Keeper of the Light (48 page)

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.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-
S
EVEN

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.