Keeper of the Light (30 page)

“Do they have grandparents?” she asked suddenly, wondering if he was getting any help from the rest of his family. “Are your parents still alive?”

“No. They died a long time ago, before the kids were born.”

“How about on Annie’s side?”

Alec made a sound of disgust. “They never even met them,” he said bitterly.

“Bad topic,” Olivia said.

Alec set down his fork. “Annie’s parents had her life planned out for her. She had to do the whole routine—private schools, the debutante ball. They’d picked out the guy they wanted her to marry and no one else would do. They completely cut her off when she married me, not just financially, but emotionally as well.” Alec picked up his fork again, holding it above his plate. “I tried to contact them. I called them several times, but they wouldn’t even come to the phone. I wrote them letters using the animal hospital as a return address so Annie wouldn’t know, but I never heard a word from them. Finally,” Alec smiled at whatever he was remembering, “I came up with what I thought was a foolproof plan.”

“What was that?”

He leaned toward her across the table. “This was about five years ago, during one of Annie’s bouts of withdrawal. I always figured those moods of hers were connected with her thoughts about her family. So I went to Boston, armed with pictures of Annie and the kids, and I made an appointment to see Annie’s father, who was a cardiologist.”

“You mean, a medical appointment?”

Alec laughed. “Pretty damn clever, huh? You should have seen his office. Incredibly posh. A lot of gaudy antique reproductions. It was nauseating. So his nurse took me into one of the examination rooms and asked my why I was there. I told her I’d been having chest pains, and she made me take off my shirt to do an EKG, which had not been in my plans. I had not planned on having to meet my father-in-law for the first time half naked.”

Olivia smiled, remembering exactly how he looked shirtless.

“So, of course I had this perfectly normal EKG. The nurse left and then Dr. Chase himself came in. He asked me what my problem was, and I said, ‘I’m not sick. I’m your son-in-law.’”

“What did he say?”

“He turned purple, and he told me in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of his office. He left and slammed the door in my face. I left too, but before I did, I gave the nurse the envelope with the pictures in it and asked her to give it to him.”

“Did he get them? Did you ever hear anything from him?”

Alec ran his fork through the crabmeat on his plate. “The next thing we heard, he had died of a heart attack. An old friend of Annie’s wrote to tell her about a month after it happened, and when I figured out the date he died I realized it was the day after I’d gone to see him.”

Olivia shifted back in her chair. “Oh,” she said.

“So, of course, I never told Annie what I’d done. She was so upset she hadn’t known in time to go to his funeral. Jesus.” Alec shook his head. “Her mother had the audacity to show up at
Annie’s
funeral, though. I wouldn’t even talk to her, although there were certainly plenty of things I wanted to say. Fucking bitch.” He looked up at Olivia. “Pardon me.”

She laughed, and Alec smiled. “How did I get on the subject of Annie again? Back to Olivia. Are you all set for your debut as a connoisseur of the Kiss River Lighthouse tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll pick you up around ten.”

The waiter cleared their plates away and they ordered coffee. Olivia watched Alec drop two lumps of sugar in his cup. He was smiling to himself.

“Alec?” she said.

“Hmmm?”

“You’re different tonight.”

“Am I? Is that good or bad?”

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “You seem happy. Even when you’re talking about painful things, like Annie’s parents, you seem removed from the sadness somehow.”

He nodded. “I feel better. Every day’s a little improvement from the day before.” The candlelight flickered in his pale eyes. “I owe a lot of how I feel to you. You’ve let me talk, let me cry on your shoulder, or at least in your kitchen. Going in to work today topped it off. Thank you.”

She felt his knees touch hers beneath the table, and this time she didn’t bother to move away.

Outside, the air was filled with screams and music from the amusement park next door. The sky above the rides was lit up from the colored lights. Alec rested his hand lightly on Olivia’s back as they crossed the parking lot to the Bronco, and she was exquisitely aware of every fingerpoint of pressure.

Three teenagers walked toward them, probably cutting across the parking lot to get to the amusement park, and they were very close before Olivia recognized them as Lacey and her two friends from the emergency room.

“Dad?” Lacey stopped, frozen, a few yards in front of them.

Alec stiffened at Olivia’s side, dropping his hand quickly from her back. “Hi, Lace,” he said. “Jessica.” Alec stared at the boy walking between his daughter and her friend, while Lacey stared at Olivia, nothing short of stark terror in her face.

Olivia broke the silence. “I like your haircut, Lacey,” she said. “It really looks different than it did back in December.” She looked hard into the girl’s eyes, letting her know she had said nothing to Alec about Lacey’s visit to the emergency room.

“This is Olivia Simon, Lacey,” Alec said taking a step away from Olivia. “Do you remember her?”

Lacey gave a quick nod, but Alec didn’t seem to notice. He thrust his hand toward the boy. “I’m Lacey’s father,” he said.

“Bobby,” the boy said, solemnly shaking Alec’s hand.

“Where are you kids off to?” Alec asked.

“The rides, Dad.” Lacey walked past her father, and Jessica and Bobby quickly followed.

“Well, have fun,” Alec called after them. He glanced at Olivia, and they started walking toward the Bronco again, this time a few feet apart. It felt like miles.

Alec was quiet as they got into the car. He turned to look behind him as he backed out of the lot into the street, and in the garish, blinking lights from the amusement park, his knuckles glowed white on the steering wheel. He turned toward Kill Devil Hills. He wished he were rid of her now, she thought. He wished he did not have to drive her back to the ER before heading home.

They had driven four blocks in silence when she finally spoke. “Is it any woman you don’t want Lacey to see you with, or just the one who couldn’t save her mother’s life?”

Alec looked at her sharply, then back to the road. He sighed. “Sorry. My kids have never seen me with a woman other than Annie and that just felt weird. I don’t want her to read anything into seeing me with you. I think she’d feel like I’m betraying Annie.”

“We’re friends, Alec. Aren’t you allowed to have friends?”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “That boy she was with looks far too old for her.”

Olivia twisted her wedding ring around on her finger. “Maybe she needs to be restricted a little more than she is.”

He shook his head. “No way. Annie would never have tied her down.”

She weighed her words carefully before she spoke. “Annie’s not here,” she said quietly. “The situation’s different from any the two of you had to handle when she was alive. You don’t really know what she would have done.”

Alec pulled the Bronco into the emergency room parking lot. “Well, soon enough you’ll have your own kid and then you can raise him or her any way your heart desires, but Lacey’s done just fine all these years and I’m not going to change things now.” He turned off the ignition and got out of the car, walking around it to open her door for her. By the time she had stepped out, her eyes had filled. She looked up at him.

“I understand that you’re embarrassed Lacey saw us together,” she said, “but please don’t take it out on me.”

He looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry,” he said, nearly whispering, and she was glad they were under the bright lights of the parking lot, glad they couldn’t touch. She got into her own car and pulled out of the lot, glancing back to see him standing in the pool of white light, watching her drive away.

There were four messages on her answering machine when she arrived home, all left by the same reporter—an eager-sounding young woman—from the
Gazette.
Each message was more urgent than the one preceding it, and the last was marked by an almost threatening quality, as the reporter finally stated the nature of her call: “It’s
critical
that I speak with you
tonight,
Dr. Simon,” the woman said. “It’s regarding Annie O’Neill.”

Olivia bristled. She pressed the erase button. What could possibly be so urgent about a woman who was already dead, a woman Olivia had no interest whatsoever in discussing tonight? She knew reporters, though. This young woman would not give up until she had Olivia on the line.

She followed the phone cord to the wall and unplugged it. In the kitchen, she lifted the phone from the wall and set it on the counter. She pulled the cord from the jack in her bedroom as well, knowing as she did so that she was cutting herself off from the possibility of hearing anything more from Alec that night. That was just as well. If he didn’t try to call her tonight, she didn’t want to know.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
N
INE

“She’s the doctor who killed Mom,” Lacey said as she poured milk on her puffed rice.

Alec frowned at his daughter across the table. “No,” he said carefully. “She’s the doctor who tried to save your mother’s life.”

Lacey looked up at him. “Mom had this one tiny little speck of blood on her shirt. That was it, but by the time that doctor got through with her, she’d bled to death.” Lacey’s lower lip trembled, and he watched her fighting to still it. She looked down at her bowl, bobbing the puffed rice in the milk with her spoon. A tiny stripe of red was growing in the part of her black hair.

“Lace,” he said. “Look at me.”

She tried. She lifted her eyes to his for the briefest of moments, then turned her head toward the window.

“Sweetheart.” He rested his hand on her wrist. “We’ve never really talked about this. About what actually happened that night.”

Lacey pulled her hand away from him. “She’s dead,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, I think maybe it does. I had a lot of questions, Lacey, and I bet you do, too. That’s how I know Dr. Simon. I bumped into her a few weeks ago at the studio. She’s taking stained glass lessons from Tom, and I had a long talk with her about what happened to Mom.”

Lacey looked at him, her nose red. “Are you, like,
dating
her?”

“No.”

“Then why were you with her last night?”

“She’s become a friend.”

“You had your
arm
around her.”

He did not know what to say. He couldn’t even explain last night to himself. “She’s married, Lace,” he said. “She and her husband are separated right now, but they’re probably going to get back together. Her husband is the guy who wrote that article about Mom in
Seascape Magazine,
remember?”

She wrinkled her nose. “He got my age wrong.”

“Did he?”

“Don’t you remember? He said I was twelve.
Twelve.
” Her eyes grew huge. “I was thirteen and a half.”

Alec smiled at her indignation. “Well, I guess that sort of mistake happens all the time.”

Lacey began dipping her spoon in and out of the cereal again. So far none of the puffed rice had made it to her mouth. “So,” she said, “what did you and that doctor talk about last night?”

“The lighthouse.” Alec leaned back in his chair. “She’s going to help out with the speaking engagements. She has a lot of experience doing that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, she’s driving up to Norfolk with me this morning.”

Lacey rolled her eyes and stood up to carry her bowl to the sink.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?” Alec asked.

“I’ve lost my appetite.” She began running water into the bowl.

“Who’s Bobby?” Alec asked.

“A friend.” She kept her back to him as she put the bowl in the dishwasher.

“Well, why don’t you ask him over sometime so I could get to know him?”

Lacey turned around to frown at him. “Get a
life,
Dad.” She dried her hands on a paper towel and left the room.

Alec smiled as he pulled into Olivia’s driveway. She was sitting on her front deck in a pale, apricot-colored suit that looked out of place on the rustic wooden deck, but would be perfect for her interview in Norfolk. He was wearing a suit himself.

He got out of the Bronco and walked around to open the door for her, and he was relieved to see her ready smile after their tense words of the night before.

“You look beautiful,” he said as he took his seat behind the wheel once again. “Sophisticated.”

“You too,” she said. “First tie I’ve seen you in. Looks nice.”

Alec quizzed her about the lighthouse as they drove over the long bridge to the mainland, and they had crossed the state line into Virginia before either of them mentioned the night before.

“I’m sorry about the way I acted when we bumped into Lacey,” he said. “Are you still angry with me?”

“No. I know it was awkward for you.”

“I tried to call you to apologize, but you didn’t answer.” He had dialed her number several times, finally giving up at eleven o’clock.

“I’d unplugged my phone.”

Alec frowned at her. “So I couldn’t get through?”

“No, Alec.” She smiled. The peeling bridge of her nose made her look very young. “A reporter from the
Gazette
was trying to reach me and I just didn’t feel like talking to her.”

“What did she want to talk to you about?”

Olivia shrugged and looked out the window where a de-lapidated barn sat in the middle of a wide, jade-green field. “I have no idea,” she said.

They reached Norfolk a few minutes after noon, and they ate lunch at a restaurant near the radio station where Olivia would be interviewed. Olivia ate her own tuna salad sandwich as well as a couple of bites of his.