Keeper of the Light

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Jessica gave it to me for my birthday,” Lacey said, her voice flat. She picked up the radio from the table and attached it to the waistband of her shorts as she stood up, leaving half of her frozen waffle on the plate.

  Alec frowned. “For your birthday? Which birthday?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Lacey grabbed her book bag from the counter. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Lacey, wait a second.” Alec stood up as Lacey slipped out the screen door. He heard the slap of her tennis shoes on the driveway as she ran out to the street to wait for the bus. It was her first day of summer school.

  He looked at Clay, who stared back at him, his fork poised in the air. “We missed her birthday,” Clay said.

  “We couldn’t have. It’s the first, right?”

  “Right. And today’s the second.”

  Alec felt as though someone had socked him in the gut. “Damn.” He sat down again, closing his eyes, pressing his fingers to his suddenly aching temples as he thought back to the day before. Lacey had been quiet at breakfast, and he’d been absorbed in a report on the erosion at Kiss River. He’d barely taken his eyes off it during the entire meal. She’d been up in her room when he got home last night. She said she wasn’t hungry, so he and Clay ordered a pizza and ate it by themselves in the kitchen. Lacey didn’t come out of her room the entire evening. He’d been surprised by that. She spent a lot of time in her room these days, but it was odd for her to completely disappear for the night.

  “Dad?”

  Alec opened his eyes at the sound of his son’s new, adult-sounding voice. He sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I don’t believe I did that,” he said. “Did I miss yours too?”

  Clay smiled. “No, Dad, I’m October, remember?”

  Alec ran his hand over his chin. He needed a shave. “We’ll have to celebrate it today,” he said. “I’ll pick up a gift for her. Will you have time to get her something, too?”

  Clay nodded.

  “What can I get?” He looked helplessly at his son. “What does she want these days?”

  “Mom always got her an antique doll.”

  “Yeah, but she’s fourteen now.” He had no idea where he could find one, anyway. Annie usually picked up the dolls sometime during the year and tucked them away for Lacey’s birthday. Besides, they were Annie’s special gifts. Annie died when Lacey was thirteen, so Lacey should have thirteen dolls.

  After Clay left, he stopped by Lacey’s room. It was not nearly as messy as it had been before her whirlwind cleaning spree on the day of Clay’s graduation, but the clothes and papers were starting to mount up again. This room had become her refuge.

  She’d come home late the other night, rushing past him to get to her room. But the glimpse he got of her was enough to tell him something was wrong: her blouse was misbuttoned, her face tear-streaked. He stood outside her door for several minutes, listening to her crying, before he knocked and went in. The room was very dark and he had to feel his way to her bed. He sat down on the edge and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that she was on her side, facing the wall. She was sniffling as quietly as she could, trying to hide her tears from him.

  “What’s wrong, Lace?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” He had to lean close to hear her.

  “Has someone hurt you?”

  She made a sound of disgust. “God, you are so warped.”

  Alec pressed his hands together in his lap. “Maybe it would help if you saw a counselor, Lace,” he said. “Would you like that? You’d be able to talk about whatever’s on your mind.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Would you like to see a counselor, Lace?” he repeated.

  “No.”

  “Could you tell me what’s bothering you then?”

  “I already told you, nothing.”

  “Sweetheart.” He touched her arm and she snapped her shoulder away from him, a wounded sound escaping her lips.

  “Would you please go away?” she asked.

  He stood up and walked to the door. “I love you, Lace,” he said, before closing the door on her silence. He waited in the hall outside her room, and sure enough, her tears started again, worse this time, as though he had somehow increased her pain.

  Now as he stood in the doorway of her room, he wondered how he could make everything up to her. The dolls stared back at him reproachfully, and the leather-clad, bare-chested young men on the walls leered. Well, he’d really given her something to cry about now.

  He bought her a cake, chocolate with white frosting. He had the woman in the supermarket bakery write Happy Birthday Lacey, in blue letters amidst the sugar flowers on the top. He looked in the clothing store she used to shop in with Annie. The racks of shorts and T-shirts, skirts and dresses, overwhelmed him. He did not know her size. He no longer knew her taste. He finally settled on a gift certificate from the record store—he didn’t even know what kind of music she liked anymore—and feeling reasonably satisfied with himself, drove home to make her favorite chicken enchiladas for dinner.

  The notecard in Annie’s recipe box offered him little guidance. Annie had obviously made up most of the enchilada recipe as she went along, and the little that was there was in her scratchy handwriting. He’d become good at deciphering it over the years, but just about all he could make out on this particular card was down in the lower right hand corner. Lacey’s fave! she’d written.

  He called Nola. “Would you believe I forgot Lacey’s birthday?”

  “I know, hon. Jessica told me.”

  “I should have written it on the calendar. My memory’s not the greatest these days.”

  “Don’t beat up on yourself, Alec. She’ll get over it.”

  “I wanted to make those enchiladas Annie used to make. Lacey loves them, but Annie’s recipe is illegible. Do you have it?”

  “Sure do. Let me come on over and help you.”

  “Well, no, please. Don’t do that. Could you just read it to me?” Nola lived on the other side of the cul-de-sac and it would take her only a minute to come over, but that was the last thing he wanted. He wondered if she was aware of how carefully he avoided being alone with her.

  There were more steps than he’d anticipated in making the enchiladas. He burned his fingers shredding the chicken, and destroyed four of the tortillas before he managed to get a system going for dipping them in the sauce and folding them quickly around the filling.

  Lacey came in the back door at five-thirty and he wrapped his arms around her, hugging her close to him before she had a chance to object. She felt thin and stiff. The headset she wore was cool against his cheek and he could hear the faint rocking beat of the music. “I’m so sorry, Lacey,” he said. “The days just got away from me.”

  She pulled away without looking at him. “It’s no big deal.”

  She took the headset off and set it on the counter.

  “Call Clay for dinner, okay?” he asked. “I made your favorite. Enchiladas.”

  She glanced at the oven and headed toward the stairs.

  “These are good, Dad,” Clay said, digging into the cheesy mass on his plate. The enchiladas did not taste like Annie’s and he wondered what he’d done wrong. Lacey hung her head over her plate, twisting her fork in the cheese, making a mess.

  “Not like Mom’s, though,” Alec said, acknowledging his failure before either of them could.

  “Mom put those little cans of green chilies in them.” Lacey didn’t lift her head.

  “Ah,” Alec said. “I’ll know better next time.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said, her voice sarcastic. Cruel.

  Clay raised his eyes to Alec, incredulous. “You’re a bitch,” he said to Lacey, and Alec quickly shook his head at him.

  “Let’s just get on with dessert,” he said. “I didn’t make it so maybe it’ll be a little better than dinner.”

  The cake was waiting for him on the dining room table, and as he lit the fourteen candles it occurred to him that Annie would never
have had a birthday celebration in the kitchen as he was doing. He hadn’t given it a thought. He and the kids had not eaten dinner in the dining room once since Annie died.

  He carried the cake and its flaming candles into the kitchen, singing.

  “Please don’t sing,” Lacey said as Clay joined in, prompting Clay and Alec to sing louder. Lacey clamped her hands over her ears. “Don’t!” she said. “I hate it!”

  Alec saw the tears in her eyes and stopped singing, signaling to Clay to do the same. “Okay,” he said. “Enough of the entertainment.” He set the cake on the table and handed Clay the knife while he got the wrapped gifts from one of the cupboards. He placed them on the table in front of Lacey and felt suddenly mortified. There was a box from Clay—water shoes—and the thin envelope from himself. That was it. Annie always had dozens of things for her, for any of them. The table would be piled high with gifts wrapped in paper she had made herself. A day late and he still had not managed to do this right.

  Lacey went through the motions. She genuinely liked the water shoes; he could see that in her face, and he was grateful to Clay for knowing his sister as well as he did. She thanked Alec for the gift certificate and then began idly poking at her cake. He felt desperate to make her happy.

  “I have a check for you too, Lace,” he said, although he had not thought of one until this minute. “Fifty bucks. You can spend it on whatever you want.” Annie would have killed him. She would have laid him right out on the kitchen floor and kicked the life out of him.

  All I ever got growing up was money, she’d said to him once, when he’d suggested giving money to the kids as a Christmas gift. That’s absolutely all I ever got, when what I really wanted was my parents. I would have traded everything I owned, every cent they ever gave me, if they’d just once said, “We love you, Annie. No matter what you do, no matter what you look like, you’re our child and we love you.”

  “This is the first birthday in my entire life that I didn’t get a doll,” Lacey said. She was not looking at either of them. She poked her fork up and down in a pink sugar flower.

  “Well, I figured you’re fourteen now,” Alec said. “Pretty old for a doll.”

  She shrugged. “Mom said she’d get me one each year till I was twenty-one.”

  “She did?” Alec asked, truly surprised.

  Lacey looked up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time in what seemed like months, and he cringed at the hurt in her face. “When I have kids, I’ll never forget their birthdays.”

  “I didn’t actually forget it, Lacey. I know your birthday’s July first. I just didn’t realize that it was already July.”

  “So you thought maybe it was just June twenty-ninth or thirtieth, then, right? You must have been planning what you would get me. I just bet you were.” She got up from the table. She was starting to cry and trying to hide her face from him, letting her hair fall forward to cover her eyes.

  Alec stood up too and reached for her shoulder. “Sweetheart…”

  She jerked away from him. “I bet you know the exact date your stupid lighthouse was built, don’t you? I bet you have some gigantic anniversary celebration planned.” She took off out the back door.

  “You have school tomorrow, Lace,” he called through the screen. “I don’t want…”

  “Fuck you!” she shouted over her shoulder, words that shut him up, that sent a pain into his chest where the enchiladas lay like concrete behind his breastbone. He wanted to go after her, tell her he wouldn’t stand for her to talk to him that way, but Annie would never have made an issue out of it. Besides, Lacey had come entirely too close to the truth. The construction of the Kiss River Lighthouse began on April 5, 1869, and was completed five years later. The lantern was lit for the first time on September 30, 1874, and for this year’s anniversary of the first illumination they were indeed planning an enormous celebration. He had already ordered the cake.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was not exactly impulse that made Alec stop by the Kill Devil Hills Emergency Room. He’d been planning to do it for a few days now, but it wasn’t until he pulled into the parking lot, his heart rocketing a little from the memory of the last time he’d been there, that he knew today was the day.

  The waiting room was packed, and he wondered if Olivia would be able to get away. He was pleased to see all those people, though. They gave the emergency room an entirely different appearance from the night Annie died. He would hardly know he was in the same place.

  He approached the reception desk, where a balding, barrel-chested man was bullying the frightened young receptionist.

  “I’ve been waiting a goddamn hour!” The man pressed against the desk, jutting his chin toward her. He held a blood-smeared rag to his forearm. “You could bleed to death waiting to be seen here.”

  The receptionist stuttered as she tried to explain the reason for the delay, and the man interrupted her with expletives and threats. Alec thought, unhappily, that he should probably intervene. He was trying to figure the best course of action when Olivia appeared at the young woman’s side. For a second, Alec didn’t recognize her. She looked different here. It was not just the white coat. She seemed taller, her eyes greener, the lashes long and black. She didn’t notice him as she leaned across the reception desk toward the man.

  “I’m sorry you’ve had to wait,” she said. “But this isn’t McDonald’s.”

  Alec grinned, and the man opened his mouth to say something, but Olivia cut him off.

  “There are people ahead of you with injuries more serious than yours,” she said. “We’ll get to you as soon as we can.”

  Something in her voice shut the man up. He turned, grumbling to himself, and took his seat again, and then Olivia noticed Alec. She frowned. “Are you all right?”

  He was surprised by the question. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine.” He leaned across the desk to speak without being overheard. “Are you free for dinner?”

  She smiled. “You really want to take me to a restaurant after I cried in my crab salad?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  “Well, why don’t we pick up some Chinese and take it over to my house? I get off at seven.”

  Obviously her husband had not moved back in. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll get it and meet you there. What would you like?”

  “You choose.” She jotted down directions on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

  He walked back to his car. She was in her element in there. There was a confidence in her that had been entirely absent in the restaurant in Duck. He wished he could watch her work. He wanted to see how she would treat that man’s bleeding arm, how she would talk to him while she worked. He wanted to watch her brain and her body work in harmony. He knew how that felt—he could still remember—although it had been so long now. Suddenly, he missed the sensation of touching a living being, of using his hands to heal. He was healing the lighthouse, he told himself, working to save it, but he knew it was not the same. No matter how warm the day, how intense the sun, the lighthouse still felt cool and lifeless beneath his hands.

  As soon as she left the ER, Olivia regretted her impulsive decision to ask Alec over. She wanted to see him, she wanted to talk to him again, but at her house? The house Paul still paid half the mortgage on? Paul might even be there. Not likely, but not impossible either. This was the first time she had driven home from work with the hope that he had not decided to stop over.

  Alec was waiting on the front deck of her house, a paper bag cradled in his right arm. She parked next to his Bronco in the driveway and got out of her car.

  “Smells good,” she said, reaching past him to unlock the door. She stepped into the living room. “Come in.”

  Sylvie meowed at them as they crossed the room to the kitchen. Alec set the bag on the table and reached down to pick her up. “She’s a pretty one.” He held Sylvie in the air in front of him and she batted at his nose with her paw. “How old is she?” He cuddled the cat against his chest. Olivia co
uld hear her purring.

  “Six,” Olivia said. “Her name’s Sylvie, and ordinarily she hates strangers.”

  “Mmm.” Alec smiled and set Sylvie down on the floor again. “Just don’t tell her I’m a vet and we’ll get along fine.”

  Olivia took two plates out of the cupboard, wishing she could shake her uneasiness. She busied herself with silverware, napkins, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he removed the cartons from the bag. He had on jeans and a white and blue striped short-sleeved shirt. His arms were tan and tightly muscled, and they were covered with smooth, dark hair. He smelled subtly of aftershave, and his hair was damp from a shower, or maybe the sound. He was an undeniably masculine presence in her house, and she could not remember the last time she’d been alone with a man other than her husband. What if Paul walked in right now? She listened for the sound of his car in the driveway as she set the plates on a tray. What if he walked in and found her entertaining Annie O’Neill’s husband?

  “This is Annie’s.” Alec touched the stained glass peacock feather hanging in the window over the sink.

  “Yes,” she said. “I bought it the first time I stopped in the studio.” If Alec knew it was Annie’s, Paul would certainly know as well. She would have to move it someplace where he would be unlikely to see it if he came over. “Let’s eat out on the deck,” she said, lifting the tray. She led him out the sliding glass doors to the covered back deck overlooking the sound.

  “This is very nice,” Alec said, setting the cartons down on the glass-topped table. He stood up straight and put his hands on his hips as he took in the view. “My house is on the sound, too.”

  Olivia sat down and started opening cartons. “I was shocked when we came down here and discovered we could afford something like this, right on the water. I felt as though I’d found my spiritual home.” She smiled ruefully. “I was so optimistic that this was where we would settle down and raise our family.”

  Alec sat down across from her. “How are the twins?” he asked.