Keeper of the Light

  “You washed this?” He asked the obvious.

  Lacey nodded. “It was on your bed.”

  Alec lifted the sweatshirt to his nose and breathed in the scent of detergent. Lacey and Clay looked at one another, and he lowered the shirt to his side.

  “Your mother wore this a lot, you know?” he explained. “So when I threw her things out, I kept it as a remembrance. It still smelled like her, like that stuff she used on her hair. I should have set it aside so you didn’t get it mixed up with the dirty clothes.” He tried to laugh. “I guess I can finally get rid of it.” He looked over at the trash can in the corner of the kitchen, but slipped the sweatshirt under his arm instead.

  “It was right there with your dirty sheets,” Lacey said, her voice high. Scared and defensive. “How was I supposed to know it wasn’t laundry?”

  “It’s all right, Annie,” he said, “it’s…”

  Lacey stamped her foot, her face crimson. “I am not Annie!”

  Alec quickly played his words back to himself. Yes, he’d just called her Annie. He reached for her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  Lacey dodged his hand. “Next time you can do your own fucking laundry!”

  Alec watched as she ran out of the room, and in a moment they heard her light, quick steps on the stairs, followed by the slamming of her bedroom door.

  “You’ve done that a lot, you know,” Clay said quietly.

  Alec looked at his son. “Done what? Called her Annie?” He frowned, trying to think. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Ask her.” Clay nodded in the direction of the stairs. “I bet she could tell you how many times you’ve done it.”

  Alec struggled out of his suit jacket and pressed his back against the car seat. He felt perspiration on his neck, across his chest. He tried to slow down his breathing. Keep it even. Stop gulping air.

  He’d parked a little bit away from the rest of the cars in Cafferty High’s parking lot. He needed a few minutes to pull himself together before he could face people. Parents of Clay’s friends, he hadn’t seen in months. His teachers. Everyone who was going to want to talk to him and say wonderful things about his son. If he could just keep a smile on his face, say the appropriate thing at the appropriate moment. God, he was never going to make it through the next couple of hours. Damn it, Annie.

  She used to talk about seeing her kids graduate. As much as she tried to pretend that Lacey’s and Clay’s accomplishments were immaterial, she took pride in everything they did. She would have thrown a huge celebration for Clay’s graduation. She would have hooted and hollered her way through the ceremony to make sure Clay knew she was there. Annie is one intense mother, Tom Nestor had said to him once, and he was right. Annie always tried to give her children the things she had never received from her own parents.

  Her parents did not go to her graduation from the exclusive high school she’d attended in Boston. “We would have been proud to come if you’d kept your grades up,” her father had told her. “But losing your membership in the National Honor Society during your last semester of school is inexcusable.”

  Her parents had been very wealthy. They’d groomed Annie to fit into their social circle, to date the sons of their well-connected friends and acquaintances. When she failed to meet their expectations, which she did often, either by accident or design, they punished her by withholding their love. When Alec pictured her childhood, he saw a little girl with unruly red hair sitting alone in the corner of her room, teary-eyed, hugging a teddy bear. Annie had never described that scene to him, yet it had been vivid in his mind from the night he first met her and learned how desperately she needed to be loved.

  Annie’s response to her upbringing was to criticize nothing in her children, to love them unequivocally. “I wouldn’t care if they were so ugly people couldn’t look at them without getting sick, or so dumb they could never learn to count to ten,” she’d said. “They’d still be my precious babies.”

  Alec could see her making that little speech as she kneaded bread dough in the kitchen, and in his memory she was wearing the green sweatshirt, sleeves pushed up high on her arms, the fabric over her left breast smudged with flour.

  The sweatshirt. Why had that hit him so hard? It was only his imagination that it still smelled like her, but when he saw it lying on the pile of laundry he’d felt as if he’d lost her all over again.

  “Grow up.” He said the words out loud to himself as he picked up his camera and stepped from the car. The air was sticky hot, with a breeze that ballooned the sleeves of his shirt. He would think about the lighthouse. Or windsurfing. He had to get through this for Clay’s sake.

  “Alec?”

  He turned to see Lee and Peter Hazleton walking toward him. The parents of Clay’s girlfriend, Terri. He hadn’t seen them since the memorial service for Annie.

  “Hi!” He manufactured what he hoped was a great smile.

  Peter slapped his back. “Big day, huh? My camera’s out of commission. Take a few of Terri for us, okay?”

  “Clay would never forgive me if I didn’t.” He spotted Lacey on the lawn with a group of girls. “I’m going to get my daughter and find a seat,” he said, pleased for the escape.

  It shocked him every time he saw Lacey these days. He wished he could see Annie again to compare their faces and mark the differences. Maybe it would put an end to this jolt he felt every time he saw his daughter. She looked more like Annie than Annie had. He felt awkward with her. He could no longer look at her for more than a few seconds without feeling an overwhelming sadness.

  He called to her and she walked over to him, looking alternately at the ground or the sky, steadfastly avoiding his eyes. He hadn’t seen her since the explosion in the kitchen that afternoon. “Let’s find our seats,” he said to her now, and she followed him without speaking.

  Clay had reserved two seats for them in the front row. Alec sat between Lacey and a heavyset woman who was perspiring profusely and who squeezed his thigh with her own. He shifted a little closer to Lacey and could smell smoke in her long hair. She was only thirteen. Damn.

  He pulled his camera out of the case and started to change the lens. Lacey stared straight ahead at the empty wooden platform, and Alec knew it was up to him to break the silence.

  “I’m sorry I called you Annie, Lace,” he said.

  She shrugged, her response to the world. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, yeah, it does. Clay says that’s not the first time I’ve done it.”

  She shrugged again, her gaze dropping to the dry patch of lawn in front of their chairs.

  “I overreacted about the sweatshirt.”

  She turned her head away from him. She was rocking slightly, as though she heard a beat he couldn’t hear.

  “When does summer school start?” he asked, struggling to engage her, but just then Clay appeared in front of them. He was already in his blue cap and gown, and a film of perspiration lined his forehead. “Aren’t these great seats?” He held out his hand and Alec shook it, the gesture making him feel old. Clay reached inside his gown and took the battered notecards from his pants pocket. He handed them to Alec. “Hold these for me. I don’t want to rely on them.” He tugged a long strand of his sister’s hair. “How’re ya doin’, O’Neill?”

  Lacey shrugged. “’Kay.”

  Clay glanced behind him. “Better get to work,” he said, and he turned and walked back toward the stage.

  The band began playing “Pomp and Circumstance,” and the graduates filed into their seats. Alec and Lacey turned to watch them. Alec tried to tune out the familiar, stirring music, imagining himself sailing across the sound, working with the wind.

  The graduates were finally seated and the speeches began. He felt Lacey tense next to him as Clay walked up to the podium. He wanted to put his arm around her, pull her close, but he kept his hands in his lap as he watched his son. Clay looked for all the world like a man up there. His voice seemed deeper as it poured
through the loudspeaker; his smile was genuine. There was nothing at all to betray his nervousness. Anyone would think he was making up the speech on the spot, he seemed so comfortable with the words. He talked about his class and its accomplishments. Then he hesitated briefly, and when he spoke again his voice quivered, almost imperceptibly.

  “I’m grateful to my parents, who, through their love and respect, taught me to believe in myself and think for myself.” Clay looked at Alec for a moment and then back up to the crowd. “My mother died in December and my only regret is that she can’t be here to share this moment with me.”

  Alec’s eyes filled. He felt a shifting in the audience behind him as people turned to look at him and Lacey. He would not fall apart here.

  Windsurfing. Cutting through the water, far out in the sound, far from the shore. Far from the joyless reality that had become his life.

  A woman leaned forward from the front row to get a look at him. For a moment he thought it was the doctor he’d met at the studio. Olivia. He leaned forward himself to see her more clearly, and felt some disappointment that the woman was a stranger.

  Tomorrow was Saturday. He would go to the studio about the time she’d be done with her lesson. He would buy her lunch. He would finally ask the questions that had been haunting him for the last few long and lonely months.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The glass was cool beneath her fingertips. Olivia drew the glass cutter cleanly across the surface, mesmerized by the changing color of her hands. Tinted sunlight flooded the studio and fell across the work table in violet and teal and bloodred, at first making concentration on her task impossible.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Tom said.

  He was right. After a while, the colors seemed essential. Intoxicating.

  Tom handed her another glass cutter, this one with a beveled, oil-filled handle. “Try this one on that piece,” he said.

  She took the cutter from his hand and scored a perfectly straight line down the center of the glass.

  “You’ve been practicing,” he said.

  She beamed. “Nothing to it.” She had been practicing, setting up the glass at her kitchen table each evening after work. She’d had to force herself the first time—there were several articles she should have been reading in The Journal of Emergency Medicine—but then she got into a pattern, and she began to look forward to getting home in the evening, sitting down with the glass. She’d drawn her own geometric design on graph paper last night, and now she was cutting shapes to fit the design from scraps of colored glass.

  She had nearly finished scoring the third piece when Alec O’Neill arrived. He nodded to Tom before his eyes settled on her.

  “I’d like to talk with you,” he said. “Do you have some time after your lesson?”

  She took off the green safety glasses and glanced at her watch, although she had no other plans for the day. “Yes,” she said, looking up at him. He was wearing acid-washed jeans and a faded blue polo shirt, but at that moment he was bathed in a vermilion light from head to toe.

  “Twelve?” he suggested. “I’ll meet you across the street at the deli.”

  He disappeared briefly into the darkroom and then left again after telling her he’d see her soon. The stained glass panel on the door swayed for a moment after he closed it, and Olivia watched the wall near the darkroom change from blue to rose, then blue again.

  She reached for another scrap of glass, a piece she’d been eyeing since her arrival at the studio that morning. It was a deep green, with a light, rippled texture.

  “No,” said Tom. “Not that piece. It’s hand-rolled. Too delicate.”

  “But it’s so beautiful.” She ran her fingers over the cool, wavy surface. “I haven’t broken anything yet, Tom. Couldn’t I try it?”

  “All right.” Tom reluctantly let her set the glass in front of her on the table. “But pretend this piece of glass is Alec, all right? He’s about as fragile as a person can get. I don’t know what it is he wants to talk to you about, but keep in mind you need a light touch, okay?”

  She looked at Tom’s dark blue eyes. “Okay,” she said, and the word came out in a whisper. She slipped on the safety glasses again, then carefully set the cutter to the glass, licking her lips, holding her breath. But despite her caution, despite the lightness of her touch, the glass splintered raggedly in pieces beneath her multicolored hands.

  The tiny deli was crowded. People in bathing suits pressed up against the counter, and the smell of cold cuts and pickles mingled with the scent of sunscreen. Olivia felt overdressed in her flowered skirt and green blouse. She stood against the wall by the door, searching the crowd for Alec’s face.

  “Dr. Simon.”

  She followed the voice with her eyes, peering around the back of a woman standing next to her to see Alec at one of the four small tables near the windows. She squeezed her way through the crowd. Alec stood up and leaned across the little table to pull the chair out for her.

  “Thanks.” She sat down, catching her reflection in the window. Her straight, dark hair brushed the tops of her shoulders, and her bangs had grown long enough to sweep to the side. She remembered the black and white photograph of Annie, with her wide smile and glittering hair.

  “It’s crowded, but they’re fast here.” Alec turned to look up at the menu, written in chalk on a black slate board hanging above the counter. “What would you like?”

  “Turkey on whole wheat,” she said. “And lemonade.”

  Alec got up—sprang up—and walked behind the counter where he spoke to one of the young women who was making sandwiches, his hand on her shoulder. Olivia studied him from the safety of her chair by the window. He looked about forty and a little too thin, thinner than he had been that night in the ER. He was tan, but there were circles beneath his eyes she did not remember from that night, and hollows in his cheeks. His hair was very dark, yet even from this distance she could see the gray creeping into it at his temples. He moved with an athletic grace and she imagined he worked construction, something that put him outside all the time, that allowed him to use up his wired energy and kept him in shape.

  The woman behind the counter handed him their drinks and he nodded his thanks to her before turning to work his way back to the table. Olivia wondered if he ever smiled.

  He put her lemonade in front of her and took a long drink from his own cup before sitting down again. She had the feeling he did not sit often.

  He looked at her across the table. The sunlight hit his eyes and sharpened the contrast between the translucent blue and the small black pupils. “I asked you to meet me because I need some answers about what happened to my wife that night,” he said. She felt his denim-covered knees touch her bare ones and drew her chair back a little. “It didn’t seem important then, but I can’t seem to… I keep wondering…” He rubbed his temples with his long tanned fingers. “There are these gaps for me. I mean, I said good-bye to her on Christmas morning and that was it.” He dropped his eyes and leaned back as the waitress set their sandwiches down in front of them. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and Olivia knew he was very close to the edge.

  “Mr. O’Neill,” she said after the waitress had left.

  “Alec.”

  “Alec. I’ll answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, but some of the answers might be hard to hear. Maybe this isn’t the right place.”

  He looked around him at the press of bodies. “I have an office near here,” he said. “I’m not working these days, but it’s open. We could take our sandwiches over there. Would you mind? Do you have time?”

  She nodded. “That would be fine.”

  Alec got a bag for their sandwiches, and they walked outside and across the street to the studio parking lot.

  “You can follow me,” he said, opening the door of a navy-blue Bronco.

  She got into her Volvo and followed him out to Croatan Highway, where he turned left towards Nags Head. He had an office, he’d said. Maybe he m
anaged a construction crew. What did he mean he wasn’t working? She realized she knew nothing about him, other than the fact that he’d been married to the woman she both idolized and detested.

  They pulled into the parking lot of the Beacon Animal Hospital and she frowned when she saw the shingles hanging below the sign: Alec O’Neill, DVM and Randall Allwood, DVM. He was a vet. She had to quickly reorganize her thinking about him.

  Alec got out of his car, carrying the bag with their sandwiches. “Let’s sneak in the back way,” he said.

  Olivia felt oddly criminal, as though she should tiptoe across the pea gravel that crunched beneath their feet as they walked around to the back of the building. Alec opened the door and they stepped into a cool, vinyl-tiled hallway. Frantic yapping filled the air. He unlocked the first door on the left and let Olivia in ahead of him. It was a small office, the walls paneled a pale, ashy color. The air was warm and stale, and Alec reached up to turn the knob of the air conditioning vent in the ceiling.

  “Sorry it’s so stuffy,” he said. “Should be better in a minute.”

  “You’re a vet,” she said, taking a seat in the red leather chair he gestured toward.

  “Uh-huh.” He handed her the wrapped turkey sandwich and sat down behind his desk. The paneling was covered with photographs, many of the Kiss River Lighthouse. There were also a few pictures of windsurfers, and a portrait of a tawny-colored cocker puppy sitting next to a gray Persian cat that reminded her of Sylvie. She considered mentioning that to him, but he seemed so preoccupied with his own thoughts that she let it go.

  Hanging in the window above his desk was a stained glass panel, the letters DVM in blue nestled between the tail of a black cat and the outstretched wings of a gull. Olivia had a sudden image of Annie presenting it to him—a surprise, a symbol of her pride in him.

  He opened the wrapping on his sandwich and pressed the paper flat against his desk. “I can’t say that I feel much like a vet these days, though. I was going to take a month off when Annie died, but…” He shrugged. “It’s been a little longer than a month.”