“What’s it been like for you since the story came out in the Gazette?”
She described the bilious letters to the editor that had appeared in the last two issues of the Gazette. Their irate tone and the mushrooming of negative sentiment toward her were humiliating. She told him about her stiffness at work and her sudden lack of faith in her own judgment, surprising herself with her willingness to talk to him so openly. Then she told him about the petition. “I expected to see your name at the top,” she said. “I figured the only reason you weren’t on it was because you were out of town.”
He reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “Forgive me for ever thinking you wouldn’t do your best with her. It hurts me to see your name dragged through the mud this way, Liv. Really, it does.”
At the next stoplight, he pulled out his wallet and handed her a picture of Joe Gallo’s granddaughter. He told her about his conversation with Joe and how proud he had felt to be her husband, but she only half listened.
She would have to tell him she’d gone to Norfolk with Alec, that she’d done that talk show. He was sure to hear about it at the next lighthouse meeting, and it would be better if he heard it from her. Not now, though. She didn’t want to damage the closeness she felt to him here in his car.
When they pulled into the restaurant parking lot, she turned to lay her sweater on the back seat of the car and saw the small oval of stained glass attached to the window. It was too dark to see the design, but she had no doubt it was one of Annie’s, and the hope she’d felt these last twenty-four hours was abruptly tempered by reality.
She carried the rose into the restaurant, exchanging it for the carnation on their table. After their drinks had been served, she folded her hands on the edge of the table and drew in a breath.
“I was on a radio talk show in Norfolk last Saturday,” she said. “About the lighthouse.”
“What?” His eyes widened behind his glasses. “What do you mean?”
“Alec O’Neill called me. He was supposed to make two appearances up there on the same day, so he asked me if I’d be willing to handle one of them since I had experience doing that sort of thing.”
“That’s ridiculous. You don’t know a thing about the lighthouse.”
“I do now.”
Paul pumped the stirrer up and down in his drink. “Did you and Alec drive up together?”
“Yes.” He let out his breath, ran a hand over his chin. “What have you told him, Olivia? I mean, does he have any idea why we’re separated?”
“He doesn’t know anything about you and Annie.”
“Well, what did you talk about for…what is it, two hours each way?”
She thought back to all she had told Alec, to how thoroughly she had let him into her personal life. “We worked on our presentations going up and talked about how they went coming back. That’s all.”
Paul sat back in his chair and shook his head. “I don’t get this at all. Why you? Why do you care about the lighthouse enough to speak about it?”
“Why do you care so much?”
He colored quickly. “I’ve always had a fascination with lighthouses,” he said. “You just didn’t know about it because we lived in the District, where lighthouses are few and far between.” He bent his stirrer between his fingers until it snapped. “It just makes me uncomfortable to know you’re talking to O’Neill. Do you have any more of these speaking engagements lined up?”
“No.”
“Don’t take any more, all right?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “If I have the time and interest, I’m going to do it, Paul. You really have no right to tell me not to.”
The woman at the next table glanced over at them, and Paul lowered his voice. “Let’s not talk about this now, okay?” he said. “I wanted tonight to be good. Let’s talk about Washington.”
“All right.” She leaned away from the table as the waitress set her salad in front of her.
“I felt good there, Olivia. I haven’t felt that way in so long. I’ve been back just a few hours and I’m already tensing up. It’s this place.” He shuddered. “The Outer Banks. It reminds me too much of Annie here. It’s too small. Everywhere I go there are reminders of her. The way the air smells makes me think of her.”
“I love the way it smells,” she said, alarmed with herself for baiting him. The way the air smelled made her think of Alec and the evening they stood on the balcony of the Kiss River Lighthouse, the beacon pulsing above them. Every time she stepped outside now, she breathed in the air in huge, cleansing gulps.
Paul looked down at his salad. “If you and I get back together, we’ll have to leave here.”
She felt stricken. “I love it here, Paul, in spite of the fact that half the populace would like to see me lynched. I’m hoping that will blow over. I think this would be the perfect place to raise a family.”
“What family?” he asked, and the woman at the next table could not resist glancing at them again. “You’re thirty-seven years old and the surgery only gave you a twenty percent chance of conceiving. Not very good odds.”
Olivia leaned closer to him to avoid being overheard. “I’m more convinced than you are that I could conceive. If I don’t, we could adopt. We’ve talked this out before. It’s nothing new.”
“Things have changed since the last time we talked about a family.”
The waitress delivered their entrees, and Olivia watched the muscles in the side of Paul’s jaw contract as he waited out the intrusion.
“You don’t understand,” he said, once the waitress had left. “I have to get out of here, Olivia, that’s all there is to it. Whether it’s with you or without you, I have to leave. I drove down here today feeling good and optimistic about us and looking forward to seeing you, but as soon as I crossed the bridge into Kitty Hawk, this black cloud dropped over my head. My mood got worse and worse as I drove down the island, and by the time I got to my house and out of the car…” He shook his head. “It’s like she’s still here, more powerful than she ever was when she was alive.”
Olivia felt her patience slipping. “What do you expect? Your house is full of reminders of her. Maybe if you got rid of…all the icons, all the tangible evidence that you ever knew her, you’d start to forget about her.”
He looked, briefly, angry, and she suddenly realized she could not just forgive him and go on. She was filled with her own anger.
“There’s nothing I want more than for us to get back together,” she said, “but I refuse to live in Annie’s shadow again.”
“Then we have to leave here.”
“I’m not going to leave a place I’ve come to love until I see real evidence that you’re over her. Throw out the stained glass. Break it into pieces.”
He started visibly.
“Oh, Paul.” She crumpled her napkin and set it next to her plate. “You’re not ready, are you?”
“Not to destroy the stained glass, no.” He looked exhausted, his eyes red and half-closed behind his glasses. She thought of Annie as a succubus, coming in the night to drain the life out of him. Perhaps Annie was more Paul’s nemesis than she was hers.
He drove her back to her car in the emergency room parking lot after dinner. She was glad he was not driving her home, where she would have felt the need to invite him in, where the night before she had worked on the crib until she was giddy. He walked her to her car, holding her hand. He kissed her lightly on the lips, and she turned abruptly to unlock the door of the Volvo. She would give him no chance to touch her, no chance to discover her secret.
She arrived home to find a message on her answering machine from Clark Chapman, the medical director of Emerson Memorial. She frowned as she listened to his deep, resonant voice.
“Please give me a call when you get in tonight,” he said. He left a number and told her he would be up until eleven. It was not quite ten now.
She dialed his number, curious.
“Dr. Simon!” He sounded delighted to hear f
rom her, as if they were old friends. “How are you?”
She hesitated, wondering if perhaps she had met him somewhere and had forgotten. “I’m fine, thank you,” she said.
“You’re wondering why I’m calling, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“I’d rather have this conversation in person, of course, but I didn’t want to put it off that long. I’ve been following your story, Dr. Simon. It was more than idle curiosity on my part, of course, since your patient—Mrs. O’Neill—would have ended up in our trauma center had you opted to transport her.”
“Yes.”
“And you and I both know she would have come to us DOA.”
Gratitude and relief rushed through her, and her eyes threatened to fill. She cried too easily these days. “You and I seem to be the only people who are certain of that,” she said.
“I’ve spoken to some colleagues of mine at Washington General,” Clark Chapman continued. “People who can attest to your clinical skill and sound judgment. You made the far more difficult choice with Mrs. O’Neill, didn’t you? You demonstrated initiative and courage, at considerable personal risk.” There was a smile in his voice. “Are you wondering what I’m leading up to?”
“Yes.”
“I’m offering you a job. You’d be co-director of our trauma team. It’s a great group of people. They already think you’re a bit of a hero.”
It was perfect. One of those weird serendipitous occurrences that suddenly made everything fall into place. She and Paul could be together in a new location, without the rush of Washington, yet without reminders of Annie for either of them. Still, aside from feeling vindicated by Clark Chapman’s words, she felt no enthusiasm.
“I’m very flattered,” she said, “but I’m not sure I’m ready to leave the Outer Banks. I don’t want to simply run away from my problems here.” It was not exactly the truth, but Clark Chapman seemed to accept it.
“It’s an open invitation,” he said. “Come visit us.” He gave her his work number, and she jotted it down in her appointment book. “The position would be created for you,” he added. “It doesn’t exist right now, but we’ve got a few extra bucks for that department, so it’s yours whenever you say the word.”
She hung up the phone, feeling strangely flat. Wary. She couldn’t allow herself to hope, couldn’t give herself over to a new dream of the future when she didn’t yet trust her husband to be a committed, contented part of it. But Paul was back, she told herself. Paul had missed her. Surely they would be able to work things out.
Once in bed, though, once she had closed her eyes, all she could see was that telltale oval of glass on the window of his car.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Paul Macelli was back, more nervous than the first time, if that was possible. Mary had been waiting weeks for him and was beginning to think he wouldn’t come again, that he’d lost his courage after his first visit. She hated waiting. She was ninety years old. It seemed like all she did these days was wait.
Paul adjusted his glasses and took the tape recorder from his briefcase, setting it once again on the broad arm of Mary’s rocking chair. He pressed the button to begin recording.
“I’d like to hear about you today,” he said. “They used to call you the Angel of the Light, didn’t they?”
“So they did,” she said, a little surprised, but pleased all the same. “What do you want to know?”
“You said you met your husband in Deweytown. Is that where you grew up?”
“Oh, yes. Deweytown was just about cosmopolitan compared to Kiss River, I can tell you that. My father owned a little grocery store over there. Caleb was worried I wouldn’t want to leave Deweytown, but I had plenty of spunk in those days. I thought it would be an adventure living in Kiss River.”
“And was it?”
Mary smiled. “At times, yes. At other times—well, it didn’t matter. I was always one for having a good imagination. I knew how to keep myself occupied when there was nothing more exciting going on than watching the beacon go round.” Mary clamped her lips shut. She’d better watch how much she said. She looked over at him as he adjusted his glasses again. He was jiggling one leg up and down, sending an irritating vibration into the floor of the porch.
“So,” he said. “Tell me how you came to be known as the Angel of the Light.”
“Well.” Mary looked out at the street. “I guess you could say I had a way with people, and living out at Kiss River, you got real hungry for company. So any time I’d hear someone in the village was sick, I’d take them food and make sure they had whatever it was they needed. Sometimes I’d carry them across the sound to the doctor in Deweytown in our little boat. I guess I just got a reputation for helping people out.”
Mary shifted in the rocker. It had bothered her that people thought she was so good. They hadn’t known her, really.
“Caleb and I made a good team,” she continued, looking once again at Paul. “We were both hard workers, and we both loved the lighthouse. Anytime I’d see a ship, I’d go out on the gallery and wave. So I guess I got myself a reputation that way, too. Sailors would ask each other who that lady on the lighthouse was, and they’d say, why, that’s Mary Poor, who’s always friendly, always doing a good turn for someone. Sailors watched for me then, hoping I’d be out waving when they went by.”
She looked toward the harbor and closed her eyes to block out the view of the boats, imagining in their place the towering white spire of the lighthouse.
“I could cook, too.” She opened her eyes again and smiled. “I was a bit famous for my persimmon cakes and puddings. I believe you’ve had a taste of one of my persimmon cakes, haven’t you?”
“Uh.” Paul dropped his pen, bent over to pick it up. “I don’t recall,” he said, straightening up again.
“Too bad I couldn’t make one right now,” Mary said, “but they don’t allow us to cook. Or drink. Or smoke. You have a cigarette with you today?”
“Sorry, no. I don’t smoke.” He shifted in the rocker and pushed the recorder a little closer to Mary. “Tell me about the work you did with the Life Saving Service.”
Mary felt herself color and hoped that Paul Macelli did not notice. “Well, I guess that’s another reason they got to calling me the Angel. A more important reason, really.” She sat up taller in the chair, straightening her spine. “I was very strong, you see. I could swim better than most men. I’d be out in the ocean nearly every day, swimming back and forth, back and forth. My arms were solid as brick, and my legs too, from climbing up to the top of the tower.” Mary smiled to herself. “I had a dream of working with the Life Saving Service, you see. We knew a lot of the men who worked over at the station and I’d ask to go out with them when they were rescuing someone. Of course they just laughed at me. But in 1927, I finally got my chance. Caleb and I were down a mile or so on the beach because we heard there was a boat stranded on the bar. When we got there, the boys from the Life Saving Station had just sent out their power boat to try to save the crew. It was real squally that day, and the power boat got hit straight on by a big breaker and started going to pieces. There were just a few of the men left on the beach with their old surfboat. They quick got in and headed out to sea, and I saw my chance.” Mary smiled to herself. “I just jumped in with them, in my skirt and all. They were too shorthanded and too shocked to stop and tell me to get out. I’ll tell you, those oars felt right natural to me, and we managed to load the fellas from the power boat into the surfboat without a hitch. I was stiff in the shoulders for a few days, but I didn’t care. After that, the Life Saving crew sometimes called on me—unofficially, of course—when they needed an extra pair of hands.”
Mary rested her head against the back of the rocker. All this talking was wearing on her.
“Would you like to stop for today?” Paul asked.
Mary shook her head. “I’m not finished just yet,” she said. There was one last story she needed to tell—and a story it was, more fiction than fac
t. She’d told it this way for so long now, she could hardly remember the truth anymore. “You see, in the end it was my courage—or maybe my foolhardiness—that cost me my husband. In July of 1964, I was up in the tower when I spotted a man swimming off Kiss River and it looked like he was in trouble. I ran down to the beach and went in after him. He was unconscious when I got to him and he was just too heavy for me and I started getting crampy and going under. Caleb somehow caught sight of us and he came out to the beach and jumped in after the both of us. He managed to get us out, too, but it was all too much for him. He was sixty-four years old. His heart stopped right there and he fell out on the sand.”
“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “That’s a tragic way to lose someone.”
Mary stared into space for a moment. “Yes, it was,” she said finally. She raised her hands and dropped them on her thighs. “Well, that’s all for today, I think.”
“Of course.” Paul turned off his recorder and stood up. “Thanks again for your help,” he said.
Mary watched him walk down the sidewalk to his car. The stories had tired her, made her remember things about herself she did not like to remember. And they made her remember a night long ago when she’d told those same stories to Annie.
She’d known Annie for only a few months then, but already she’d felt a comfort with her young friend she’d never known with another soul, woman or man. She had never had the luxury of a close woman friend, and despite the difference in their ages, she knew she could confide in Annie. She could tell Annie the truth.
It was on a cold evening in January, one of many evenings Annie had spent with her back then. Alec was struggling to make a go of a veterinary practice, but the Outer Banks were so sparsely populated that he spent most of his time treating farm animals on the mainland. He was gone often in the evenings, pulling calves, or tending to colicky horses, leaving Annie with entirely too much time on her hands.
She had Clay with her, as she often did, on that night in January. Clay would totter around the keeper’s house, talking gibberish and getting into things. Finally, Annie would lay him down in the small upstairs bedroom, setting pillows at the edge of the bed so he couldn’t roll out. She’d sing to him in that soft, dusky voice that made Mary’s heart ache as she listened to her from the chair by the fire. She could picture the room—the room that had been Caleb’s as a child—filling with light every few seconds. Annie might pull the shades and draw the curtains, but the light would still find cracks to pass through, and Clay would slip under its hypnotic spell. He would be asleep quickly, more quickly than he ever fell asleep at home.
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