Lighthouse Beach

by Shelley Noble

  “Well, we did talk about maybe doing something today, but he has work to do. And I don’t want to neglect my friends.”

  “Oh hell, I’d drop you guys in a New York minute to get a quick one in the hay.”

  “Not hay,” Jess said. “You don’t know who’s been sleeping there.”

  “Or is still sleeping there,” Allie added.

  Diana barked out a laugh. She really did love these nutcases. “I have no intention of deserting you. Besides, I told Lillo that we were going to meet back here later and help her clean out the storage room.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Yep, I did.” Diana stretched. “It didn’t go over really well.”

  Jess leaned on her elbow. “And then I told her … Hell, I don’t even know what I said, but she bolted. We may have done more harm than good.”

  “Maybe, but we’re cleaning out that storeroom whether she gets back or not.”

  “Diana, we couldn’t. You wouldn’t.”

  “Look, how much longer can we stay? … Wait—that sounded weird. I’m having a great time, but I have to get back to the office.”

  “And I need to go home,” Allie said. “Last time I called home, I told them that I wanted to take care of Mac’s eye situation, but I’d try to catch the red-eye Sunday night.”

  They both looked at Jess. “Well, I seem to be unmarried, unemployed, and familyless. Is that even a word?”

  “You can always come work—”

  Jess held up her hand. “I know, and I may, but I sort of have an idea … that maybe I’ll stay on here for a while longer. Work on some ideas about stuff and things.”

  “Oh my God. That was vague even for you. Must mean there’s a dynamite idea percolating in that convoluted brain of yours.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, I hate to see you go, but I’ll be around to hold down the fort, as they say.”

  “Have you told Lillo?”

  “I haven’t mentioned it. But if she needs her space back, I’ll stay at Mac’s.”

  “You really are working on something, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe. Thank you for making that delicious breakfast. I’m going to drop by Mac’s for a minute, and see if she wants to come here for dinner.”

  “Or invites us to her place,” Diana added.

  “Or invites us there. Then I have to go into town.”

  “Why?” Allie asked.

  “Well, I’m getting these ‘someone is trying to get into your bank accounts’ notices. Must be dear old Dad. I changed the passwords, but he probably already has his hackers on it. So I need to get to a secure server and change my passwords again. Then get on to the bank and freeze all activity. Which can be a bitch. I’m hoping no one is using the computer at the community center.”

  Diana sighed. “It’s come to this. Dial-up. What they need here is connectivity.”

  “Tell me about it. But it’s worth it if I can keep my father busy enough not to come galloping here to disrupt everybody’s life.”

  Diana gave her the look her horse metaphor deserved.

  “You think he’ll send those men again?” Allie asked.

  “Oh, definitely, if he can’t get to my money.”

  “I’m sure he cares about more than just your money.”

  Diana and Jess looked deadpan at her.

  “Or not,” Allie reluctantly agreed.

  “Not,” Diana said. “I’m sorry, Jess, but you know it’s true.”

  “Yeah, I do. And the really sad thing? He doesn’t really care about my money. He doesn’t need it. He just needs to be the winner. And you know, now that I’ve finally given in to the truth—the real truth—not his version of it, I feel ridiculously fine about it.”

  Allie looked like she might cry.

  “It’s all right, Al. My brothers and sister and I lived in luxury, had a mother who usually loved us. And plenty of nannies who did for real. And I’ve realized, now that I’ve had time to think, he didn’t love any of my siblings either. They were just possessions, just like me. They’re still shackled to the company store. I’m free at last, free at last. It’s empowering.”

  “Great,” Diana said. “Do you feel empowered enough to stop at the liquor store and carry all the bottles back in the fog?”

  Jess laughed. “I love you. And absolutely. I’ll pick up wine and provisions if you’ll make a list.” She checked her watch. “It’s after ten and I have to make another stop after the center, though I have a feeling everybody will be running late today.”

  She headed down the hall to get dressed.

  “You might as well go, too, Diana,” Allie said. “I can see you’re chomping at the bit to get to the stables.”

  “What a fetchingly descriptive phrase.” Diana snapped her teeth and tossed her head. “What about the dishes?”

  “I’ll do them, then I’m going to curl up with a book and look out the window to where I can’t see a damn thing, not even the lighthouse, and—”

  “Wait for the studly CPA.”

  Allie immediately grew serious. “Nothing is going to happen.”

  “Why? Time’s a-wasting, girl. Seize the day, while you have the chance. And go home happy.” She went to their room to put on her last clean pair of new used jeans.

  Allie was at the sink when she came out. “You’d better put a jacket on over that sweatshirt. The weather can get raw.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m from California, land of fog and damp.”

  “I thought you were the land of sunshine and movie stars.”

  “Movie stars, yes; sunshine, I think, is Florida. Take mine. It’s on the peg by the door.”

  “You may need it.”

  Allie flashed a smile. It transformed her face and Diana suddenly realized it was a younger smile, a smile she’d grown accustomed to in school but hadn’t really seen since they’d reconnnected this week.

  Damn. She didn’t want to admit it, but there was something weird about this town. It made you feel different. Believe in odd things. Caught you off guard, which was not a smart place for Diana Walters, CEO of a cutting-edge tech company, to find herself. Not a smart place at all.

  The wet and the cold and the fog hit her the moment she stepped out of the cottage. Damn. They weren’t kidding when they called it pea-soup weather. This was ridiculous.

  She was ridiculous. To go out walking in this weather, to stumble blindly up a country road in the cold and damp just to muck out some stables. Yeah, keep believing that one and she’d be sitting around the fireplace all winter with Lillo Gray, ex-physician.

  So why wasn’t Lighthouse Beach working out for her?

  She tripped over something in the road, realized she’d wandered onto the shoulder, where branches and other stuff had been brought down by the storm. She eased back to her left, felt the firm pavement under her feet. Realized she might have trouble seeing the sign to the stables. It was hard enough to see it in the sunlight.

  She slowed down, peered into the denseness. It was like a smoke machine in a theater gone berserk and pumping noxious fumes over the audience as the curtain rises. The coughs and teary eyes that follow. Only this fog didn’t lift and it wasn’t noxious and it didn’t disperse, just hovered in the air, unmoving.

  Had she missed the turnoff? It was impossible to tell. How long had she been walking? Her heart stuttered and she berated herself for her moment of fear. If she didn’t find the turnoff soon, she’d just turn around and go back to the cottage. It wasn’t like she was lost in the woods.

  It came upon her like the roll of doom. She heard it, but before she could identify it or figure out its direction, it rose over her, barely lighter than the fog itself.

  She threw up her arm to protect herself, but the scream died in her throat. She was knocked to the side; recognized Loki’s whinny as she hit the ground; heard the scrambling of hooves. But she couldn’t see a thing.

  “Jesus! Where the hell are you? Don’t move.” Ian’s voice.

 
Diana froze, tried to tell him where she was, but her landing had knocked the air out of her. She gasped, wheezed. “Here,” she croaked.

  She could see the white shroud moving above her and then something kicked her thigh.

  “Shit.” Ian’s face came into view, eye level, two inches away.

  “Are you fucking crazy?”

  He was screaming at her. Music to her ears. She started to laugh.

  “It isn’t funny. I could have killed you. I could’ve—” His voice broke and his face moved away. She was alone in the mist.

  “Do not leave me,” she ordered. She’d meant to order, but it might have sounded like a plea. The fog was doing odd things to her voice.

  “Just don’t move.” Ian’s disembodied voice echoed around her. Where was he?

  She could hear him mumble and realized he was talking to Loki, not her. She tried to stand.

  “I said don’t move.”

  “Sorry, I thought you were talking to the horse.” She giggled, stifled the sound. She freaking giggled. What the hell was wrong with her? She hadn’t giggled even as a child. She took a deep breath. Pulled herself together. Hauled herself to her feet and came nose to chest with Ian Lachlan.

  It was a good place to be, she decided.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “Coming to the stables. Why are you riding in this fog?”

  “I—I almost ran you down.” His voice sounded weak, breathless.

  She swore he was shaking.

  Damn. Sometimes a girl just needed to act. She slipped her arms around his waist and managed to find his mouth with hers. Not bad aim, when you couldn’t see shit.

  And then she stopped commenting, stopped analyzing, gave up, and gave in.

  Chapter 21

  Lillo reached into the carton and pulled out two more boxes of swabs. The clinic was quiet and virtually empty. The fog was keeping people away. They’d seen only three patients since she’d arrived. And all three of them had walked.

  With nothing to do, she had decided to rearrange the supply cabinet. Anything to keep from thinking about this afternoon. Had she really agreed to throw out the stuff in the storeroom? Throw it out? Was she nuts? Her whole life was in that room.

  No, Lillo thought, her whole past life. Her whole life was here.

  Not here in the clinic but here in Lighthouse Beach. Maybe she would have to get a steadier job than emergency gardener, handyman, grocery shopper to the infirm.

  But people left the island to get jobs. She didn’t even have a car. She’d sold it along with whatever wasn’t waiting for her in the extra bedroom.

  She was such a mess. Pharmaceuticals salesman? Oh, right, no car. She could buy a secondhand clunker, but with what money? Borrow Mac’s van? Then what would Mac do?

  Waitress at Mike’s?

  Hell, what was she thinking? She’d just racked up a quarter of a million dollars in tuition to be a waitress? “Hi, Mom and Dad, how’s Florida? I got a new job, working at Mike’s.”

  She could barely force herself to make her once-a-month call as it was. Let several of their calls go by before she answered the phone. She was consumed by guilt. She’d never known what that phrase meant until the first time she’d talked to them after her return to Lighthouse Beach. She’d thrown up after she’d hung up.

  She’d taken their love, their support, their money, and betrayed them with her failure.

  Clancy came into the room with his coffee mug. “You gonna hold that box of swabs all day? Have you even moved since the last time I came in for a refill?”

  Lillo hastily put the box in the cupboard. “Yes.” She opened the door wider to show him the nearly filled shelves.

  Clancy shook his head. “Very neat,” he said, and walked toward the door. Turned when he got there. Opened his mouth and Lillo braced herself. But he just shook his head again and left the room.

  Even Clancy was disappointed in her. Well, stand in line. No one was more disappointed in her than she was. Not just because she’d lost the man she loved, or her profession, or all the friends and colleagues she’d had pretragedy. But because she believed in her failure.

  She hadn’t at first. At first, she’d known that what happened wasn’t entirely her fault, that emotions had made her slow on the uptake. It was her fiancé, for heaven’s sake. He’d been laughing and then he’d stopped. She didn’t automatically start sorting through the list of possibilities as she slid down the palisade.

  She was screaming his name. Refusing to believe and panicking. She’d panicked and Kyle was dead.

  She reached for another box of swabs; it crumpled in her hand. It wasn’t even the self-doubt that had driven her home. It was the doubts of her peers. She was culpable, but so were they. The looks, the whispers. The snippets of overheard conversation. They’d subtly but insidiously broken down what little self-confidence she’d had left. Maybe it hadn’t been intentional, but they’d been ruthless. And she’d let them do it to her. And now she had nothing left.

  She gulped back a cry. Pushed the box back into shape and put it on the shelf with the other boxes. Supplies she would never have the right to use. She’d known this for the last year. And yet today, with the fog shrouding the light, pushing into the windows and creating a suffocating bubble of remorse around her, she saw, for the first time, that she wasn’t alone in her downfall.

  If she hadn’t let her guilt wear her down, if she hadn’t let the suspicions get to her, if she hadn’t let Kyle die, if she had never left the island in the first place, she’d be happily running a fat camp for kids like Jess. Jess, whose own life had almost been ruined by her inability to stand up for herself. To resist the motives of others. Who still didn’t know what she was going to do with her future.

  Lillo shut the cabinet door. She hadn’t been needed in the examination rooms since she’d arrived. Maybe she should just go home. Give herself a minute to confront her storage room before the others dismantled it.

  Because she was going to let it go. Somehow. All of it. Sever the final ties to her life and let it go.

  She blew out air. Stretched her neck, and went out to see if she was really needed at all.

  “We’re rescheduling all nonemergency visits until tomorrow and Saturday,” Agnes told her. “The fog is hanging around like an obnoxious relative. Not safe to drive in unless you have to.

  “We’re sending Doc Hartley home. He’ll be on call; you might as well catch a ride with him if you want to leave. But I hope you’ll be able to come back tomorrow, when we’ll really need you.”

  Lillo was surprised at the disappointment she felt at being sent home. That was dangerous. Because it wouldn’t do to start getting comfortable. Clancy and Ned would be gone next week. She and Mac and the rest of the town’s inhabitants would go back to life without a working clinic. Maybe some internist or nurse prac would retire and be looking for a place to settle down.

  Fat chance. People moved away from Lighthouse Beach; they didn’t settle there.

  “I guess I will go. Call my cell if you need me.”

  Agnes blinked and Lillo realized what she’d just said.

  “Are you and Doc Clancy both staying?”

  “For a while longer; then I’ll put everything on call forwarding.”

  “Well, be careful in this soup.”

  “You too, hon. Ask Doc for a ride.”

  Lillo gave one of those noncommittal chin lifts and went to get her things.

  “Damn,” Ned muttered as he saw Lillo. He’d been on his way to tell her about the change in plans and offer her a ride home. The way she was headed for the back door, it looked like Agnes had gotten to her first.

  He grabbed his jacket off the peg, clapped his pockets to make sure Ian’s car keys were there, and hurried after her.

  He didn’t know why he kept trying to fix her. She didn’t appreciate it. Actually, he was pretty sure she was beginning to hate him for it. But he couldn’t stop. She was talented and selfless when she wasn’t being
a self-indulgent, self-pitying—ugh. What was wrong with her? The world needed her. People needed her. Hell, they needed her right here in Lighthouse Beach.

  Mac had told him to lay off. That he was doing more harm than good. But he couldn’t just sit by and let Lillo destroy herself. Ever since he’d known her, she’d wanted to be a doctor, ever since the days as a skinny ten-year-old hanging out at the clinic, begging to be allowed to put the supplies away and asking a million questions. She’d studied hard, was at the top of her class. Had a great future in front of her, until— Ned clenched his fist. He’d tried to avoid her, which turned out to be totally unnecessary because she’d been avoiding him. And she was much better at it than he was.

  Still, if he believed in anything unscientific, which he didn’t, he’d think that the fates were pushing them together. And the only reason for that was to get her to admit she missed medicine and then convince her to return to it, before she got so far behind she’d have to start over again and not just slip back into her residency.

  “Hey, wait up.”

  She hesitated. “Now what?”

  “Lunch?” He’d meant to ask if she needed a ride, but “lunch” came out instead. He was such an ass.

  “Thanks, but apparently there’s something I have to do today.”

  “What?”

  “My houseguests have made plans.”

  “Oh.” She was reaching for the doorknob. “You’re not planning to drive anywhere in this fog, are you?”

  Lillo gave him her “How stupid do you think I am?” look.

  He knew it well enough. “Just asking. It isn’t safe to be out.” He sounded like a condescending asshat even to himself.

  “Do you think you will ever stop acting like a … a …”

  “Man?”

  “Not the term I actually had in mind, but yeah, that too.”

  Bossy? Pushy? Overbearing? Probably none of those were strong enough, so he didn’t even try. “I’ve got Ian’s SUV. I’ll drive you home. I mean—”

  “I’ll take you up on that offer.”

  She opened the door. He only had time to call out to Agnes that he and Lillo were leaving.

  “Fog seems to be letting up some,” Agnes called back. “But it’s still dangerous, so be careful.”