Читать книгу Keeper of the Light - Diane Chamberlain - Страница 15

The glass was cool beneath her fingertips. Olivia drew the glass cutter cleanly across the surface, mesmerized by the changing color of her hands. Tinted sunlight flooded the studio and fell across the work table in violet and teal and bloodred, at first making concentration on her task impossible.

“You’ll get used to it,” Tom said.

He was right. After a while, the colors seemed essential. Intoxicating.

Tom handed her another glass cutter, this one with a beveled, oil-filled handle. “Try this one on that piece,” he said.

She took the cutter from his hand and scored a perfectly straight line down the center of the glass.

“You’ve been practicing,” he said.

She beamed. “Nothing to it.” She had been practicing, setting up the glass at her kitchen table each evening after work. She’d had to force herself the first time—there were several articles she should have been reading in The Journal of Emergency Medicine—but then she got into a pattern, and she began to look forward to getting home in the evening, sitting down with the glass. She’d drawn her own geometric design on graph paper last night, and now she was cutting shapes to fit the design from scraps of colored glass.

She had nearly finished scoring the third piece when Alec O’Neill arrived. He nodded to Tom before his eyes settled on her.

“I’d like to talk with you,” he said. “Do you have some time after your lesson?”

She took off the green safety glasses and glanced at her watch, although she had no other plans for the day. “Yes,” she said, looking up at him. He was wearing acid-washed jeans and a faded blue polo shirt, but at that moment he was bathed in a vermilion light from head to toe.

“Twelve?” he suggested. “I’ll meet you across the street at the deli.”

He disappeared briefly into the darkroom and then left again after telling her he’d see her soon. The stained glass panel on the door swayed for a moment after he closed it, and Olivia watched the wall near the darkroom change from blue to rose, then blue again.

She reached for another scrap of glass, a piece she’d been eyeing since her arrival at the studio that morning. It was a deep green, with a light, rippled texture.

“No,” said Tom. “Not that piece. It’s hand-rolled. Too delicate.”

“But it’s so beautiful.” She ran her fingers over the cool, wavy surface. “I haven’t broken anything yet, Tom. Couldn’t I try it?”

“All right.” Tom reluctantly let her set the glass in front of her on the table. “But pretend this piece of glass is Alec, all right? He’s about as fragile as a person can get. I don’t know what it is he wants to talk to you about, but keep in mind you need a light touch, okay?”

She looked at Tom’s dark blue eyes. “Okay,” she said, and the word came out in a whisper. She slipped on the safety glasses again, then carefully set the cutter to the glass, licking her lips, holding her breath. But despite her caution, despite the lightness of her touch, the glass splintered raggedly in pieces beneath her multicolored hands.

The tiny deli was crowded. People in bathing suits pressed up against the counter, and the smell of cold cuts and pickles mingled with the scent of sunscreen. Olivia felt overdressed in her flowered skirt and green blouse. She stood against the wall by the door, searching the crowd for Alec’s face.

“Dr. Simon.”

She followed the voice with her eyes, peering around the back of a woman standing next to her to see Alec at one of the four small tables near the windows. She squeezed her way through the crowd. Alec stood up and leaned across the little table to pull the chair out for her.

“Thanks.” She sat down, catching her reflection in the window. Her straight, dark hair brushed the tops of her shoulders, and her bangs had grown long enough to sweep to the side. She remembered the black and white photograph of Annie, with her wide smile and glittering hair.

“It’s crowded, but they’re fast here.” Alec turned to look up at the menu, written in chalk on a black slate board hanging above the counter. “What would you like?”

“Turkey on whole wheat,” she said. “And lemonade.”

Alec got up—sprang up—and walked behind the counter where he spoke to one of the young women who was making sandwiches, his hand on her shoulder. Olivia studied him from the safety of her chair by the window. He looked about forty and a little too thin, thinner than he had been that night in the ER. He was tan, but there were circles beneath his eyes she did not remember from that night, and hollows in his cheeks. His hair was very dark, yet even from this distance she could see the gray creeping into it at his temples. He moved with an athletic grace and she imagined he worked construction, something that put him outside all the time, that allowed him to use up his wired energy and kept him in shape.

The woman behind the counter handed him their drinks and he nodded his thanks to her before turning to work his way back to the table. Olivia wondered if he ever smiled.

He put her lemonade in front of her and took a long drink from his own cup before sitting down again. She had the feeling he did not sit often.

He looked at her across the table. The sunlight hit his eyes and sharpened the contrast between the translucent blue and the small black pupils. “I asked you to meet me because I need some answers about what happened to my wife that night,” he said. She felt his denim-covered knees touch her bare ones and drew her chair back a little. “It didn’t seem important then, but I can’t seem to … I keep wondering …” He rubbed his temples with his long tanned fingers. “There are these gaps for me. I mean, I said good-bye to her on Christmas morning and that was it.” He dropped his eyes and leaned back as the waitress set their sandwiches down in front of them. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and Olivia knew he was very close to the edge.

“Mr. O’Neill,” she said after the waitress had left.

“Alec.”

“Alec. I’ll answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, but some of the answers might be hard to hear. Maybe this isn’t the right place.”

He looked around him at the press of bodies. “I have an office near here,” he said. “I’m not working these days, but it’s open. We could take our sandwiches over there. Would you mind? Do you have time?”

She nodded. “That would be fine.”

Alec got a bag for their sandwiches, and they walked outside and across the street to the studio parking lot.

“You can follow me,” he said, opening the door of a navy-blue Bronco.

She got into her Volvo and followed him out to Croatan Highway, where he turned left towards Nags Head. He had an office, he’d said. Maybe he managed a construction crew. What did he mean he wasn’t working? She realized she knew nothing about him, other than the fact that he’d been married to the woman she both idolized and detested.

They pulled into the parking lot of the Beacon Animal Hospital and she frowned when she saw the shingles hanging below the sign: Alec O’Neill, DVM and Randall Allwood, DVM. He was a vet. She had to quickly reorganize her thinking about him.

Alec got out of his car, carrying the bag with their sandwiches. “Let’s sneak in the back way,” he said.

Olivia felt oddly criminal, as though she should tiptoe across the pea gravel that crunched beneath their feet as they walked around to the back of the building. Alec opened the door and they stepped into a cool, vinyl-tiled hallway. Frantic yapping filled the air. He unlocked the first door on the left and let Olivia in ahead of him. It was a small office, the walls paneled a pale, ashy color. The air was warm and stale, and Alec reached up to turn the knob of the air conditioning vent in the ceiling.

“Sorry it’s so stuffy,” he said. “Should be better in a minute.”

“You’re a vet,” she said, taking a seat in the red leather chair he gestured toward.

“Uh-huh.” He handed her the wrapped turkey sandwich and sat down behind his desk. The paneling was covered with photographs, many of the Kiss River Lighthouse. There were also a few pictures of windsurfers, and a portrait of a tawny-colored cocker puppy sitting next to a gray Persian cat that reminded her of Sylvie. She considered mentioning that to him, but he seemed so preoccupied with his own thoughts that she let it go.

Hanging in the window above his desk was a stained glass panel, the letters DVM in blue nestled between the tail of a black cat and the outstretched wings of a gull. Olivia had a sudden image of Annie presenting it to him—a surprise, a symbol of her pride in him.

He opened the wrapping on his sandwich and pressed the paper flat against his desk. “I can’t say that I feel much like a vet these days, though. I was going to take a month off when Annie died, but …” He shrugged. “It’s been a little longer than a month.”

Olivia nodded. She knew exactly how long it had been. The night he’d lost his wife was the night she’d lost her husband.

“So.” He looked up at her expectantly.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“Exactly what happened in the emergency room that night. You said you worked on her. I understand in general what you mean by that, but in her case, specifically, what happened?” He drew in his breath and glanced at a photograph on his desk. It was set at an angle so she couldn’t quite make it out, but she was certain it was Annie and their children. She could see a patch of red that was most likely Annie’s hair. “I guess more than anything I want to know if she was ever conscious,” he continued. “If she felt anything. Suffered.”

“No,” she said. “She didn’t suffer, and she never regained consciousness. I honestly don’t think she ever knew what hit her. She probably felt a sharp stinging pain from the bullet—just enough to surprise her—and then immediately lost consciousness.”

He licked his lips, nodded. “Good,” he said.

“When they brought her in she was in very bad shape, and I could tell from her symptoms that the bullet had entered her heart and surgery was the only option.”

“Was it you who performed the surgery?”

“Yes. Along with Mike Shelley. He’s the director of the ER, and he got there about halfway through.”

“Shouldn’t she have been sent up to Emerson Memorial—to a trauma unit—for that sort of injury?”

Olivia stiffened. She heard Mike Shelley’s voice in the back of her mind. Maybe she should have been sent up. This way her blood’s on your hands. “Ideally, she should have had a trauma unit, yes. But it would have taken far too long to transport her to Emerson. She would have died on the way. Immediate surgery was her only chance.”

“So you had to … open her up right there?”

“Yes. Then I … Do you really want to hear more?”

He set his sandwich down. “I want to know everything.”

“We’d lost her heartbeat. I was able to get my hand around her heart and hold my finger and thumb over the holes the bullet had made, and then her heart began to contract again.” Olivia had lifted her hand involuntarily. Alec stared at it and something contracted in him. She saw him start, saw his breathing quicken, and she rushed on, dropping her hand to the arm of the chair. “I was very hopeful then. I thought if we could just close those holes we’d be all right.” She explained about Mike Shelley trying to sew the hole in the back of Annie’s heart. She remembered feeling the blood seeping over her fingers. Sometimes still she woke up at night, winded, and had to turn the light on to be certain her hand was not warm and sticky with blood. Suddenly she was afraid of crying herself. The tears were so close. Her nose burned with the effort of holding them back.

“Well,” said Alec. There was no feeling at all in his voice. “It sounds as though everything that could have been done was done.”

“Yes.”

He sank lower in his chair. “I’ve forgotten most of that night,” he said. He was not looking at her. His eyes were focused on some invisible point in the air between them. “Someone must have called my neighbor, Nola, because I know she drove us home. I couldn’t tell you a thing about that ride, though. My kids were with me, but I don’t remember them being there at all.” He looked over at her. “I get the feeling it was a difficult night for you too.”

“Yes.” She wondered what she was giving away in her face.

“Even talking about it now isn’t easy.” “You have a right to know.”

He nodded. “Well, thank you. For everything you did that night, and for taking the time to talk with me now.” He gestured toward the sandwich in her lap. “You haven’t touched your lunch.”

She glanced down at the tightly wrapped sandwich. “I’ll save it for dinner,” she said, but he wasn’t listening. He was staring at the photograph on his desk.

“I just wish I’d had one extra minute with her to say good-bye,” he said. Then he looked at Olivia’s hand, where her wedding ring circled her finger. “You’re married?”

“Yes.”

“Be sure to treat every minute with your husband as though it’s your last.”

“Well, actually, we’re separated.” She squirmed, feeling somehow guilty that she and Paul were alive and healthy, yet apart.

“Oh,” Alec said. “Is that good or bad?” “Horrible.”

“I’m sorry. How long has it been?”

“Six months.” If he made any connection between his six months without his wife and hers without her husband, he gave no sign.

“His idea or yours?”

“Entirely his.” She looked down at her hand, where she was twisting the diamond ring around on her finger. “There was another woman,” she said, wondering how far she would take this. “It wasn’t an affair, exactly. They weren’t … it was platonic. He barely knew her. I think it was more of a fantasy, and anyway, she’s no longer around. She … moved away, but he’s still upset about it, I guess.”

“Is there any chance you two will get back together?”

“I hope so. I’m pregnant.”

He dropped his puzzled gaze to her stomach.

“Just eleven weeks,” she said.

Alec raised his dark eyebrows in a question. “I thought you said …?”

“Oh.” She felt herself blush. “He … stopped by one night.”

For the first time, Alec smiled, and she could see the handsomeness hiding behind his haggard demeanor. She laughed herself.

The door to his office opened a crack and a woman stuck her head in. “Alec?” She stepped into the room. She wore a white lab coat over jeans, and her dark hair was braided down her back. She glanced at Olivia, then back at Alec. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you were with someone. Are you working?”

“You wish.” Alec actually grinned. He stood up and walked around his desk to kiss the woman’s cheek. Then he gestured in Olivia’s direction. “This is Olivia Simon. She was the doctor in the ER the night Annie died.”

“Oh.” The woman’s expression sobered and she turned toward Olivia. “I’m Randi Allwood.”

“Randi’s my partner,” Alec said.

“Can’t prove it by me,” said Randi. “I seem to be running this place singlehandedly these days.”

Alec nodded toward Olivia as a signal it was time to leave, and she rose from her seat.

“I need to talk to you, Alec,” Randi said as Alec started for the door.

“All right,” Alec held the door open for Olivia. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He walked Olivia to her car. “Thanks again for doing this,” he said, “and good luck with your husband.”

“Thank you.” Olivia turned to face him.

“Does he know about—” Alec dropped his hand between them, nearly touching her stomach with the back of his fingers “—what happened the last time he … stopped by?”

Olivia shook her head. “No.”

“Does he know you still love him?”

“I think so.” Did he? There had been so much unpleasantness between them lately that perhaps he didn’t.

Alec opened her car door. “Make sure he knows that, okay?”

Olivia got into her car and waved to him before pulling out onto Croatan Highway. She could not recall the last time she’d told Paul she loved him. What about that night in April? She must have, but she couldn’t remember. She’d avoided the memory of that night for the past few months.

It had been a Thursday night, early in April, and he’d stopped by the house, looking for something. Software for his computer? She didn’t remember. It wasn’t important. She was already in bed, but she was not quite asleep when she heard him let himself in. Her first thought was angry, bitter—what gall, marching into the house as though he still lived there—but it was quickly replaced by relief, that she could see him, talk with him. She lay still as he walked through the living room and up the stairs. He came into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the queen-size bed.

“I’m sorry to disturb you this late,” he said. “I just need to pick something up and then I’ll be out of here.”

She looked up at him. It was dark in the room, but she thought she saw something tender in his eyes. He was actually sitting on their bed, next to her, the warm length of his thigh against her hip. She reached for his hand and held it softly on his knee, grateful that he didn’t try to pull away from her.

“You don’t have to rush off,” she said.

He lightly ran his thumb across the back of her fingers, encouraging her, and she brazenly drew his hand beneath the sheet to her bare breast.

He said nothing, but she felt the tips of his fingers graze over her nipple, once, then a second time. She wrapped her hand around the buckle of his belt, worried she was pushing him too far, too fast, but unable to stop herself. She had gone without him far too long.

He gently withdrew his hand from under the sheet and took off his glasses, folding the wire arms before setting them on the night table, close to the lamp. He lowered his head to her lips and kissed her softly. Then he began undressing, slowly, folding his shirt, his pants, and Olivia’s heart pumped with anticipation, not just of making love to him but of the possibilities wrapped up in this moment. The hope. When he slipped into the bed next to her, she was smiling. She wanted to welcome him home.

He touched her woodenly at first, as though he did not quite remember who she was, what she liked. His penis lay limp and cool against her thigh, and she bit her lip in disappointment. She was doing something wrong; he was not aroused. The old uncertainty washed over her. Insecurities she had thought were long gone.

His touch grew more certain, though, as he stroked her body, and when she finally straddled him, reaching down to draw him inside her, he was more than ready. They made love with an exquisite slowness that Olivia knew she was controlling with her own body. She did not want it to end. While they were locked together she could pretend that everything was all right, that they would be together not just at this moment, but tomorrow as well, and next week, next year.

She cried when it was over, bathing his shoulder with her tears, and he ran his hand over her hair. “I’m so sorry, Liv,” he said.

She raised herself to her elbow to look at him, not certain why he was apologizing. “Please stay,” she said.

He shook his head. “We should never have made love. It just makes it harder for you.”

“You still think about her.” She tried to keep the accusation out of her voice.

“Yes.” He rolled out from under her and sat up on the side of the bed, reaching for his glasses. “I know it’s sick,” he said. “I know she’s dead, but it’s as though she’s taken over my mind. I’ve stopped trying to fight it. I’ve just given in.”

Olivia sat up and moved next to him, resting her chin on his shoulder, her hand on his back. “Maybe if you moved back in,” she said. “If we tried to build a life together again. Maybe then you could forget her.”

“It’s no use, and it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“Let that be my choice. I’d like to try, Paul. It was so wonderful making love just now. That’s what we need to do to—” the word exorcize slipped into her mind “—to help you forget her.”

“It won’t work, Liv.” He pulled on his shorts and stood up, staring at the dark sound through the window. “When we made love just now, I couldn’t get into it until I imagined you were Annie.” He turned to face her. “Is that what you want?”

Her tears were immediate. She pulled the blanket around her to cover her nakedness. “What was so extraordinary about her?” she asked. “What did she have that I’m so horribly deficient in?”

“Shh, nothing.” He bent down, patronizing her with a quick hug. “Don’t cry, Liv. Please.”

She looked up at him. “Was it ever any good for you with me? Have you just been pretending it was good all these years so you didn’t hurt my feelings?” He had been her first and only lover, and although she’d been far past the age when most women first made love, she’d been terrified. Paul’s patient encouragement had made it easy for her, though. He’d fed her confidence with loving praise, tender compliments, and he’d told her, in the most flattering tone, that she had become an animal in bed. It relieved her to know she was capable of passion and desire when she’d long thought those emotions were impossible for her.

“Of course it was good,” he said. “This has nothing at all to do with sex.” He turned his head to the window, letting out a long sigh and rubbing his hands tiredly over his face. “I’m sorry I said that about Annie, Liv.” He shook his head, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick. “You didn’t deserve that. I’m really sorry.”

She did not know what to say. She had no idea what words she could use to save the little scraps of whatever they had left together. And so she watched in silence as he finished dressing, as he bent low to kiss the top of her head, as he left the room. She listened to him hunting in the study for whatever it was he needed. Then she heard him leave the house, closing the door quietly behind him, but closing it all the same. She listened to him pull the car out of the driveway, and she could still hear it as he turned the corner onto Mallard Run. It was another hour before she shut her eyes, and an hour after that before she slept. And it was just a few short weeks before she knew that the seed Paul had imagined himself planting in Annie had started a new life in her.

Alec wasn’t surprised to find Randi still waiting for him in his office. He had avoided seeing her these past six months. He’d bumped into her a couple of times, once in the grocery store, once at the Sea Tern, but he’d kept those meetings brief, shifting away from her when he saw impatience replace the sympathy in her eyes. Now, though, he was cornered.

“Sit down, Alec.” She was sitting in the chair Olivia had vacated, and he sat down once again behind his desk.

“It was so great to walk in here and see you in that chair,” she said.

“Look, Randi, I was here because we were talking about something too heavy for a restaurant. This was the best place to meet. Don’t read so much into it.”

“When are you coming back, Alec?”

He hated being asked that question so directly. It made it impossible to dodge. “I don’t know,” he said.

She sighed, exasperated, and leaned forward in the chair. “What the hell are you living on? How are you keeping your kids fed? How do you plan to get Clay through four years at Duke?”

“It’s not a problem.”

“Isn’t your brain disintegrating?”

“I like the time off, Randi. It gives me loads of time to work on the lighthouse committee.”

She sat back, scowling. “Alec, you’re pissing me off.” He smiled.

“Don’t give me that condescending smile,” she said, but she was smiling herself. “Oh, Alec, the bottom line is I miss you, and I worry about you. But you just dumped everything on me. You said it would be one month, and here I am nearly a year later doing it all.”

“It hasn’t even been six months, and you’re not alone. Isn’t Steve Matthews working out?”

She waved her hand impatiently through the air. “That’s not the point.”

He stood up and walked around to the front of his desk, leaning back against it, working his way toward the door. “Randi, if it’s really too much for you, tell me and we’ll get someone else in to help out. I don’t want you to be overextended.”

She sighed and seemed to deflate in the chair. “I’m all right. I just thought playing on your guilt might work.” She stood up too, and he was pleased to see she was surrendering. She walked over to him for a hug, which he provided, stunned for a moment by the way her breasts felt against his chest, by the way her hair lay warm and fragrant next to his cheek.

He pulled away from her, gently. “Wow, do you feel good. It’s been a while since I hugged a woman.”

There was a sudden glint in Randi’s eyes. “I’ve been dying to fix you up with this friend of mine,” she said. He shook his head.

“You’d love her, Alec, and it’s time you went out. There’s a world full of single women out there, and you’re a free man.”

He was irritated by the word free. “It’s way too soon,” he said.

“What about that doctor? She’s pretty and … “

“And married and pregnant.”

“Don’t you miss sex?” she asked bluntly.

“I miss everything,” he snapped, suddenly angry, and Randi took a step backward. “This is not some high school game, here, Randi. I’ve lost my wife. My right arm, you know? Annie wasn’t replaceable.”

“I know that,” Randi said in a small voice. There were tears in her eyes.

“Let me do things at my own pace, okay?” He picked up his keys from the desk and started for the door.

“Alec,” she said. “Please don’t be angry.”

“I’m not.” He opened the door and looked back at her. “I shouldn’t expect you to understand, Randi. Don’t worry about it.”

He was sweating by the time he reached the Bronco. He sat for a moment with the door open, letting the air conditioner blow the heat from the car. Then he pulled onto the road, heading north, his car practically operating on autopilot. In a short time, he had reached Kiss River. There might be tourists at the lighthouse this time of day, but he knew how to escape them.

He turned onto the winding, wooded road that led out to the lighthouse. He had to stop for a minute as one of the wild mustangs—the black stallion he had treated for an infection last fall—leisurely crossed the road in front of him. He drove on until he reached the small parking lot, surrounded on all sides by thick, scrubby bayberry bushes. He got out of the Bronco and took the footpath that led to the lighthouse.

The ocean was rough today. It broke wildly over the jetty, and he felt the spray against his face as he neared the lighthouse. It rose above him, the white brick sun-drenched and blinding. There were a couple of kids on the crescent of sand that made up the small, ever-shrinking Kiss River beach, and a few tourists milling around, some of them reading the plaques, others shading their eyes as they looked skyward toward the black iron gallery high above them.

Alec tried to make himself invisible as he approached the door in the white brick foundation. He glanced over at the old keeper’s house. It looked as though no one from the Park Service was around today. Good. He slipped a key from his pocket and into the lock, jiggling it a little before the door opened. Mary Poor had given the key to Annie years ago, and she had cherished it. Controlled it jealously.

He disappeared inside, locking the door behind him. It was cool, almost chilly. There were birds somewhere in the tower. He couldn’t see them, but he heard the echoing flap of their wings, the occasional chirp that ricocheted off the rounded brick walls. The brick was white in here as well, although the paint was crumbling, flaking onto the floor in a coarse white powder.

Alec began the long climb to the top up the steel circular staircase, not bothering to stop at the six rectangular windows that marked the landings along the way, and by the time he reached the claustrophobic room below the lantern, he was winded. He was not getting enough exercise these days.

He opened the door and stepped into the sunlight on the gallery. He sat down, close to the tower so he could not be seen from below, and breathed in the damp, salty air.

Glassy blue water stretched out in front of him for as far as he could see. He had a clear view of the jetty, and it made him remember the funeral and the welcome numbness that had befriended him back then. From the moment Olivia Simon told him Annie was dead, he’d felt nothing. He didn’t cry, didn’t even feel close to crying. Nola helped him make the arrangements, weeping most of the time and talking about how Annie usually did that sort of thing, how good she was at rallying people together at a time of crisis, and he’d muttered some form of agreement from inside the comforting protective capsule that had formed around him.

The funeral was held in the largest church in the northern Outer Banks, but even it was not big enough to hold everyone who wanted to come. Someone told him later that people stood in the vestibule and spilled out onto the front steps and into the parking lot.

Alec sat between Clay and Nola. Lacey had refused to come and he didn’t press the issue with her, although person after person wanted to know where she was. He was too dazed to realize that his response “—she didn’t want to come—” was not enough.

Even Annie’s mother was there, and Alec let her sit in the back of the church, although Nola begged him to try to make peace with the woman.

“Annie would never have let her sit back there, Alec.” She spoke quietly in his ear.

“I don’t want her near me,” he said, and he wished he could stop Clay from turning around to get a glimpse of the grandmother he had never known.

Alec listened as people recounted how Annie had touched their lives. They walked up to the podium in the front of the church, one after another, ending finally with the county commissioner, who spoke of how Annie had been “woman of the year” for four years in a row, how she’d donated stained glass panels to the library and the community center, how she’d fought for the rights of people who could not fight for themselves. “She was our Saint Anne,” he said. “You always knew you could turn to her for help. The word ‘no’ was simply not in her vocabulary.”

Alec listened to it all from behind the wall he’d built around himself. He did not like it, this recitation of her generosity. It was her generosity that killed her.

Nearly everyone met on the cold beach at Kiss River afterward to watch Alec and Clay walk out on the windy jetty with Annie’s ashes. It wasn’t until Alec let them fly, until he watched in horror as the wind caught them and carried them away from him with cruel speed, that the numbness gave way to a searing pain. The ashes had been all that was left of her and he’d cast them away. He stared after them, stunned, until Clay tugged at his arm.

“Let’s go back, Dad,” he said. By the time they reached the beach once again, Alec was weeping freely and leaning on his son. Arms reached for him, and he was quickly pulled into a loving circle. Clay, Nola, Tom, Randi. Everyone. They moved closer to him until they formed one black mass with Alec at its core, completely surrounded, completely alone.

Alec leaned forward and looked directly down from the gallery. The ocean was closer to the lighthouse than the last time he was up here, or perhaps that was his imagination. Whatever the Park Service decided to do to save it, he wished they would hurry up.

He patted his pocket for the illicit key. Mary! Alec had a sudden brainstorm. He would call that journalist, Paul Macelli, as soon as he got home and tell him to get in touch with Mary Poor. He hoped the old woman was still alive, still thinking clearly. She would be loaded with anecdotes. Paul might not even need the historical collection if Mary was lucid enough to help him out.

Alec stood up and drew in a long breath of salty air. He felt better, although he could still hear Randi’s voice, telling him about the joys of being “free.” He shook his head. Randi couldn’t possibly understand, he told himself. He shouldn’t hold it against her.

He thought of the doctor. Olivia. The woman whose husband had left her for an illusion. She knew how he felt. He could tell by the way she spoke to him, by the empathy in her eyes. She had understood completely.