Keeper of the Light

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “How did it go today?” Alec asked. “The amnio?”

  Olivia held the phone against her ear as she rolled onto her side. She’d hiked her nightgown up to her hips, and her hand rested on the bandaid below her navel.

  “It was all right.” She was relieved to hear Alec’s voice, relieved to talk to someone who knew about the baby. She had felt more alone today than at any time since Paul left her. She’d wept on the far-too-long drive to Chesapeake, as well as on the way back, and she’d gone to bed early tonight—nine-thirty—as though she could hasten Alec’s call just by being there. “Today was the easy part,” she said. “Now comes the waiting.”

  “I thought of you driving up there alone. I should have offered to go with you. Didn’t think of it till too late.”

  Olivia smiled. He was so sweet. Thoughtful. And his voice was sleepy. Warm. Like the triangle of moonlight that crept across her bed, and her legs, and her hand where it rested on her belly. More than likely his room was drenched in moonlight too. It was in his eyes, perhaps. On his chest. She could see the wedge of white light playing with the softly curled hair of his chest. She had not stared at his body the other day at Rio Beach. She had barely noticed it, but right now she found she could remember it in detail.

  “Olivia?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re very quiet. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  She lifted her hand from her stomach and watched the diamonds in her ring soak up the moonlight. “My bed just feels particularly empty tonight.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Do you know how to reach Paul? Maybe you should call him.”

  “Actually, you’re a lot easier to talk to than Paul these days.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t do much about filling your bed.”

  She cringed, and rolled onto her back again. “Where is this conversation going?” she asked.

  “Shall we change the subject?”

  “Actually, this subject has been on my mind a lot lately. I think it began when you told me about Paul saying he might have made a mistake. I started thinking about him—you know, about being with him—and then he takes off for D.C.”

  “Maybe when he gets back.”

  “Maybe. Alec? How do you…” She struggled for the right words. “How are you coping with celibacy?”

  He laughed. “That’s pretty damn personal, Dr. Simon.”

  “Sorry.”

  Alec sighed. “Mother Nature has a way of taking care of things,” he said. “Having your spouse die seems to obliterate any libidinous urges, temporarily at any rate. At least I’m assuming it’s temporary.” He chuckled. “Actually, I’m sure it is. I guess it doesn’t work that way when you’re only separated, huh?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Are you still getting massages?”

  “It’s not the same thing,” she said grumpily.

  Alec was quiet for a moment. “What would happen if you showed up in Paul’s hotel room?”

  “I don’t want to be humiliated.”

  “I’m certain he still cares about you.”

  Almost unknowingly, she had moved her hand to the warm delta of her pubic hair. She parted her legs a little. She could do this. She could listen to Alec’s voice and…

  “Oh, God.” She sat up abruptly, tugging her nightgown to her knees.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Talking about this is definitely not helping, Alec.” She propped her pillow up against the headboard and sat back, lifting the blue file folder from her night table to her lap. “Why don’t you just quiz me on the lighthouse?”

  Mike Shelley walked into her office late the following afternoon.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  She closed the patient chart she’d been working on as he sat down on the other side of her desk. He looked a little tired, but he was smiling. He leaned back in the chair.

  “I wanted to let you know I’ll be leaving the ER in September.”

  “No.” She was genuinely distressed. She depended on the calm efficiency Mike brought to his job as director of the emergency room.

  “I’m afraid so. My parents are in Florida, and they haven’t been well this past year. I’d like to be closer to them and I’ve been offered a job down there.” He paused. “So, obviously, that leaves my position here open. I wanted to tell you that you’re in the running, along with Jonathan and two candidates from outside.”

  The ambition Olivia had tried to temper when she started working in this small, sedate ER suddenly reared its head. She smiled. “I’m honored to be considered.”

  “Between you and me, Olivia, you’re my first choice. Jonathan’s clinically good, but your past experience is far more varied and you handle everything that comes through the door with a cool head. That’s critical in this job. I don’t want you to get your hopes up, though. You still have the least seniority of anyone on the staff.” He stood up and sighed. “Jonathan wants this badly,” he said, and she thought she detected a warning in his voice. “He may be a bear to work with until this is over.”

  Olivia smiled. “What else is new?”

  She reached for the phone the instant Mike left her office and dialed Paul’s number, but she succeeded only in reaching his answering machine. She’d forgotten he was in Washington. She listened to his voice on the tape, imagining it filling his little cottage, resonating off the colored images in Annie’s stained glass.

  She didn’t bother to leave a message. Instead she called Alec and was pleased when he suggested they go out to dinner to celebrate.

  “Except,” she said, “there’s really nothing to celebrate yet.” Mike had warned her not to get her hopes up, and already she was picturing taking his place.

  “Sure there is.” Alec sounded unusually cheerful. “More than you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  He picked her up at the emergency room after her shift and drove her to a small restaurant she’d never even noticed before. It was tucked between a few acres of amusement park rides on one side and a trailer park on the other, but inside it was cozy and dark. The candlelit tables were draped in mauve tablecloths, and the waiter laid her napkin across her lap as she sat down. The setting was undeniably romantic.

  They ordered their meals, Alec turning down wine out of obvious deference to her condition. Olivia looked at him across the table as the waiter walked away. “So,” she said, “what did you mean there’s more to celebrate than I know about?”

  He lowered his own napkin to his lap. “I went in to work today,” he said, grinning.

  “Oh, Alec, really? How was it?”

  “It was great till the animals started showing up.”

  She gave him a sympathetic smile before she realized he was joking.

  “It was actually painless,” he said. “Thanks for persuading me. I’m going to work three days a week for now.”

  “You look as though it agrees with you,” she said. He had not stopped smiling since they sat down, and she could barely remember the haggard look he’d worn that first day she’d met him in the studio.

  They filled their plates at the salad bar. “You must have had a sonogram with the amnio yesterday, huh?” Alec asked as they walked back to their table.

  “Right.”

  “No twins?”

  She took her seat again. “Just one unbelievably tiny fetus,” she said. “Sex indeterminate.”

  “What was it like being a twin?” Alec cut a cherry tomato neatly in half. “You must have been very close to your brother.”

  “When we were kids, yes, we were close, but probably not the way you would imagine.” She sipped her water, set the glass down again. “I was born first, but my mother’d had no prenatal care and the midwife wasn’t prepared for twins. The cord was wrapped around Clint’s neck for quite a while before she even realized he was there. He suffered some brain damage.”

  “Oh
, no.”

  “It wasn’t severe. He was mildly retarded, but he also had a wealth of physical problems.” She pictured her brother as a child, his skin so white, so translucent that the veins were clearly visible at his temples. “He was always small for his age and he was asthmatic. Quite frail. So I didn’t have the usual twin experience. I had to look out for him.”

  She had sat up with Clint during his middle-of-the-night asthma attacks. She’d beaten up kids who made fun of him. She’d even done his homework for him, until one of her teachers told her she couldn’t protect Clint from everything. You have to look out for yourself, Livvie, she’d said, and Olivia had finally done exactly that. Once she left home, she neatly, permanently cut Clint out of her life. In the early years of her marriage, Paul had encouraged her to get in touch with Clint, but even with Paul’s support she had not been able to make the phone call or write the letter that would have brought her brother back into her world.

  “How did he die?” Alec asked.

  “Respiratory problems and something with his liver. My mother died a few years after I moved out, and Clint and my older brother, Avery, stayed on in the house in the Pine Barrens.” Clint had idolized Avery, but Avery had been a dangerous boy to look up to.

  The waiter set their meals in front of them, and Olivia took a bite of tender, perfectly cooked salmon.

  “Was it growing up with Clint that made you want to be a doctor?” Alec asked.

  Olivia shook her head. “I wasn’t even a pre-med major when I started college. I was going to Penn State, and I was living with a woman who was a doctor. She was the sister of…” How much should she say? “This is confusing. She was the sister of a teacher I had in high school, the teacher I moved in with after I left home.” She took another bite of her salmon, chewing slowly, before she continued. “I’ve always had a tendency to be very influenced by the women around me. My mother wasn’t much of a role model, so I grew up a little unsure of myself as a female. My brothers were my strongest influence when I was young. I could beat up nearly anyone on the playground by the time I was twelve.” She smiled. “But when I became a teenager I realized that wasn’t appropriate behavior for a girl, so I started looking to my teacher for clues to how a woman should act. I started to…emulate her, and it became a pattern. When I lived with her sister while I was at college, I began modeling myself after her. That’s why medicine started to look so appealing.”

  “Good thing she wasn’t a trash collector.”

  Olivia laughed.

  They ate in a comfortable silence for a few minutes before Alec began talking about Lacey and Clay. Olivia thought of Lacey’s tough-looking appearance in the emergency room a few nights earlier. Alec had his hands full with her.

  “Do they have grandparents?” she asked suddenly, wondering if he was getting any help from the rest of his family. “Are your parents still alive?”

  “No. They died a long time ago, before the kids were born.”

  “How about on Annie’s side?”

  Alec made a sound of disgust. “They never even met them,” he said bitterly.

  “Bad topic,” Olivia said.

  Alec set down his fork. “Annie’s parents had her life planned out for her. She had to do the whole routine—private schools, the debutante ball. They’d picked out the guy they wanted her to marry and no one else would do. They completely cut her off when she married me, not just financially, but emotionally as well.” Alec picked up his fork again, holding it above his plate. “I tried to contact them. I called them several times, but they wouldn’t even come to the phone. I wrote them letters using the animal hospital as a return address so Annie wouldn’t know, but I never heard a word from them. Finally,” Alec smiled at whatever he was remembering, “I came up with what I thought was a foolproof plan.”

  “What was that?”

  He leaned toward her across the table. “This was about five years ago, during one of Annie’s bouts of withdrawal. I always figured those moods of hers were connected with her thoughts about her family. So I went to Boston, armed with pictures of Annie and the kids, and I made an appointment to see Annie’s father, who was a cardiologist.”

  “You mean, a medical appointment?”

  Alec laughed. “Pretty damn clever, huh? You should have seen his office. Incredibly posh. A lot of gaudy antique reproductions. It was nauseating. So his nurse took me into one of the examination rooms and asked my why I was there. I told her I’d been having chest pains, and she made me take off my shirt to do an EKG, which had not been in my plans. I had not planned on having to meet my father-in-law for the first time half naked.”

  Olivia smiled, remembering exactly how he looked shirtless.

  “So, of course I had this perfectly normal EKG. The nurse left and then Dr. Chase himself came in. He asked me what my problem was, and I said, ‘I’m not sick. I’m your son-in-law.’”

  “What did he say?”

  “He turned purple, and he told me in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of his office. He left and slammed the door in my face. I left too, but before I did, I gave the nurse the envelope with the pictures in it and asked her to give it to him.”

  “Did he get them? Did you ever hear anything from him?”

  Alec ran his fork through the crabmeat on his plate. “The next thing we heard, he had died of a heart attack. An old friend of Annie’s wrote to tell her about a month after it happened, and when I figured out the date he died I realized it was the day after I’d gone to see him.”

  Olivia shifted back in her chair. “Oh,” she said.

  “So, of course, I never told Annie what I’d done. She was so upset she hadn’t known in time to go to his funeral. Jesus.” Alec shook his head. “Her mother had the audacity to show up at Annie’s funeral, though. I wouldn’t even talk to her, although there were certainly plenty of things I wanted to say. Fucking bitch.” He looked up at Olivia. “Pardon me.”

  She laughed, and Alec smiled. “How did I get on the subject of Annie again? Back to Olivia. Are you all set for your debut as a connoisseur of the Kiss River Lighthouse tomorrow?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll pick you up around ten.”

  The waiter cleared their plates away and they ordered coffee. Olivia watched Alec drop two lumps of sugar in his cup. He was smiling to himself.

  “Alec?” she said.

  “Hmmm?”

  “You’re different tonight.”

  “Am I? Is that good or bad?”

  “It’s wonderful,” she said. “You seem happy. Even when you’re talking about painful things, like Annie’s parents, you seem removed from the sadness somehow.”

  He nodded. “I feel better. Every day’s a little improvement from the day before.” The candlelight flickered in his pale eyes. “I owe a lot of how I feel to you. You’ve let me talk, let me cry on your shoulder, or at least in your kitchen. Going in to work today topped it off. Thank you.”

  She felt his knees touch hers beneath the table, and this time she didn’t bother to move away.

  Outside, the air was filled with screams and music from the amusement park next door. The sky above the rides was lit up from the colored lights. Alec rested his hand lightly on Olivia’s back as they crossed the parking lot to the Bronco, and she was exquisitely aware of every fingerpoint of pressure.

  Three teenagers walked toward them, probably cutting across the parking lot to get to the amusement park, and they were very close before Olivia recognized them as Lacey and her two friends from the emergency room.

  “Dad?” Lacey stopped, frozen, a few yards in front of them.

  Alec stiffened at Olivia’s side, dropping his hand quickly from her back. “Hi, Lace,” he said. “Jessica.” Alec stared at the boy walking between his daughter and her friend, while Lacey stared at Olivia, nothing short of stark terror in her face.

  Olivia broke the silence. “I like your haircut, Lacey,” she said. “It really looks different than it did back in Dece
mber.” She looked hard into the girl’s eyes, letting her know she had said nothing to Alec about Lacey’s visit to the emergency room.

  “This is Olivia Simon, Lacey,” Alec said taking a step away from Olivia. “Do you remember her?”

  Lacey gave a quick nod, but Alec didn’t seem to notice. He thrust his hand toward the boy. “I’m Lacey’s father,” he said.

  “Bobby,” the boy said, solemnly shaking Alec’s hand.

  “Where are you kids off to?” Alec asked.

  “The rides, Dad.” Lacey walked past her father, and Jessica and Bobby quickly followed.

  “Well, have fun,” Alec called after them. He glanced at Olivia, and they started walking toward the Bronco again, this time a few feet apart. It felt like miles.

  Alec was quiet as they got into the car. He turned to look behind him as he backed out of the lot into the street, and in the garish, blinking lights from the amusement park, his knuckles glowed white on the steering wheel. He turned toward Kill Devil Hills. He wished he were rid of her now, she thought. He wished he did not have to drive her back to the ER before heading home.

  They had driven four blocks in silence when she finally spoke. “Is it any woman you don’t want Lacey to see you with, or just the one who couldn’t save her mother’s life?”

  Alec looked at her sharply, then back to the road. He sighed. “Sorry. My kids have never seen me with a woman other than Annie and that just felt weird. I don’t want her to read anything into seeing me with you. I think she’d feel like I’m betraying Annie.”

  “We’re friends, Alec. Aren’t you allowed to have friends?”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “That boy she was with looks far too old for her.”

  Olivia twisted her wedding ring around on her finger. “Maybe she needs to be restricted a little more than she is.”

  He shook his head. “No way. Annie would never have tied her down.”