Keeper of the Light

by Diane Chamberlain

  “No,” he said. “I want to look through them.”

  She frowned down at him. “Why are you doing it? It just gets you upset.”

  He struggled to smile. “I’m all right, Lacey.”

  She shoved her hands in the pockets of her shorts and stared at him, unconvinced. “Do you want me to look through them with you?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not tonight.”

  She left the room, reluctantly, and Alec dug through the pictures until he found the few he had taken of Annie when she was pregnant with Lacey. She’d been constantly sick during that pregnancy. She could keep almost nothing down, and she put on so little weight that her obstetrician came close to hospitalizing her. She’d had weird pains, which a slew of doctors were unable to diagnose, and she’d spent most of those nine months in bed, while Nola helped Alec take care of Clay.

  Annie’s labor with Lacey had been frightening. Neverending. Alec stayed with her, holding her hand and helping her breathe, until he thought his own body would give out. He didn’t know how one woman—how one human being—could tolerate so much pain.

  Just before Lacey was born, just in those few minutes when Annie must have felt the baby’s head crowning, she began screaming for Alec to leave the delivery room. At first he thought he’d misunderstood her. She was hysterical, and he tried to pretend she did not actually say what he thought she was saying. But the doctor understood her words, and the nurses looked at each other, perplexed.

  “You’d better leave, Dr. O’Neill,” one of them said. “She’s so distraught. She’s not going to be able to concentrate on what she has to do unless you go.”

  He left the room, enormously hurt. He stood in the hallway of the obstetric unit rather than go to the waiting room, where Nola and Tom and a few other friends had gathered. He wouldn’t have known how to explain his presence to them.

  Later, he asked Annie why she had made him go, and she wept and apologized and told him she’d been confused, she didn’t know what she was saying.

  How scared she must have been to have sent him away when she needed him most. How terrified that, somehow, with just one look at that newborn baby, he would know. Had she watched him carefully after that, studying his face every time he studied his daughter’s? Had she looked for his suspicions? Had she tried to tell him the truth once or twice or dozens of times? Or did she know that never, never would he have believed her capable of anything less than complete fidelity?

  He stayed up until nearly midnight, tormenting himself with picture after picture, until he was so drained he could barely climb the stairs to his room. Still, he couldn’t sleep. Too many memories. Too many clues he’d missed. They’d argued about sterilization. She’d insisted she have her tubes tied rather than Alec have a vasectomy because, she said, she couldn’t bear to have him go through the pain and discomfort. Coming from Annie, that explanation had sounded perfectly rational. And what about all those times she’d tried to keep Tom Nestor sober and closedmouthed around him? And all the times he’d catch her crying for no apparent reason? Oh, Annie.

  His mind was churning. There was a coiled tightness in his muscles he had not felt in months. He needed to do something. Go somewhere. He needed to see the ligthhouse.

  He got up long before sunrise and left a note for Lacey on the kitchen table. Then he drove through the dense, early-morning fog to Kiss River.

  He was nearly to the lighthouse when he spotted the horses at the side of the road, and he pulled over to watch them. They looked ethereal in the fog—clearly visible one minute, mere shadows the next. He could make out the colt who had been hit by the Mercedes. He was grazing close to the side of the road; apparently he had learned nothing from his experience. Alec could see the faint scar on the colt’s hindquarters where he had stitched the wound closed. With Paul’s help. The cloisonné horse. She’d treasured it. Had she?

  Alec growled at himself. He wished he could turn his thinking off. Shut it down.

  He drove on to the lighthouse. The white brick blended into the fog and he could barely see it from the parking lot. He let himself in and began climbing the steel steps of the eerie, echoey tower, and he didn’t stop until he reached the top. He stepped out onto the gallery. He was above the fog here, and the lantern must have shut off only minutes earlier in anticipation of daylight. The sun was rising over the sea, a breathtaking spectacle of pink and gold, lighting up the sky and spilling into the water.

  Alec walked around to the other side of the gallery and looked toward the keeper’s house. Through the fog, he could just make out a second bulldozer and a backhoe tucked into the bushes near the side of the house.

  He sat down on the cool iron floor of the gallery, facing the ocean and the sunrise. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the black gallery wall, waiting for the lighthouse to work its usual magic on his nerves.

  Had she come up here with any of them? Did she ever make love with them up here? On the beach below?

  Stop it!

  He opened his eyes again, drumming his fingers next to him on the floor of the gallery. He sat forward and peered over the edge of the gallery. Below him, the ocean crept ever closer to the base of the lighthouse. Through the thinning fog, he could see the white-tipped waves nibbling at the few feet of sand remaining between the water and the brick. Damn, it was close.

  …we should just let it go.

  Alec sat back again, slowly, a small smile on his lips. For the first time, Annie’s words elicited no fear in him. None at all.

  He left Kiss River and drove down the island. No one would ever guess it had been foggy an hour or so earlier. The sun was already blazing across the Banks, and as Alec drove over the bridge into Manteo, it lit up the boats on the sound.

  He parked in front of the retirement home, but that was not his destination. Instead, he walked across the street to the quaint little gray and white antique store, frowning when he noticed the closed sign in the front window. It had not occurred to him that it was too early for the shop to be open.

  There was a car in the driveway, though. He peered through the front door and could see light coming from a room at the back of the shop. He knocked, and in a moment a woman came to the door.

  She opened it a few inches. “Can I help you?” she asked. She was sixty or so, Alec guessed. Gray-haired and grandmotherly.

  “I know you’re not open yet, but this is important,” he said. “I’m looking for an antique doll for my daughter. I think my wife used to buy them here for her.”

  “Annie O’Neill?”

  “That’s right.”

  She opened the door wide. “You must be Alec.” She smiled. “Come in, dear. I’m Helen.”

  He shook the hand she offered.

  “I’m so pleased to meet you,” she said. “Annie bought the dolls for her daughter’s birthday, right?”

  “That’s right. I’m a little late with it this year.”

  “Better late than never.” Helen leaned against a glass counter filled with old jewelry. “Annie was such a good customer. Such a lovely person. She gave me that.” She pointed to a stained glass panel hanging in the front window. The little gray antique shop stood against a background of grass and trees. Yet another creation of Annie’s he had never seen.

  “It’s nice,” he said.

  “I was so sorry to hear about…everything,” Helen said, as she led him into a small back room, where dolls sat here and there on pieces of antique furniture. One of them—an imp with red hair—caught his eye immediately.

  “Oh, that one.” He pointed toward the doll. “Without a doubt.”

  “I had a feeling you’d pick her. It’s the first one with red hair I’ve seen, and when I got it in a month or so ago, I thought to myself, wouldn’t Saint Anne have loved this one? Her face is a very high-quality pearly bisque, and she has her original human hair. That all makes her quite expensive, though.” A small white tag was attached to the doll’s arm, and Helen turned it over
so Alec could see the price written on it.

  “Wow.” He smiled. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Helen picked up the doll and carried it to the front of the store. She stuffed some tissue paper into the bottom of a large box and placed the doll inside. “Annie used to like to wrap them up herself,” she said. “I think she made the paper. But I suppose…would you like me to wrap it for you?”

  “Please.”

  She cut a length of blue and white striped wrapping paper from a roll and began taping it around the box. “Annie came in here all the time,” she said, cutting off a piece of tape. “She just lit up the store. We still talk about her.” She attached a premade bow to the top of the box and slid it to him across the counter. “Everyone misses her so much.”

  “She’d like that,” Alec said, handing her a check. “I think being forgotten was one of her biggest fears.”

  He could hear Lacey’s music blasting from upstairs when he got home, but he stopped in the den first to call Nola.

  “I have some news,” he said, “and you’re not going to like it. Brace yourself, okay?”

  “What’s that, hon?”

  “I’m resigning from the lighthouse committee.”

  There were two beats of silence before Nola spoke again. “You’re joking,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Alec, why in God’s name would you…?”

  “I couldn’t begin to explain it to you, Nola. I nominate you as the new chair, and I wish all of you great luck with your endeavors.”

  “Wait! Don’t you dare hang up. You owe us an explanation, Alec. I mean, really, don’t you think? What am I supposed to tell the others?”

  He ran his fingers over the silky blue on Lacey’s present. “Tell them I’ve had an epiphany,” he said. “Tell them I’ve been set free.”

  He carried the box upstairs and knocked on Lacey’s door.

  She let out a little scream. “Don’t come in yet, Dad,” she said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I’m not dressed. Just a second.”

  He heard her frantically rooting around in her room, and he wondered what he would find when he was finally allowed in.

  She opened the door after a minute or two. She was dressed in her usual shorts and T-shirt, with her hair tucked under a wide-brimmed straw hat.

  “What’s with the hat?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” She was a little winded. She looked at the box in his hands. “What’s that?”

  “A very belated birthday gift.”

  She took the box from him and sat down on her bed, and he leaned against the door frame to watch her. She bit her lip as she raised the lid.

  “Oh.” She gasped. “She’s incredible, Dad.” She lifted the doll from the tissue paper and touched its hair. “A redhead.” She looked up at him. “Where did you ever find one with red hair?”

  He shrugged and looked secretive.

  Lacey stood up and placed the doll in the center of the shelf above her dresser, just below the poster of a leather-vested, long-haired thug.

  “Well,” she said, sounding suddenly timid. “I have something to show you too, but you’re gonna freak, Dad.”

  Alec smiled and folded his arms across his chest. “You know what, Lacey? I think I’m just about unfreakable right now. What is it?”

  She kept her eyes on him as she slowly lifted the hat from her head, revealing exceedingly short red curls. She had cut off every speck of black, leaving herself with very little hair at all, but all that was there was red.

  “Oh, Lace,” he said. “It’s beautiful.” He pulled her against him, and she stayed easily in his arms. He held her close, pressing his cheek against the damp curls and breathing in the sweet, clean scent of her hair.

  Someday he would have to tell her the truth about her parentage. Someday he would have to tell Tom. But not now. Right now, she was his.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Was it this painless to end a marriage?

  Olivia got out of bed with the realization that she had not once thought of Paul since he left the house the afternoon before. Of course, she had worked late last night, later than she had to, letting the patients absorb her time and attention. She’d worked until she was so exhausted that she knew sleep would be immediate and dreamless once she got in bed.

  Now, as she showered, as she dried her hair, she had the feeling she was carefully holding thoughts of Paul at bay, as if letting them in, letting them get a grip on her, might be more than she could manage.

  She was thinking of Alec, though. She had the day off, and as she busied herself with housework, she listened for the phone to ring, willing him to call. She would not call him again. He needed to work this out in his own good time.

  Around noon, she reluctantly left the house to go to the store. She had two bags of groceries with her when she turned onto her street an hour later, and she spotted Alec standing on the pier behind her house. Although she was three or four houses away, her view of him was nearly unbroken, and she stopped her car to watch him. He was leaning against one of the pilings, shading his eyes to look out at the sound. An aching tenderness filled her. What a horrendous day he must have had yesterday. As stunned as she had been by what she’d learned about her husband, it could not compare to what he’d learned about his wife.

  She drove on, and he must have heard her pull into the driveway, because by the time she started unloading the groceries, he was helping her.

  “I’m glad to see you,” she said, looking at him over the top of the car. “I wasn’t sure if you’d call, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “I thought I was taking a risk coming over here.” He lifted a bag of groceries into his arms. “I figured maybe Paul would be here, and I’m not ready to meet up with him yet.” He stopped midway to her front door. “He’s not here, is he?”

  “No.” She unlocked the door. “Come in.”

  He followed her into the kitchen and set his bag next to hers on the table. “So—” he glanced up at her as they began unloading the groceries “—have you spoken to him?”

  She put a quart of milk in the refrigerator, then leaned back against the counter. “He stopped over yesterday afternoon,” she said. “He was very apologetic, very distraught. Absolutely dripping with remorse.” She heard the mockery in her voice and wondered if she sounded as hard to Alec as she did to herself. “He’d been a fool, he said, and he destroyed the taped interviews he’d made of Annie and burned all her pictures.” She shook her head. “I guess he never did lose his flair for drama. I told him about the baby, and if guilt could kill, I would have had a dead man on my hands.” She smiled ruefully. “He said he wants us to get back together, that we should try to work things out for the baby’s sake, but I just…” Her voice caught suddenly, surprising her, and she turned her face away from Alec.

  “It’s all right, Olivia,” he said quietly. “Let it out.”

  She shook her head. “But I’m not sad.” Tears filled her eyes and she wiped at them with her fingers. “Really, I’m not.”

  Alec reached his arm toward her. His fingers slipped around the nape of her neck, and she let him pull her to him, shutting her eyes as his arms closed around her.

  He held her, letting her cry for a long time. He offered no platitudes, no words of false comfort, as though he knew that her only chance for healing lay in her tears.

  “I’m through with him.” She spoke into his shoulder. “It’s over. I don’t love him anymore. I don’t think I have for a long time.” She was quiet for a moment, relishing the closeness of Alec’s body, knowing this was where she wanted to be. She flattened her hand against the small of his back. “Yesterday must have been terrible for you,” she said. “Yes.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Sometime,” he said. “But not right now.”

  “Mary Poor knew exactly what she was doing, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Alec pulled gently away from her.
“That she did.” He picked up the yogurt and cottage cheese from the table and carried them over to the refrigerator. He bent down to put them on the bottom shelf, and she noticed he was not wearing his wedding ring. It had left a band of light-colored skin on his tanned finger.

  When he stood up again, his eyes went to the window above the sink. “Where’s Annie’s peacock feather?” he asked.

  “Oh,” she said. “I broke it the night Paul told me that he and Annie had…” She caught herself and looked away from him, out the window, trying to think of some way to finish the sentence without saying too much.

  Alec finished it for her. “The night he told you that he and Annie had made love.”

  She looked up at him, stunned. “How did you know?”

  “Was it just once since you’ve been here?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Just before Christmas, right?”

  “Yes. But how…”

  “I figured it out last night. I spent the night putting clues together. She gave me plenty, and I missed them all because it never occurred to me to look for them.” He leaned back against the refrigerator. “One night, just before Christmas, she came home late from the studio and she was extremely upset. She had a sliver of glass in her hand, and she couldn’t get it out herself. I took it out for her, and she cried the whole time. Then she wanted to take a bath before she came to bed. She said it would help her relax, but I guess she just wanted to wash away any evidence of Paul before she got into bed with me.”

  He lowered his eyes to the floor, and Olivia bit her lip.

  “When I was thinking about this last night, when I was putting the clues together, I realized something must have happened between her and Paul that night, but I was hoping that maybe they didn’t actually…” He looked up at Olivia. “But they did, huh? I mean,” he smiled wistfully, “it wasn’t just that he tried to coerce her and she steadfastly refused him?”

  She returned his sad smile. “Paul said it was…a mutual thing.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t think you knew, Olivia. I figured that if you did, you would have thrown it up in my face when I accused you of being a less honest person than Annie.”