Keeper of the Light

  “Because,” Alec said with a biting touch of sarcasm, “as we all know, Dr. Simon had unplugged her phone.” He dropped the paper on the coffee table and stared at her. “Why didn’t you tell me there was some question about how to treat her?” he asked. “Why did you hide the facts from me?”

  Olivia sank wearily into the nearest chair and looked up at him. He stood in the center of the room, directly in the light spilling from the kitchen, like an actor caught in the spotlight.

  “Alec,” she shook her head. “There was no cover-up. I didn’t tell you there was a question about treating her because in my mind there was no question. Jonathan Cramer dislikes me and he’s afraid I might be selected over him for the director spot. He’s looking for a way to hurt me.”

  “Right this minute I don’t give a damn what he’s doing to you,” he said. “I want to know what happened to my wife.”

  “I’ve explained everything that hap…”

  “You made it sound like you only had one option.”

  “I felt like I did.”

  He paced, out of the spotlight, into it again. “It’s always struck me as insane—the idea of one lone physician performing open heart surgery, whether you had the necessary instruments or not. I tried to put that thought out of my mind, but this article just…” He shook his head and turned to look at her again. “Why didn’t you send her up to Emerson?”

  This way her blood’s on your hands.

  “I didn’t think she could possibly make it, and…”

  Alec gestured toward the newspaper on the coffee table. “This guy obviously thought her chances were better if she went up, and he’d been working there longer than you. Didn’t you stop to consider that he might have known what he was talking about?”

  “I really thought that surgery…”

  “You don’t do that kind of surgery in that kind of setting, Olivia. You don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to figure that out. You’d intubate her, put a couple of IV lines in her, and get her out of there as fast as you could.” He stood directly above her now, and his voice had risen, hurting her ears. “If you’d sent her to Emerson, maybe she would have had a chance. Maybe she’d still be alive.”

  Tears spilled over Olivia’s cheeks. She looked up at Alec. “Jonathan was scared,” she said. “He’d never seen that kind of wound before, and he had no idea what to do with it. Think about it, Alec. Please. She had two holes in her heart. Jonathan neglected to mention that to the press. How do you stabilize a person with two holes in her heart? I had no choice but to operate. She would have died in that helicopter. I have absolutely no doubt about it. She was losing blood so quickly.”

  Olivia paused. Above her, Alec was breathing hard, his eyes still narrowed, angry, but he was listening to her, hearing her out.

  “Jonathan walked out on me when I said we should operate. He left me alone to take care of her. I realized that I was taking a risk when I elected to do surgery, especially by myself. Maybe it was crazy of me to try. I knew I was walking a fine line, legally and medically. But not ethically.” She brushed the back of her hand across her wet cheek. “Sending her up, making her someone else’s responsibility, would have been the easy way out, but she would have died. I did what I thought was right, and if we could have somehow closed that hole in the back of her heart she might very well have made it.” Her hand started to throb, her fingers grew hot with the memory. She looked up at Alec again. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  His chest rose and fell rapidly with his breathing, but his eyes had softened while she spoke. He reached down to touch her shoulders, pulling her up to him, pulling her silently into his spotlight, into his arms.

  “You don’t know how hard it was, Alec,” she whispered against his shoulder. “You can’t know.”

  “I’m sorry.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m really sorry, Olivia. I read that article and just…lost it. I thought you’d lied to me. Kept things from me.” He sighed. “I guess I still need someone to blame.”

  She pulled her head away to look at him. “Please, Alec, talk to Mike Shelley. Talk to the nurses who were on duty that night. I need you to believe me.”

  “I do,” he said. “I believe you.” He pulled her head to his shoulder again and held her that way for a minute, maybe longer. She closed her eyes, gradually becoming aware of the depth and pace of his breathing. He drew away from her slightly, tipping her head back with his fingers to kiss her temple, her eyes, her wet cheeks, and she turned her head to catch his next kiss on her lips.

  His anger was gone, and in its place was a heat. He slipped his hands between them and untied the sash to her robe, letting it fall open a few inches. Then he stepped back and stroked the back of his fingers between her breasts.

  “This is nice,” he said, tracing the line of her gold chain with his fingertip. He pulled off his T-shirt and opened her robe further, until the satin had slipped over her breasts and she was bathed in the white light coming from the kitchen. Her body was so hungry for this. Alec raised his hands to her breasts, and she arched forward to meet the lightness of his touch.

  He lifted the robe from her shoulders and let it drop to the floor in a soft pile around her feet. She was melting, liquid. She drew her hand to the front of his shorts, tentatively resting the back of her fingers against the unmistakable firmness of his erection beneath the cloth.

  “Yes,” he said, his breath warm against her ear. “Please.”

  She turned her hand and felt a tremor run through his body as he pressed hard against her palm. He lowered his hands from her breasts, and she parted her legs slightly, waiting for his touch, aching for it, but his fingers froze on the swollen rise of her belly, and everything in him seemed to cool at that moment. She tightened her hand on him, but he was already drawing away from her, and he slipped his fingers into hers and lifted them up, holding them just below his chin. The light from the kitchen glimmered on his braided gold wedding band. He looked at her squarely.

  “What are we doing, Olivia?” He shook his head. “I mean, you’re a married woman. I feel like I’m still married. Your husband’s a friend of mine. You’re going to have his baby.”

  His hair brushed her thigh as he bent down to pick up her robe. He slipped it onto her arms and up over her shoulders, closing it across her breasts, tying the sash. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment that he, not she, had been the one to stop. She had been so eager, so willing.

  She hugged her arms across her chest as he looked into her eyes, his face once again as serious, as unsmiling as when she first met him.

  “Maybe we’d better not see each other for a while,” he said. “Today was a little too intense, all the way around. It was one thing when I felt as though we were just friends, but friends don’t do what we just did and it’s… You’re vulnerable, I’m vulnerable. I’m working with your husband…” He stared at her in exasperation. “Olivia, say something.”

  She looked down at the floor, still hugging her arms. My husband made love to your wife. The words were so close; she could barely hold them in. She wanted him to understand why that night in the ER had been so hard. She wanted him to share the pain with her.

  “All right,” she said, raising her head, but she found she could not look at him, and she bent down instead to pick up his T-shirt.

  He pulled the shirt over his head. “I’d better go,” he said. She followed him to the door, her legs shaking, and a great, vast hollowness in her chest. Her head was light. She wondered if she was about to be sick.

  Alec opened the door and turned to look at her, the porch light catching the pale blue of his eyes. “Maybe you should come to the lighthouse meetings,” he said. He reached forward to lightly touch her arm. “It would help me to see you and Paul together, and it would probably be good for the two of you. You know, a shared interest.”

  “No,” she said, recoiling from the image of the three of them together. “I couldn’t.” She glanced behind her at the coffee table.
“Do you want your paper?”

  He looked past her, back into the shadows of her living room, and shook his head. “Throw it away,” he said, and then with the barest hint of a smile, “Why don’t you use it to line Sylvie’s litter box?”

  He wished she had tried to resist him, but that was hardly a fair expectation. If he hadn’t felt the small, firm sphere of her belly, that reminder of her husband beneath his palm, he would have taken it all the way. Then at the next lighthouse meeting he would not have been able to look Paul in the eye.

  He punched the buttons on the car radio, trying to find a song he could sing along with to clear his head, but the airwaves were filled with classical music and advertisements and songs he didn’t know. He took a shower when he got home, the water just cool enough to chill him, but by the time he had dried himself off, all he could remember was the sensation of Olivia’s hand on him, squeezing him, stroking him through his shorts. He wanted to obliterate the feelings in his body, the thoughts in his head. He hunted through the pantry until he found what he needed—a bottle of tequila, left over from one of his and Annie’s parties last summer when they’d served margaritas. He uncapped the bottle and took a swallow. Shit. The stuff was poison. He forced down another mouthful and went into his bedroom, where he undressed and got into bed, still clutching the neck of the bottle in his fist.

  He remembered that party. Annie had grilled chicken for fajitas, while he made the margaritas. Tom Nestor had gotten ferociously drunk, and Annie had watched him carefully, finally telling Alec to water down his drinks. Tom was one of those people who underwent a complete change of personality after one drink too many. He’d grow weepy, pouring out his personal problems to anyone who would listen, and on that night he was bemoaning a fight with a woman he was seeing, clearly sapping the life out of the party. Annie had tried to shut him up. “You say too much when you’re drunk, Tom. You say things that will get you into trouble once you're sober.” Tom, however, could not seem to help himself, and he continued his lamentations until the early hours of the morning. Annie wouldn’t let him drive home. She made up the guest room for him, but in the morning they found him curled up on the floor of the living room, beneath the oval stained glass windows.

  Alec lay perfectly still, letting the memories come and go, but the alcohol was having no effect whatsoever on his erection. Instead, it was garbling his thoughts, taking away his control over the images that came into his head: Olivia’s breasts, white and smooth in the light pouring from the other room; the thin line of liquid gold as it dipped between them; the firm nuggets of her nipples beneath his fingertips. He swallowed another mouthful of tequila, struggling to conjure up Annie’s face, Annie’s presence, but without success. He slipped his hand beneath the sheet with a sense of resignation, knowing that it would not be his hand he sank into, but the imagined warmth and comfort of Olivia’s body.

  He came, explosively, angrily, a warm stream of tears slipping into his hair. “Annie,” he whispered. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

  He fell into a deep, restless sleep. He dreamt they were lifting the lighthouse from the ground, twenty men or more, lifting it to their shoulders, then setting it, wobbling and creaking, onto the track. People cheered, while Alec’s heart pounded in his ears. The men attached a system of ropes and pulleys to the lighthouse, and the noble, tall white tower began its slow journey inland along the track. Alec was first to hear the cracking, first to see the mortar between the bricks turn to powder. He waved his arms at the men, screaming for them to stop, but they couldn’t hear him over the cheers of the crowd. Huge chunks of the lighthouse broke off, crashing to the sand in slow motion. Alec started to run toward it, but Annie was there. She caught his arm, and he saw her mouthing the words, although he couldn’t hear them above the crashing sound of the lighthouse: “…we should just let it go.”

  “No!” Alec sat up in the bed. He was sweating. Breathing hard.

  “Dad?” Lacey was calling to him from outside his bed room door. It must have been her voice that woke him up.

  He ran his hands over his face, trying to rub away the dream. “Yes?” he answered, his voice so soft and tight that he wondered if it would carry through the door.

  “Can I come in, please?” She sounded like a child. If he opened the door she would be standing there with her curly red hair, six or seven years old.

  Alec’s head throbbed. The room was black except for the light from the digital clock. 2:07. There was a cold circle of wetness next to him on the mattress, and for a moment he thought he’d gotten so drunk that he’d wet the bed, until he remembered. The room smelled of tequila and sweat and semen. He could not let Lacey in here.

  “Daddy? I need to talk to you, Daddy, please.”

  “Give me a minute, Lace, and I’ll come out.” He got out of bed and hunted in the darkness for his shorts. He pulled them on as the room spun around his head. He was going to be sick. He made it to the bathroom in time and vomited twice before lowering himself to the floor and leaning back against the welcome coolness of the tile wall. He would sit for just a few minutes until the room stopped spinning.

  He stood up after a while, testing his legs, testing his equilibrium. He was okay. He brushed his teeth, then found his T-shirt. The clock on the night table read 3:15. 3:15? He must have passed out. He opened his bedroom door, but the hallway was dark. One of the cats whisked by his legs, startling him, as he made his way down the hall to Lacey’s room. He knocked on her door, opening it when there was no answer. Her overhead light was on, but she lay fully dressed and asleep on top of her bedspread, one of her china-faced dolls clutched tightly in her arms. The smell of beer emanated from her, as if she’d bathed in it.

  Alec got a blanket from her closet and laid it over her, tucking it around her shoulders. Then he sat on the edge of her bed and gently shook her arm.

  “Lacey?”

  Her eyes remained shut, her breathing deep and regular. He’d really blown it. She’d wanted to talk to him tonight. She’d needed to, isn’t that what she said? She’d even called him Daddy, but he had not been there for her.

  She’d been drinking. It was undeniable now. He would have to talk to her, somehow preventing the discussion from turning into one more fight. It was good she was asleep. It would give him time to think through how to handle this. He wouldn’t come down hard on her tomorrow. He wouldn’t come from a place of anger. He would try to handle it the way Annie would have, and he’d tell her he loved her before he said anything else.

  He leaned forward to brush the dark hair off Lacey’s forehead and saw the clean, straight line of red roots at her scalp. He stood up with a sigh and turned out the light, leaving his daughter alone, with her chin pressed against the cold china cheek of her doll.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The call from Nola woke him the next morning. “Did you get a chance to see yesterday’s Gazette, hon?” she asked.

  Alec rolled over to look at the clock, wincing as the bottle of tequila connected with his ribcage. It was nine-thirty, and there was a jackhammer in his head.

  “Yeah, I did,” he said.

  “I got so furious when I read it. I can just imagine how terrible you must feel, Alec. Do you think you should sue?”

  He looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve spoken to Olivia Simon,” he said. “It was a judgment call, and she did what she thought was best. I’m convinced she was right. By the way, do you know who she is?”

  “Olivia Simon?”

  “Yes. She’s Paul Macelli’s wife.”

  “You’re kidding. I didn’t know he was married.”

  He thought he detected some disappointment in Nola’s voice. Perhaps she’d been interested in Paul herself. “They’re separated, but I think it’s temporary.” He drew in a breath, bracing himself for her reaction to what he was about to say. “She went up to Norfolk with me yesterday.”

  Nola was quiet for so long that he wondered if she was still on the line. “She did?” she
asked finally.

  “Mmm. She’s had public speaking experience, so I had her take the radio interview.”

  Nola hesitated again. “I could have done that, Alec.”

  He had not even considered asking Nola. He could not imagine spending that much time alone with her. “Well, Saturday’s your big day at work.”

  “True, but what does Olivia Simon know or care about the lighthouse? And with this brouhaha about her mishandling of Annie’s treatment—it’s a little like sleeping with the enemy, don’t you think?”

  He laughed. “No, Nola, your metaphor’s a bit off base.”

  “Well, hon, I think there are going to be some repercussions from this. I got a lot of phone calls yesterday from people who are upset over it and want to do something about it.”

  Alec sighed. “Try to diffuse it, okay, Nola? Annie’s gone. Nothing’s going to bring her back.”

  Clay was alone at the kitchen table when Alec came downstairs. He was eating half a cantaloupe filled with cottage cheese, and Alec’s stomach turned at the sight. He put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster and poured himself a cup of black coffee before taking a seat across from his son.

  “Is Lacey up yet?”

  “Uh-uh.” Clay looked up at him. “You look like you crawled out of a toxic waste dump.”

  “Thanks.” Alec rubbed a hand over his chin. He hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. Hadn’t even showered yet. He didn’t want to miss seeing Lacey.

  Clay stuck his spoon upright in the cantaloupe. “I’ve made a decision, Dad,” he said. “I’m not going to college this year.”

  “What?” The toast popped up in the toaster, but Alec didn’t bother to take it out.

  “I’m going to stay home a year. Lots of kids do that.”

  “You have a straight-A grade point average and a scholarship to Duke and you’re going to stay home and sell surfboards?”