Lighthouse Beach

by Shelley Noble

  He reached past Lillo and held the door for her. “Well, that’s good,” he said. “Clancy’s taking the first on-call and I don’t want him out on the roads if the visibility is bad.”

  Lillo rolled her eyes. “Do you ever get tired of trying to run everybody’s life?”

  He turned on her, stopping her on the porch, and grabbed her by the shoulder. “What? Can’t someone be concerned about a friend? That’s what friends do.”

  She jerked away and started down the steps.

  He ran after her before she could bolt. He was sick and tired of tiptoeing around her like she was some fragile figurine. She wasn’t. She was tough as nails. Or at least she had been.

  They reached Ian’s SUV. He opened the door and pushed her inside before she could refuse to get it. He ran around to the driver’s side and hopped in, started the engine, and backed out of the parking space.

  Other than telling her to buckle up, he said nothing until they got out on the street. She sat slouched in the seat next to him, arms crossed protectively over her chest, not afraid, just sulking.

  “What is wrong with you? Sometimes I don’t even recognize who you are. What’s happened to you?”

  “I killed the brightest resident M.D. the hospital had had in decades.”

  “Second brightest.” He shot her a defiant look; they both knew she was the top student in her class. “And you didn’t kill him.”

  “I stood there and watched him die.”

  “Along with twenty other people.”

  “But I could have saved him.”

  “Doubtful. He probably bled out within seconds, before you even reached him.”

  “I stood there laughing while he died.”

  “It was an accident. Not your fault. Not his fault. There was nothing you could do. You know that. Somewhere your rational self—remember her? You used to think with it before you managed to shove it into a dark corner. That self knows what the facts are.”

  She shifted in her seat to look out the window. He stared straight ahead into the fog—on the alert.

  “Tell that to my colleagues. They all knew I could have done more. Should have done. I couldn’t go on day after day with them looking at me like I’d done it on purpose.”

  “What? That is so much bullshit. Is that why you’re holed up here, out of sight, out of mind, because of what you think people are thinking? They’re not. They gave you a grant for the next year.”

  “One Kyle should have had. The one that they changed to the Kyle L. Drummond Award to honor him. That was the last nail. I couldn’t go on. I just couldn’t.”

  “Okay, that might have been a little insensitive on their part. But that’s their bad judgment. Not yours.”

  “Really? Imagine the response to that one. ‘She killed her boyfriend for his grant money.’”

  “You’re making this shit up. You’re just having a crisis of self-doubt. We all get it. Patients die. It’s shitty. But it’s what happens when you’re a doctor.”

  “I’m not a doctor.”

  “Actually, you are, but time is running out on your license. You’ll have to reapply and go through a lot of retraining if you delay this much longer.”

  “I’m not going back.”

  They’d reached the parking lot; he pulled alongside the cottage.

  “Then do something else, something that doesn’t involve triage.”

  She released the seat belt. “I’m going to clean out my closet. Thanks for the ride.”

  She reached for the door handle. He pushed the lock button. “Wait a minute. Will we see you tomorrow?”

  “Probably not. I do have guests and they haven’t seen any of the sights.”

  He frowned at her. “You know, if you’re planning on staying on here …”

  “I live here. Would you please unlock the door?”

  “Live here; then maybe you’d consider keeping the clinic open.”

  “They need to find a nurse prac to run the clinic.”

  “So go back and get licensed as a nurse prac.”

  She stared at him, anger, revulsion … she wanted to hit him … he could read it as easily as if she’d said it aloud.

  “I’m a surgeon, or at least I would have been.”

  “If you hadn’t quit.”

  “You don’t understand. Let me out.”

  “Sure I do. Shit happens. You learn to deal with it, or you quit.”

  “Well, we know what I did.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be permanent.”

  “Sure, now open this door.”

  “You know, you should really take a page from Ian’s playbook. Do you know how hard it is for him to go out day after day, treating favorite pets, saving the livestock of people who fear him, avoid him, until they need him. He could have walked away. But he didn’t. He lives in a personal hell and still manages to do good.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Yeah, I think I am.” He jabbed the lock button.

  She pushed the door open. “I know you think I’m a selfish bitch.”

  “No, I think you’re a coward.”

  She slid out of the SUV, slammed the door, and for a moment disappeared into the fog. He could just see bits and pieces of her as she groped her way down to the gate.

  Ned wanted to stop her and shake her, but mostly he wanted to kick himself. It was killing her to stay away from medicine, to live in this self-imposed exile from the thing she loved most. Or maybe it was just him. Maybe it was killing him to watch all that talent go to waste.

  And they were right back where they always ended up, with her in denial and him pissed off.

  For the briefest second he considered going over to Mac’s, but she’d just tell him he was an insensitive clod or words to that effect. He’d spare himself that. He’d had enough of them both for now. He turned the SUV around and headed slowly up to the road to Ian’s. Now there was someone who had taken his demons by the shorthairs and fought them daily, hourly, every moment of his life. And he’d managed to find a productive if solitary existence.

  If Lillo wanted something to feel guilty about, it should be for sending the CEO to Ian. Ned knew her type, and if Ian slipped back into darkness because of her, he would never forgive either of them. You didn’t flirt with someone whose sanity was balancing on the edge.

  Lillo wondered if Ned could still see her. Everybody was on her case. She couldn’t go anywhere without someone calling her out about how she’d chosen to live her life. She groped for the gate, pushed it open. She could walk this path in the fog or in the pitch black of night. Here, she knew where she was, where she was going. And everybody should just bug off.

  She’d go inside and tell the others that they wouldn’t be cleaning out the spare bedroom, that thank you very much but it was none of their business. And where did that stop? Did she tell them to get out, that she didn’t value their concern, that they’d only known her for a few days, except for Jess—Jess, who hadn’t bothered to get in touch with Lillo until she needed her. It was all true. Wasn’t it? It seemed true. She had been happy since she’d been back here, before they came, before Ned started poking his nose into her business again.

  As she walked down the path she caught snatches of objects—the mailbox, a branch, a patch of sand. The fog was beginning to clear. But the way in front of her was as opaque as the clouds. She didn’t miss the symbolism of that. Even nature was against her.

  She reached the door to the cottage; her hand went straight to the doorknob.

  She was first struck by how warm it was inside. She’d been oblivious to the cold, ragged weather until she’d stepped into the cottage. The lights were on, warm and welcoming. Allie was sitting in Lillo’s reading chair—reading a book. She could hear the shower running.

  “You’re home early,” Allie said. “Get a cup. There’s a fresh pot of tea.”

  Lillo shed her raincoat and boots. Got a cup down. She’d wait until the others returned before she announced the change
in plans. Right now a cup of tea was just what she needed.

  “Want your chair back?”

  Lillo shook her head, poured herself a cup of tea, and sat on the couch. The lighthouse rose out of the clouds like a beacon in a religious painting. She shook her head to clear her mind. The lighthouse was merely shrouded in fog, no different from all the other foggy days. She really needed to get a grip. At least the fog was lifting. Hopefully it would leave and stay away.

  “How was the clinic?” Allie asked tentatively.

  “Agnes rescheduled all nonemergency appointments and we shut down early. Ned and Doc Clancy are on call to make house calls. Who’s in the shower?”

  “Diana.”

  “She didn’t go to the stables? They couldn’t have ridden in this weather anyway.”

  “Oh, she went and came back. Gave me a look that dared me to ask what happened, went into the bathroom, and hasn’t come out since. I’m beginning to worry about her.”

  “The water heater isn’t that big, she’ll get out when the water gets cold.”

  The front door opened and banged shut. “Thank God,” Jess said, and leaned against the door.

  Her hair was windblown above her pale face. She was carrying two heavy-looking plastic grocery bags, and her windbreaker was zipped up but bulged out in front like she’d maybe eaten several dozen doughnuts. Lillo hoped she wasn’t swinging from near anorexia to the other extreme.

  “I got wine and sandwich stuff. That’s about all I could carry as I groped my way home.” She unzipped her jacket and pulled out a thick cardboard accordion folder.

  “What’s that?” Lillo said.

  Jess plunked it down on the counter and shrugged out of her windbreaker. “Is there more tea? Man, it’s cold out there. What kind of beach weather is this?”

  “There’s more tea,” Allie said. “Get a cup and tell us what’s in the folder.”

  “Historical society records.”

  “What? Where did you get those?” asked Lillo.

  “And why?” asked Allie.

  Jess got down a cup and poured herself tea. “I got them from the historical society. OMG. Mac said the whole society consisted of two old men. ‘Old’ doesn’t begin to cover it. And the ‘society’ is one room on the first floor of their house.

  “Luckily they live two doors down from the liquor store or I would still be wandering the moors like Heathcliff, calling their names. Is Diana in the shower?”

  Her answer was an expletive shouted from the bathroom. A sudden silence as the taps closed.

  “Ran out of hot water,” Lillo said. “You didn’t answer the rest of the question. Why did you go to the historical society?”

  “Because I’m getting an idea,” Jess said. “And I want to do my due diligence. Though I may have to make a trip to Augusta. Where is Augusta anyway?”

  “About forty or fifty miles northeast of here. What’s this all about?”

  “I’ll tell you when I know.” Jess glanced at her watch. “Looks like we’re all back early. I missed lunch.”

  “I don’t think any of us have eaten,” Allie said. “I’ll make some sandwiches.”

  The three of them were crowded around the kitchen counter when Diana emerged a few minutes later.

  “Guess you didn’t go riding,” Jess said.

  Diana lifted an eyebrow, snagged a bag of chips, and opened it by slapping her hands together. The top exploded with a loud pop. She reached inside and grabbed a handful. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  “I thought I heard horse hooves when you came back,” Allie said. “That was nice that he saw you home.”

  Diana scowled at her.

  “Or maybe not.” Allie bent her head over the slices of bread she was spreading with mayonnaise.

  Lillo and Jess made themselves useful. It was obvious Diana was about to explode from some emotion. It seemed to Lillo it wasn’t happiness.

  After a minute or so during which the only sound was the crunch of Diana eating chips, Jess said, “Okay, spill. What happened?”

  “What happened? What happened?”

  “I believe that was my question. What the hell happened? Why are you so pissed off? What did he do now, because we can be pretty sure it wasn’t something the horses did.”

  Diana chewed and frowned.

  “Spring more kids on you? Refuse to let you ride? Forgot you were coming and wasn’t even there?”

  “He kissed me.”

  Three faces turned to her in surprise.

  Jess was the first to recover. “I thought you wanted him to kiss you.”

  “Not like that.”

  “Oh boy. Give us the blow-by.”

  Diana threw up her hands, walked away, came back again.

  “He kissed you and …” Jess coaxed.

  “Well, I sort of kissed him first.”

  “That’s it. I’m declaring happy hour.”

  “It’s only two o’clock,” Allie said.

  “It’s five o’clock somewhere. We’re on vacation, we’re surrounded by fog, and Diana is acting like a lovesick teenager. I declare it’s happy hour.”

  Mac hadn’t bothered to open the gift shop that morning. There wouldn’t be any tourists today. For one thing, they’d close the bridge to all but necessary travel. This was a real humdinger, a pea-souper. It kept everybody home who could stay home.

  So she sat at the window looking out at the parking lot. She couldn’t see anything. The window was like a frame on one of those modern paintings, just a stretch of gray.

  That would be her whole world soon, she knew. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. Not a brain tumor, not macular degeneration, not glaucoma. Cataracts. Easily fixed, they said. If you had the time, had the money.

  Still, she’d have to go away to have it done and probably stay overnight. She could get someone to watch the lighthouse. Lillo would do it. But what then? What if something went wrong? The surgeon’s hand slipped? What if she went blind anyway? Where would she go? What would happen to the lighthouse? What would happen to her?

  And how would she pay for the operation? The doctor had said Medicare would pay for the regular lenses but he’d recommended the advanced lenses. And they cost several thousand dollars that she would have to pay. She couldn’t afford that. She didn’t have thousands of dollars to spare, she barely had enough savings to do one eye, much less two. And she depended on those savings to augment her Social Security.

  Clancy said he would loan her the money. Loan. Ha. Neither of them believed that. He would give her the money. But it didn’t do to give money to friends. It always ate away at friendships. She wouldn’t risk it. Her friends were more important to her than being able to see, and maybe even more than the lighthouse.

  “Okay, so I’m groping my way up the road, trying to figure out where the drive to the stables is. Was I nuts? I couldn’t see shit, and I was tripping and stumbling like some too-stupid-to-live heroine in a bad horror movie.” Diana took a sip of her wine.

  “When out of the mist …” She laughed. “Sorry, it does sound like a horror movie.”

  “No, it sounds like a romantic fantasy,” Allie said.

  “Well, to be perfectly truthful, when I got over my initial ‘What the fuck,’ I thought it did, too. Fool that I was.”

  “Would you just get on with it?” Jess said.

  “So out of the mist appears Loki, two feet from me. Ian reins him in, but he still knocks me to the ground. I wasn’t hurt, but he throws himself from Loki’s back—I’m making this up. I couldn’t see shit … I don’t know how he saw me; he could have stepped on me, except that I was already getting up.

  “He pulled me to my feet, and I thought what the hell. So I reached up and kissed him.” Diana made a growling noise, but Lillo thought it was more at herself for either succumbing to her desires, or maybe for telling the others about them.

  “There was this moment of will-he-won’t-he, but I’m telling you, at that moment I didn’t care. Then he kissed m
e back. I mean, like kissed me. Not like ‘Had a great time, I’ll call you,’ or ‘I think you’re hot, let’s spend the night together,’ or even like ‘Thanks for last night,’ but more like it was real.” She’d been pacing in the small space in front of them but she stopped. “Ya know?”

  Allie was the only one who nodded.

  “And I was beginning to think … well, at that point I wasn’t thinking, but all of a sudden he pulled away.

  “I can’t see his expression but I can feel the energy pulsing from him, and for a minute I think, ‘Please don’t be a psychopath,’ then he grabs Loki’s mane and throws himself back on the horse. I’m standing there feeling like an idiot and I can barely see him, and I’m thinking, ‘What just happened?’ and ‘Just shoot me now.’ He’d responded, really responded, and now he’s sitting on his horse and I’m standing on the ground. Fucking crazy.

  “Then suddenly his hand is there reaching down to me. And okay, I swear this is the truth. I took it and he swung me up behind him. Impossible. It would take fairy dust to get me up on a horse without a stirrup. But I was there. Sitting behind him. I swear.

  “And now I’m feeling like a Disney princess about to gallop away to Happily Ever After with the prince to make passionate, searing-hot, satisfying love, and hoping he’ll take me inside his house and not the stable. But whatever works.

  “He took me home, all right. At a walk, not a gallop; I mean visibility was pretty nonexistent at that point. Between the kiss and the fog, I was totally disoriented, and when he stopped and told me to get off, I did, thinking, ‘At last.’ Only then he stayed on Loki’s back, looking down at me. And said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. Please don’t come to the stables anymore.’ Then he pulls Loki around and they disappear into the mist.

  “And it turns out I’m standing in the parking lot in front of the cottage. And I’m a total fucking asshat for even thinking it might not end this way.”

  Chapter 22

  At first they just stared at Diana. It was the first time Lillo had seen her anything but assured and energetic, and she had a feeling that was the way Diana lived every day. A “Move over, world” attitude that Lillo wished she could emulate. Granted, she’d only known her for a few days—it seemed like much longer—but this apparent acceptance seemed at variance with the woman she knew. And from Allie’s and Jess’s silence, Lillo thought maybe they were seeing a different side of Diana, too.