” he said.

She closed her eyes. “I just want you to know I’m thinking of you.”

She got off the phone and walked into the kitchen. She should eat something; she had to be at the ER in less than an hour, and she wouldn’t have another chance to eat until quite late. The thought of food, though, was nearly revolting. She made herself a cup of tea instead and was carrying it into the living room when Paul’s car pulled into the driveway. She set the tea down and met him at the front door.

He stood on the deck, looking pale and beaten. “May I come in?” he asked.

She stepped back to let him into the living room. He lowered himself onto the rattan chair with a sigh, and Sylvie jumped onto his lap and began purring loudly. Olivia sat down on the couch, across the room from him, and lifted the cup of tea to her lips. She felt an easy, almost druglike calm settling over her.

He smiled weakly. “Well, I got my eyes opened in one fell swoop, didn’t I?”

“I guess we all did.”

“I piled up the rest of her stained glass and dropped it off at the studio on my way over here,” he said, “with the understanding that Tom Nestor will donate it for me.” He shook his head. “Tom Nestor. I never would have guessed… I never…”

“Saint Anne,” Olivia said quietly.

Paul groaned. “I destroyed the tapes of the interviews, Olivia. I bashed them in with a hammer.”

“How very dramatic, Paul.”

He looked hurt, and she didn’t bother to apologize.

“I burned her pictures, too, although I have to admit it wasn’t easy.”

“You didn’t save a single one?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing left of her.”

“Good,” she said. “You need to be done with her, or you’re never going to be able to get on with your life.”

He looked at her. “It’s all been so ugly. What’s happened between us, I mean. I’ve been so ugly.”

She said nothing. She could hardly disagree.

“Do you still want anything to do with me?” he asked. “Do you still want to be a part of my life?”

She shook her head, slowly, as if trying out the motion to see how it felt, and he dropped his eyes quickly to the floor.

“Maybe you’re just reacting to what happened this morning,” he said.

She set her cup on the coffee table and leaned toward him. “I’m reacting to everything that’s happened over the last year, and to all those things that happened in your past that I knew nothing about. I’m reacting to your lack of respect for your own marriage, as well as for Annie’s and Alec’s. Even if I could forgive you for all of that, I could never trust you again. You lied to me throughout our entire marriage.”

“I didn’t, Liv. I told you I’d had a serious relationship years ago, and you said, ‘Let’s put the past behind us,’ remember? I would have told you all about Annie if you’d wanted to hear it.”

“You never even mentioned you’d spent a summer here.”

“I was trying to pretend that summer never happened.”

“You should have told me Annie was here before I took the job.”

“I tried to talk you out of taking it.”

“If you had really wanted to dissuade me, all you had to do was tell me your former lover lived here. But you intentionally avoided mentioning that fact.”

“I was wrong, Liv. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. I’m sorry.” He looked down at his hand, at his wedding band. “Do you still want to go out to lunch?”

The question seemed so ludicrous she laughed. “No, I don’t want to go out to lunch.”

He set Sylvie on the floor and stood up. “Well.” He looked unsure of his next move. “Is it all right if I use your bathroom before I go?”

“Of course.”

He left the room, and it was a full minute before she realized he had to pass the nursery to reach the bathroom. She went rigid on the couch, listening, trying to remember if she had left the nursery door open or closed. She stood up slowly and walked into the hall, where she could clearly see that the door was wide open. She steeled herself and walked into the room.

Paul stood next to the crib, his hands on the rail. He looked over at her when she stepped into the room, and dropped his eyes to her stomach.

“Are you…?”

“Yes.”

“Is it mine?”

“Of course,” she said. “That night you stopped by in April. That night you pretended I was Annie.”

“Oh, my God.” He turned away from her, leaning heavily on the crib.

She didn’t want to watch him wallow in his guilt. She walked through the house and out to the back deck, intentionally sitting in one of the chairs rather than on the settee so he would not be able to sit next to her if he came out. She watched a windsurfer gliding across the sound. He was blond. Tan. She could not guess his age from this distance, but he was good. Maybe as good as Alec.

It was a while before Paul joined her on the deck. He turned one of the chairs around so he was facing her, and very close.

“You’re nearly five months?”

“Twenty-one weeks, yes.”

“How are you feeling? Is everything going all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m healthy. I had an amniocentesis done, and it’s a boy.”

“A boy.” He smiled, and she wished she’d kept that fact from him. She was irritated by the pleasure on his face.

“You should have told me,” he chided. “It would have made a difference. It would have brought me back to reality.”

“I wanted you to want me because I was me,” she said, “not because I was carrying your child.”

He nodded, reaching a tentative hand out to touch her belly. She gritted her teeth, turning her head away from him so she would not have to see the emotion in his face.

“Annie made a fool of me,” he said.

She snapped her head back to him, brushing his hand away. “You made a fool of yourself.”

“All right,” he conceded, “all right.” He sat back in the chair. “Is there any way we can work things out?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we try, for the sake of our son if for no other reason? You know as well as I do that we had something genuinely good for a long time.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “It’s over, Paul. I don’t want you anymore. That’s the bottom line.”

He looked out at the sound, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick. “But what about the baby? I want to be involved in his life.”

“Well, perhaps you should speak to that lawyer of yours about your options.”

He winced, his eyes reddening behind his glasses. Then he stood up, very slowly, as if some invisible force was holding him down. She said nothing to stop him as he walked across the deck to the house. In another moment, she heard the front door open, then close.

Out on the sound, the windsurfer skimmed gracefully across the surface of the water. Olivia watched him as she lowered her hands to her lap, as she pulled the ring from her finger, slipped it into her pocket. She watched him until it was time to leave for work.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Alec dug out the old box of photographs from the closet in the den and sat down on the living room sofa to sift through them. He had not looked at these old pictures in years, and he had intentionally avoided them since Annie’s death. The box was full of her. Looking through the pictures now, he could actually see in the lines of her face, or in the uncertainty of her smile, when she was going under, when she was giving in to her dark side. All those times she’d slipped into those seemingly inexplicable periods of withdrawal made sense to him now. I’m going to die as punishment for all the bad things I’ve done.

Two abortions. All the nights she’d visited Mary. Alec had been grateful to the old woman for the company she’d given Annie on those nights he’d had to work on the mainland.

Fishermen. Tourists. She would take them into that little bedroom, the one that would fill every few seconds with the light he had thought of as his and Annie’s.

Alec heard the back door slam. Lacey was home. Damn. He’d wanted this time for himself. He needed it. In a moment she appeared at the door of the living room.

“I’m home,” she said, proudly, “and it’s only nine-fifteen.” She looked at the box next to him on the sofa. “Why do you have those old pictures out?”

He stared at the girl who, quite suddenly, was not his daughter. “I just felt like looking at them,” he said.

To his dismay, she came into the room and plunked herself down next to him. She smelled of tobacco. She smelled, he thought, a little like Tom Nestor.

“I really like this one,” she said, reaching across him to pluck a photograph from the box. It was of her and Annie sitting side by side on the beach, taken just last summer. “Mom looks so happy,” she said.

I’ve never been happier than I’ve been this last year.

Alec started to cry. He turned his head away from Lacey, but it was no use trying to hide the tears. He wouldn’t be able to this time. They were going to take over. He would never be able to stop them.

“Please don’t cry,” Lacey said, alarm in her voice. “I can’t stand it, Daddy, please.” She stood up. “Do you want me to put these away?” She reached for the box, and he caught her hands.

“No,” he said. “I want to look through them.”

She frowned down at him. “Why are you doing it? It just gets you upset.”

He struggled to smile. “I’m all right, Lacey.”

She shoved her hands in the pockets of her shorts and stared at him, unconvinced. “Do you want me to look through them with you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not tonight.”

She left the room, reluctantly, and Alec dug through the pictures until he found the few he had taken of Annie when she was pregnant with Lacey. She’d been constantly sick during that pregnancy. She could keep almost nothing down, and she put on so little weight that her obstetrician came close to hospitalizing her. She’d had weird pains, which a slew of doctors were unable to diagnose, and she’d spent most of those nine months in bed, while Nola helped Alec take care of Clay.

Annie’s labor with Lacey had been frightening. Neverending. Alec stayed with her, holding her hand and helping her breathe, until he thought his own body would give out. He didn’t know how one woman—how one human being—could tolerate so much pain.

Just before Lacey was born, just in those few minutes when Annie must have felt the baby’s head crowning, she began screaming for Alec to leave the delivery room. At first he thought he’d misunderstood her. She was hysterical, and he tried to pretend she did not actually say what he thought she was saying. But the doctor understood her words, and the nurses looked at each other, perplexed.

“You’d better leave, Dr. O’Neill,” one of them said. “She’s so distraught. She’s not going to be able to concentrate on what she has to do unless you go.”

He left the room, enormously hurt. He stood in the hallway of the obstetric unit rather than go to the waiting room, where Nola and Tom and a few other friends had gathered. He wouldn’t have known how to explain his presence to them.

Later, he asked Annie why she had made him go, and she wept and apologized and told him she’d been confused, she didn’t know what she was saying.

How scared she must have been to have sent him away when she needed him most. How terrified that, somehow, with just one look at that newborn baby, he would know. Had she watched him carefully after that, studying his face every time he studied his daughter’s? Had she looked for his suspicions? Had she tried to tell him the truth once or twice or dozens of times? Or did she know that never, never would he have believed her capable of anything less than complete fidelity?

He stayed up until nearly midnight, tormenting himself with picture after picture, until he was so drained he could barely climb the stairs to his room. Still, he couldn’t sleep. Too many memories. Too many clues he’d missed. They’d argued about sterilization. She’d insisted she have her tubes tied rather than Alec have a vasectomy because, she said, she couldn’t bear to have him go through the pain and discomfort. Coming from Annie, that explanation had sounded perfectly rational. And what about all those times she’d tried to keep Tom Nestor sober and closedmouthed around him? And all the times he’d catch her crying for no apparent reason? Oh, Annie.

His mind was churning. There was a coiled tightness in his muscles he had not felt in months. He needed to do something. Go somewhere. He needed to see the ligthhouse.

He got up long before sunrise and left a note for Lacey on the kitchen table. Then he drove through the dense, early-morning fog to Kiss River.

He was nearly to the lighthouse when he spotted the horses at the side of the road, and he pulled over to watch them. They looked ethereal in the fog—clearly visible one minute, mere shadows the next. He could make out the colt who had been hit by the Mercedes. He was grazing close to the side of the road; apparently he had learned nothing from his experience. Alec could see the faint scar on the colt’s hindquarters where he had stitched the wound closed. With Paul’s help. The cloisonné horse. She’d treasured it. Had she?

Alec growled at himself. He wished he could turn his thinking off. Shut it down.

He drove on to the lighthouse. The white brick blended into the fog and he could barely see it from the parking lot. He let himself in and began climbing the steel steps of the eerie, echoey tower, and he didn’t stop until he reached the top. He stepped out onto the gallery. He was above the fog here, and the lantern must have shut off only minutes earlier in anticipation of daylight. The sun was rising over the sea, a breathtaking spectacle of pink and gold, lighting up the sky and spilling into the water.

Alec walked around to the other side of the gallery and looked toward the keeper’s house. Through the fog, he could just make out a second bulldozer and a backhoe tucked into the bushes near the side of the house.

He sat down on the cool iron floor of the gallery, facing the ocean and the sunrise. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the black gallery wall, waiting for the lighthouse to work its usual magic on his nerves.

Had she come up here with any of them? Did she ever make love with them up here? On the beach below?

Stop it!

He opened his eyes again, drumming his fingers next to him on the floor of the gallery. He sat forward and peered over the edge of the gallery. Below him, the ocean crept ever closer to the base of the lighthouse. Through the thinning fog, he could see the white-tipped waves nibbling at the few feet of sand remaining between the water and the brick. Damn, it was close.

…we should just let it go.

Alec sat back again, slowly, a small smile on his lips. For the first time, Annie’s words elicited no fear in him. None at all.

He left Kiss River and drove down the island. No one would ever guess it had been foggy an hour or so earlier. The sun was already blazing across the Banks, and as Alec drove over the bridge into Manteo, it lit up the boats on the sound.

He parked in front of the retirement home, but that was not his destination. Instead, he walked across the street to the quaint little gray and white antique store, frowning when he noticed the closed sign in the front window. It had not occurred to him that it was too early for the shop to be open.

There was a car in the driveway, though. He peered through the front door and could see light coming from a room at the back of the shop. He knocked, and in a moment a woman came to the door.

She opened it a few inches. “Can I help you?” she asked. She was sixty or so, Alec guessed. Gray-haired and grandmotherly.

“I know you’re not open yet, but this is important,” he said. “I’m looking for an antique doll for my daughter. I think my wife used to buy them here for her.”

“Annie O’Neill?”

“That’s right.”

She opened the door wide. “You must be Alec.” She smiled. “Come in, dear. I’m Helen.”

He shook the hand she offered.

“I’m so pleased to meet you,” she said. “Annie bought the dolls for her daughter’s birthday, right?”

“That’s right. I’m a little late with it this year.”

“Better late than never.” Helen leaned against a glass counter filled with old jewelry. “Annie was such a good customer. Such a lovely person. She gave me that.” She pointed to a stained glass panel hanging in the front window. The little gray antique shop stood against a background of grass and trees. Yet another creation of Annie’s he had never seen.

“It’s nice,” he said.

“I was so sorry to hear about…everything,” Helen said, as she led him into a small back room, where dolls sat here and there on pieces of antique furniture. One of them—an imp with red hair—caught his eye immediately.

“Oh, that one.” He pointed toward the doll. “Without a doubt.”

“I had a feeling you’d pick her. It’s the first one with red hair I’ve seen, and when I got it in a month or so ago, I thought to myself, wouldn’t Saint Anne have loved this one? Her face is a very high-quality pearly bisque, and she has her original human hair. That all makes her quite expensive, though.” A small white tag was attached to the doll’s arm, and Helen turned it over so Alec could see the price written on it.

“Wow.” He smiled. “Doesn’t matter.”

Helen picked up the doll and carried it to the front of the store. She stuffed some tissue paper into the bottom of a large box and placed the doll inside. “Annie used to like to wrap them up herself,” she said. “I think she made the paper. But I suppose…would you like me to wrap it for you?”

“Please.”

She cut a length of blue and white striped wrapping paper from a roll and began taping it around the box. “Annie came in here all the time,” she said, cutting off a piece of tape. “She just lit up the store. We still talk about her.” She attached a premade bow to the top of the box and slid it to him across the counter. “Everyone misses her so much.”