Kiss River

  Although she had the feeling she was wasting precious time, she liked working at Shorty’s. Wednesday had been hard, because the other waitresses were too busy to give her much guidance, but now she was starting to feel like a part of the place. The three old men, Henry, Walter and Brian, nursed beers or milky coffee, and they seemed to have taken an instant liking to her, probably because of her love for the lighthouse. Or at least, what they perceived to be her love of the lighthouse. Brian brought in old pictures of the structure, along with newspaper articles from the days of the Save the Lighthouse committee. It amazed her to read those old articles, because Alec O’Neill was the indisputable driving force behind the committee to save the Kiss River light. He was quoted several times in every article. His name was everywhere. And now he was being such a mule about raising the lens.

  When Walter and Brian spoke passionately about the lighthouse, Gina couldn’t help but get caught up in their zeal about the place. She’d pretended at first, but she felt their passion about the lighthouse, and a little of that couldn’t help but rub off on her. Certainly, she had some feelings of attachment to the lighthouse from reading Bess’s diary. She liked to imagine Bess climbing these spiral stairs, and she could picture her out on the beach at night with the Coast Guard patroller, Sandy, whose real name the young girl had cut from the one page of her diary where she’d written it, excised carefully as if with a razor.

  Gina had called the lighthouse association the day before, asking to speak with the contact given to her by Walter and Brian. The man sounded as old as they were, but he remembered the earlier battle to raise the lens well.

  “Has the vet come around?” he’d asked when she explained the reason for her call.

  “Excuse me?” she’d asked, wondering if there was some World War II veteran she needed to contact.

  “I don’t recall his name,” the man said. “The veterinarian who didn’t want the lens raised.”

  “Oh.” She sighed. She should have guessed. “Alec O’Neill.”

  “That’s right. We’d been all set to fund the salvaging of the lens, but he stood in the way. Both literally and figuratively. He came here in person to stop us.”

  “Well, I’ve spoken with him, and he doesn’t want to play an active role in raising it,” she said carefully. “But I don’t know that he—”

  “Well, miss.” The man sounded suddenly tired as he interrupted her. “We’ll help, but only if you can get the vet to come around. Not worth putting our effort and money into something that’s doomed to fail again. Without the support of the locals, the cause is hopeless.”

  She’d gotten off the phone knowing she had no choice but to speak with Alec O’Neill again. No matter who she talked to about the lens, the conversation always circled back to him. So, she’d made a lunch date with Alec for Monday, a bit surprised when he agreed to see her. She’d be better prepared to meet him this time, arming herself with facts about the lens so she would sound as though she knew what she was talking about. If she couldn’t persuade him to help her, maybe she could at least get him to agree not to stand in her way.

  Stars were appearing in the darkening sky when she heard the sound of footsteps below her on the lighthouse stairs. Peering down into the black hole of the tower, she spotted the beam of a flashlight bouncing off the walls, getting ever nearer, and wondered if she should be afraid. She’d come up when it was still light out and had not thought to bring her own flashlight with her.

  “It’s just me,” a male voice reassured her from the darkness. Clay.

  “Hi,” she said as he came into view.

  He turned off his flashlight, then sat next to her on the top step. “Great night up here,” he said. “Are the mosquitoes getting you?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “I don’t think they get up this high.”

  “They do,” he said, and seemed to be about to say more, but grew quiet. Clay was a mystery to her. He worked late hours and she rarely saw him. His sister was a chatterbox and an open book, but Clay kept to himself, and her conversations with him had been limited to the mundane. That was fine. She needed a landlord far more than she needed a friend, and she was grateful to him for allowing her to stay here. But she always felt a bit awkward trying to get a conversation going with him when Lacey wasn’t around.

  “I think it’s nice that you bring Henry to Shorty’s every day,” she said, testing the waters. “He enjoys it so much. I think he’d probably go crazy if he was stuck at home.”

  “Well, I don’t take him every day,” Clay said. “I don’t always have the time to pick him up. I feel terrible then. I know he looks forward to it. Brian offers to pick him up sometimes, but I don’t think that old man should have a license, frankly.”

  “Well, let me know the next time you can’t get away,” she said. “I could get him on my break.”

  He looked surprised. “That’s really nice of you. Thanks.”

  “The least I could do,” she said, meaning it. She felt beholden to her hosts. She’d cooked for them a couple of nights, usually leaving Clay’s meal in the refrigerator for him to heat up later, since he was rarely home for dinner. She’d bought some groceries, but other than that, she’d given little back in return for their hospitality. “Is Lacey home yet?” She looked over her shoulder at the keeper’s house, with its vibrant nighttime windows.

  Clay shook his head. “She’s at an Al-Anon meeting,” he said.

  “Ah.” She wished he would elaborate, but of course, he didn’t, and a silence stretched out between them. She knew Al-Anon was a support group for the families of alcoholics, and she wondered what family member had prompted Lacey to join. Gina’s best guess was her stubborn, aggravating father.

  “I’m meeting your father for lunch on Monday,” she said.

  “Are you now?” Clay wore a slight smile.

  “I thought I’d give him another chance to tell me he won’t help me raise the lens.”

  Clay laughed. “You’re a glutton for punishment.”

  “Why is he so stubborn about it? If he would just give me the go-ahead, I could find the money and it would all be taken care of.”

  Clay drew in a long breath, stretching his arms out in front of him. “There’s a lot about my dad that I don’t understand,” he said, lowering his arms to his knees again. “He just doesn’t want anything to do with the lighthouse anymore. When it toppled over, that took the wind out of his sails. So to speak.”

  She felt annoyed. If it had so little meaning to him, why did Alec have to stand in her way?

  “Is he the alcoholic?” She blurted out the question before she could stop herself. “I mean, is he the reason Lacey goes to Al-Anon meetings?”

  Clay looked utterly stunned, then burst into laughter, and Gina cringed.

  “That was too personal a question,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He shook his head, still chuckling. “I’m just trying to picture my father as an alcoholic, that’s all. No, it’s actually Lacey’s father—her biological father—who’s a recovering alcoholic. She goes as a support to him.”

  She had not expected that answer. “I thought…you don’t have the same father?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “We thought we did when we were growing up, but the truth came out a long time ago. Lacey’s a bit quiet about it, but I really don’t think she’d mind you knowing. She got close to Tom, her father, after she learned the truth. Lacey’s the one who got him sober. And he’s the one who got her doing stained glass. He used to share a studio with our mother.”

  It took her a moment to absorb all that information. “Lacey’s relationship with your father, then…How is it?”

  “Oh, it’s very good now. They had their ups and downs when Lacey was younger, and she had a rough year when she found out our dad—my dad—wasn’t really her father. But they’ve worked it all out. She’s crazy about Tom, though.” Clay shook his head with another chuckle. “He’s a strange guy, but she adores him.
He didn’t raise her, so she doesn’t have any of the checkered history with him that she has with Dad.”

  “Well, it seems she turned out okay,” Gina said. “I think she’s an amazing person.”

  “Mmm,” Clay said, but he sounded noncommittal.

  “How about your mother?” Gina asked. “Does she live around here?”

  He looked surprised by the question. “My mother’s dead,” he said. “I thought you knew that.”

  “Oh, Clay, I’m sorry.” She touched his arm, embarrassed. “I didn’t know. I assumed your father and mother were divorced.” She’d assumed far more than that. She’d figured that Alec had left Clay’s mother, most likely to run off with another woman. Olivia, or someone else. That’s what men tended to do. She had not thought of him as a widower.

  “I think you have my dad figured wrong, Gina,” he said. “He’s not the divorcing type. He’s not the drinking type. He may be stubborn, and he may be giving you a hard time, but you won’t meet a better person than my father.”

  Gina touched his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I believe you, and you’re right. I’ve been making him into a monster instead of merely a thorn in my side.”

  Clay smiled at that.

  “How long ago did she die?” Gina asked. “Your mother?”

  “Nearly twelve years. She died Christmas Day, 1990.” He was staring toward the dark horizon, and she thought there was a glaze of tears in his eyes.

  “Had she been ill long?” she asked.

  Again, he was quiet. Then he shook his head. “She wasn’t sick,” he said. “She worked at a shelter for battered women in Manteo, and on Christmas Day, this guy named Zachary Pointer came in looking for his wife, waving a gun. My mother stood in front of the woman to protect her, and he shot her.”

  Gina’s hand rose quickly to her throat, and sudden tears filled her own eyes. “Oh my God, Clay,” she said. “How awful. I’m so sorry.”

  “Lacey was with her,” he said. “She saw the whole thing. I honestly don’t think she’s ever quite recovered from it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Clay looked thoughtful a moment, then shook his head. “No reason,” he said, evading her.

  “Tell me,” she prompted.

  He shrugged, as though avoiding the question, but then he spoke. “Lacey’s just…she’s amazing, as you said. She’s a lot like my mother that way. Very caring about other people. But she doesn’t care enough about herself. My mother was the same way. That’s why she risked her life for that woman. I don’t want to see Lacey make those kind of sacrifices.”

  “Have you ever talked to her about it?” she asked.

  “Not in so many words.”

  She wanted to tell him that if he was truly concerned about his sister, he should talk to her, but the conversation had gone so much deeper than she’d ever anticipated that she didn’t dare push him further. Instead, she changed the subject. “Your stepmother seems nice,” she said, remembering Olivia’s graciousness the one time she’d met her—and feeling much better about the woman now that she knew she wasn’t a home wrecker. “How do you get along with her?”

  “Olivia’s terrific,” he said. “She’s been great for Dad. And Jack and Maggie are a kick.” His smile was wide, but disappeared quickly. “Olivia was the doctor on duty in the E.R. when my mother was brought in,” he said. “She tried her best to save Mom’s life.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Gina said. “You have a very complicated family.”

  He smiled at her. “Is there any other kind?”

  She supposed there was not, but the truth was, she had little experience with families. She’d had her mother, and that had been it. Yet family was what she craved. The mix of personalities, the ups and downs Clay had spoken of, the occasional animosity and disagreements, and the love that was underlying all of it. That’s what she had never had and what she wanted more than anything.

  She studied Clay’s profile, outlined by the light of the moon. His features were straight and sharp, the nearly transparent blue eyes she had thought of as icy cool were now an amazing underwater blue in the moonlight. She rarely noticed men’s looks these days, and until this moment, she had not seen the beauty in Clay’s face. He had spoken with such warmth about his sister and father and mother, and that touched something deep inside her. She didn’t think she had ever met a man so caring about his family. She hadn’t thought that sort of man existed. You don’t know him, she told herself. They all seem good in the beginning.

  Could she ask him about Terri? About his marriage? She was about to open her mouth to do so when a star suddenly shot across the sky, a short distance above the horizon. They both saw it, both sucked in their breath in wonder.

  “It’s great up here, isn’t it?” he asked. “I love coming here after work.”

  It suddenly occurred to her that she had stolen his personal refuge. She’d moved in and had made this top step her own, never thinking that perhaps he or Lacey had found the same private haven up here as she had.

  “Clay…have I taken your place up here? I mean, is this where you like to come in the evenings for some time alone?”

  “It’s not a problem,” he said, and she knew her suspicion was right. He stood up. “And you can have it to yourself for the rest of the night, if you like,” he said. “I’ve got to go over to the dive shop to get my equipment ready for tomorrow.”

  “Dive shop?” she asked.

  “Scuba.” He took a couple of steps down the spiral staircase, then turned to hand her his flashlight.

  “Be careful,” she said. “Do you want me to shine this down the inside of the stairs for you?”

  “I’ll be fine, thanks,” he said. “Don’t get eaten alive up here. Good night.”

  That was fast, she thought. Suddenly, he couldn’t get away from her quickly enough, as if he knew the questions she’d been about to ask. She ached a little for him as she listened to him descending the stairs. He’d lost both his mother and his wife. Rani’s picture burned hard in her pocket, and she had to remind herself that she was not the only person hurting in the world.

  CHAPTER 15

  There was something about being underwater that made Clay feel as if he was flying. He had flown in planes, of course, and in gliders and hang gliders, but he would take this sense of graceful, slow-motion flight over those experiences any day.

  He and Kenny were exploring the wreck of the Byron D. Benson, a four-hundred-and-sixty-five-foot tanker sunk by a German U-boat sixty years earlier. The Benson was not one of the more popular wreck dives in the Outer Banks, and today they had it to themselves. The broken vessel lay on its side one hundred and ten feet below the water’s surface. It had long ago been stripped of its artifacts, of course, but the marine life both in and on the ship was enough to make it interesting. The ocean bottom here was like an underwater desert, an empty expanse of sand. The wreck gave the sea urchins, anemones, crabs and all variety of fish shelter, something to attach to, to feed from, and the vessel literally pulsed with life in the current.

  This was Clay’s fifty-fourth dive, but compared to Kenny, he was a novice. Kenny’s work in marine construction took him underwater more often than not, and he’d almost certainly lost track of how many dives he’d made over the years. For Clay, diving was pure recreation. He enjoyed swimming in and out of the wreck, watching the fish dart back into the crevices as he floated by, but more than anything, he loved simply flying above the wreckage, from one twisted, decaying end to the other, his hands relaxed at his sides, his legs doing the work of propelling him. There was no better way to slip away from the real world than to sink into this unreal one.

  Yet, after they’d been down twenty minutes or so, and they’d seen two tiger sharks and a manta ray and watched a huge, bulky sea turtle swim out from one of the ragged tears in the ship’s hull, Clay’s mind began to drift back to the night before, when he’d sat on the lighthouse steps with Gina.

  God, she was beautiful. She’
d been little more than a silhouette in the moonlight when he spotted her there last night, her long hair tossed around her shoulders by the breeze. Yes, she’d been right that she’d stolen his refuge from him; he’d loved the privacy of the lighthouse in the evenings. But he’d felt no resentment when he saw her there. Instead, he’d felt an unexpected longing to be next to her. To be close enough to touch her. He’d been surprised to discover that he wanted to talk to her. Really talk. She’d asked him questions, making it easy. He’d been afraid of how much he was saying and had to remind himself that he was a private person, not one to divulge his thoughts and feelings easily.

  He could tell that she didn’t want to talk about herself. She’d asked questions to keep from revealing her own answers. Who was she, really? A woman who suddenly appeared in their backyard, who lived three thousand miles away and yet seemed consumed with one little part of the Atlantic Ocean, who claimed to be a teacher and a lighthouse historian, who had been married but who described that marriage as “not very good.” There were questions he wanted to ask her. Nothing deep. Questions any man would ask any woman he met at a bar, for example, questions tossed out casually, thoughtlessly. But he couldn’t bring himself to ask them of her, because he feared her answers would tell him something he didn’t want to hear, or worse, pull him even closer to her.

  When they had finished their dive, they stored their gear in the back of Kenny’s red pickup truck, then drove to Shorty’s for lunch. They found a booth near the front door and as they took their seats, Clay searched the restaurant for Gina. Even though Kenny didn’t even know of Gina’s existence, he spotted her before Clay did. Clay watched his friend’s gaze shift from him to the air behind his head, and when he turned to see what he was looking at, he wasn’t surprised to see Gina waiting on the next table.