Keeper of the Light

  Olivia nodded. She knew exactly how long it had been. The night he’d lost his wife was the night she’d lost her husband.

  “So.” He looked up at her expectantly.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  “Exactly what happened in the emergency room that night. You said you worked on her. I understand in general what you mean by that, but in her case, specifically, what happened?” He drew in his breath and glanced at a photograph on his desk. It was set at an angle so she couldn’t quite make it out, but she was certain it was Annie and their children. She could see a patch of red that was most likely Annie’s hair. “I guess more than anything I want to know if she was ever conscious,” he continued. “If she felt anything. Suffered.”

  “No,” she said. “She didn’t suffer, and she never regained consciousness. I honestly don’t think she ever knew what hit her. She probably felt a sharp stinging pain from the bullet—just enough to surprise her—and then immediately lost consciousness.”

  He licked his lips, nodded. “Good,” he said.

  “When they brought her in she was in very bad shape, and I could tell from her symptoms that the bullet had entered her heart and surgery was the only option.”

  “Was it you who performed the surgery?”

  “Yes. Along with Mike Shelley. He’s the director of the ER, and he got there about halfway through.”

  “Shouldn’t she have been sent up to Emerson Memorial—to a trauma unit—for that sort of injury?”

  Olivia stiffened. She heard Mike Shelley’s voice in the back of her mind. Maybe she should have been sent up. This way her blood’s on your hands. “Ideally, she should have had a trauma unit, yes. But it would have taken far too long to transport her to Emerson. She would have died on the way. Immediate surgery was her only chance.”

  “So you had to…open her up right there?”

  “Yes. Then I… Do you really want to hear more?”

  He set his sandwich down. “I want to know everything.”

  “We’d lost her heartbeat. I was able to get my hand around her heart and hold my finger and thumb over the holes the bullet had made, and then her heart began to contract again.” Olivia had lifted her hand involuntarily. Alec stared at it and something contracted in him. She saw him start, saw his breathing quicken, and she rushed on, dropping her hand to the arm of the chair. “I was very hopeful then. I thought if we could just close those holes we’d be all right.” She explained about Mike Shelley trying to sew the hole in the back of Annie’s heart. She remembered feeling the blood seeping over her fingers. Sometimes still she woke up at night, winded, and had to turn the light on to be certain her hand was not warm and sticky with blood. Suddenly she was afraid of crying her self. The tears were so close. Her nose burned with the effort of holding them back.

  “Well,” said Alec. There was no feeling at all in his voice. “It sounds as though everything that could have been done was done.”

  “Yes.”

  He sank lower in his chair. “I’ve forgotten most of that night,” he said. He was not looking at her. His eyes were focused on some invisible point in the air between them. “Someone must have called my neighbor, Nola, because I know she drove us home. I couldn’t tell you a thing about that ride, though. My kids were with me, but I don’t remember them being there at all.” He looked over at her. “I get the feeling it was a difficult night for you too.”

  “Yes.” She wondered what she was giving away in her face.

  “Even talking about it now isn’t easy.”

  “You have a right to know.”

  He nodded. “Well, thank you. For everything you did that night, and for taking the time to talk with me now.” He gestured toward the sandwich in her lap. “You haven’t touched your lunch.”

  She glanced down at the tightly wrapped sandwich. “I’ll save it for dinner,” she said, but he wasn’t listening. He was staring at the photograph on his desk.

  “I just wish I’d had one extra minute with her to say good-bye,” he said. Then he looked at Olivia’s hand, where her wedding ring circled her finger. “You’re married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be sure to treat every minute with your husband as though it’s your last.”

  “Well, actually, we’re separated.” She squirmed, feeling somehow guilty that she and Paul were alive and healthy, yet apart.

  “Oh,” Alec said. “Is that good or bad?”

  “Horrible.”

  “I’m sorry. How long has it been?”

  “Six months.” If he made any connection between his six months without his wife and hers without her husband, he gave no sign.

  “His idea or yours?”

  “Entirely his.” She looked down at her hand, where she was twisting the diamond ring around on her finger. “There was another woman,” she said, wondering how far she would take this. “It wasn’t an affair, exactly. They weren’t…it was platonic. He barely knew her. I think it was more of a fantasy, and anyway, she’s no longer around. She…moved away, but he’s still upset about it, I guess.”

  “Is there any chance you two will get back together?”

  “I hope so. I’m pregnant.”

  He dropped his puzzled gaze to her stomach.

  “Just eleven weeks,” she said.

  Alec raised his dark eyebrows in a question. “I thought you said…?”

  “Oh.” She felt herself blush. “He…stopped by one night.”

  For the first time, Alec smiled, and she could see the handsomeness hiding behind his haggard demeanor. She laughed herself.

  The door to his office opened a crack and a woman stuck her head in. “Alec?” She stepped into the room. She wore a white lab coat over jeans, and her dark hair was braided down her back. She glanced at Olivia, then back at Alec. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you were with someone. Are you working?”

  “You wish.” Alec actually grinned. He stood up and walked around his desk to kiss the woman’s cheek. Then he gestured in Olivia’s direction. “This is Olivia Simon. She was the doctor in the ER the night Annie died.”

  “Oh.” The woman’s expression sobered and she turned toward Olivia. “I’m Randi Allwood.”

  “Randi’s my partner,” Alec said.

  “Can’t prove it by me,” said Randi. “I seem to be running this place singlehandedly these days.”

  Alec nodded toward Olivia as a signal it was time to leave, and she rose from her seat.

  “I need to talk to you, Alec,” Randi said as Alec started for the door.

  “All right,” Alec held the door open for Olivia. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He walked Olivia to her car. “Thanks again for doing this,” he said, “and good luck with your husband.”

  “Thank you.” Olivia turned to face him.

  “Does he know about—” Alec dropped his hand between them, nearly touching her stomach with the back of his fingers “—what happened the last time he…stopped by?”

  Olivia shook her head. “No.”

  “Does he know you still love him?”

  “I think so.” Did he? There had been so much unpleasantness between them lately that perhaps he didn’t.

  Alec opened her car door. “Make sure he knows that, okay?”

  Olivia got into her car and waved to him before pulling out onto Croatan Highway. She could not recall the last time she’d told Paul she loved him. What about that night in April? She must have, but she couldn’t remember. She’d avoided the memory of that night for the past few months.

  It had been a Thursday night, early in April, and he’d stopped by the house, looking for something. Software for his computer? She didn’t remember. It wasn’t important. She was already in bed, but she was not quite asleep when she heard him let himself in. Her first thought was angry, bitter—what gall, marching into the house as though he still lived there—but it was quickly replaced by relief, that she could see him, talk with him. She lay still as he
walked through the living room and up the stairs. He came into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the queen-size bed.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you this late,” he said. “I just need to pick something up and then I’ll be out of here.”

  She looked up at him. It was dark in the room, but she thought she saw something tender in his eyes. He was actually sitting on their bed, next to her, the warm length of his thigh against her hip. She reached for his hand and held it softly on his knee, grateful that he didn’t try to pull away from her.

  “You don’t have to rush off,” she said.

  He lightly ran his thumb across the back of her fingers, encouraging her, and she brazenly drew his hand beneath the sheet to her bare breast.

  He said nothing, but she felt the tips of his fingers graze over her nipple, once, then a second time. She wrapped her hand around the buckle of his belt, worried she was pushing him too far, too fast, but unable to stop herself. She had gone without him far too long.

  He gently withdrew his hand from under the sheet and took off his glasses, folding the wire arms before setting them on the night table, close to the lamp. He lowered his head to her lips and kissed her softly. Then he began undressing, slowly, folding his shirt, his pants, and Olivia’s heart pumped with anticipation, not just of making love to him but of the possibilities wrapped up in this moment. The hope. When he slipped into the bed next to her, she was smiling. She wanted to welcome him home.

  He touched her woodenly at first, as though he did not quite remember who she was, what she liked. His penis lay limp and cool against her thigh, and she bit her lip in disappointment. She was doing something wrong; he was not aroused. The old uncertainty washed over her. Insecurities she had thought were long gone.

  His touch grew more certain, though, as he stroked her body, and when she finally straddled him, reaching down to draw him inside her, he was more than ready. They made love with an exquisite slowness that Olivia knew she was controlling with her own body. She did not want it to end. While they were locked together she could pretend that everything was all right, that they would be together not just at this moment, but tomorrow as well, and next week, next year.

  She cried when it was over, bathing his shoulder with her tears, and he ran his hand over her hair. “I’m so sorry, Liv,” he said.

  She raised herself to her elbow to look at him, not certain why he was apologizing. “Please stay,” she said.

  He shook his head. “We should never have made love. It just makes it harder for you.”

  “You still think about her.” She tried to keep the accusation out of her voice.

  “Yes.” He rolled out from under her and sat up on the side of the bed, reaching for his glasses. “I know it’s sick,” he said. “I know she’s dead, but it’s as though she’s taken over my mind. I’ve stopped trying to fight it. I’ve just given in.”

  Olivia sat up and moved next to him, resting her chin on his shoulder, her hand on his back. “Maybe if you moved back in,” she said. “If we tried to build a life together again. Maybe then you could forget her.”

  “It’s no use, and it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  “Let that be my choice. I’d like to try, Paul. It was so wonderful making love just now. That’s what we need to do to—” the word exorcize slipped into her mind “—to help you forget her.”

  “It won’t work, Liv.” He pulled on his shorts and stood up, staring at the dark sound through the window. “When we made love just now, I couldn’t get into it until I imagined you were Annie.” He turned to face her. “Is that what you want?”

  Her tears were immediate. She pulled the blanket around her to cover her nakedness. “What was so extraordinary about her?” she asked. “What did she have that I’m so horribly deficient in?”

  “Shh, nothing.” He bent down, patronizing her with a quick hug. “Don’t cry, Liv. Please.”

  She looked up at him. “Was it ever any good for you with me? Have you just been pretending it was good all these years so you didn’t hurt my feelings?” He had been her first and only lover, and although she’d been far past the age when most women first made love, she’d been terrified. Paul’s patient encouragement had made it easy for her, though. He’d fed her confidence with loving praise, tender compliments, and he’d told her, in the most flattering tone, that she had become an animal in bed. It relieved her to know she was capable of passion and desire when she’d long thought those emotions were impossible for her.

  “Of course it was good,” he said. “This has nothing at all to do with sex.” He turned his head to the window, letting out a long sigh and rubbing his hands tiredly over his face. “I’m sorry I said that about Annie, Liv.” He shook his head, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick. “You didn’t deserve that. I’m really sorry.”

  She did not know what to say. She had no idea what words she could use to save the little scraps of whatever they had left together. And so she watched in silence as he finished dressing, as he bent low to kiss the top of her head, as he left the room. She listened to him hunting in the study for whatever it was he needed. Then she heard him leave the house, closing the door quietly behind him, but closing it all the same. She listened to him pull the car out of the driveway, and she could still hear it as he turned the corner onto Mallard Run. It was another hour before she shut her eyes, and an hour after that before she slept. And it was just a few short weeks before she knew that the seed Paul had imagined himself planting in Annie had started a new life in her.

  Alec wasn’t surprised to find Randi still waiting for him in his office. He had avoided seeing her these past six months. He’d bumped into her a couple of times, once in the grocery store, once at the Sea Tern, but he’d kept those meetings brief, shifting away from her when he saw impatience replace the sympathy in her eyes. Now, though, he was cornered.

  “Sit down, Alec.” She was sitting in the chair Olivia had vacated, and he sat down once again behind his desk.

  “It was so great to walk in here and see you in that chair,” she said.

  “Look, Randi, I was here because we were talking about something too heavy for a restaurant. This was the best place to meet. Don’t read so much into it.”

  “When are you coming back, Alec?”

  He hated being asked that question so directly. It made it impossible to dodge. “I don’t know,” he said.

  She sighed, exasperated, and leaned forward in the chair. “What the hell are you living on? How are you keeping your kids fed? How do you plan to get Clay through four years at Duke?”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  “Isn’t your brain disintegrating?”

  “I like the time off, Randi. It gives me loads of time to work on the lighthouse committee.”

  She sat back, scowling. “Alec, you’re pissing me off.”

  He smiled.

  “Don’t give me that condescending smile,” she said, but she was smiling herself. “Oh, Alec, the bottom line is I miss you, and I worry about you. But you just dumped everything on me. You said it would be one month, and here I am nearly a year later doing it all.”

  “It hasn’t even been six months, and you’re not alone. Isn’t Steve Matthews working out?”

  She waved her hand impatiently through the air. “That’s not the point.”

  He stood up and walked around to the front of his desk, leaning back against it, working his way toward the door. “Randi, if it’s really too much for you, tell me and we’ll get someone else in to help out. I don’t want you to be overextended.”

  She sighed and seemed to deflate in the chair. “I’m all right. I just thought playing on your guilt might work.” She stood up too, and he was pleased to see she was surrendering. She walked over to him for a hug, which he provided, stunned for a moment by the way her breasts felt against his chest, by the way her hair lay warm and fragrant next to his cheek.

  He pulled away from her, gently. “Wow, do you feel good. It’s been a wh
ile since I hugged a woman.”

  There was a sudden glint in Randi’s eyes. “I’ve been dying to fix you up with this friend of mine,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “You’d love her, Alec, and it’s time you went out. There’s a world full of single women out there, and you’re a free man.”

  He was irritated by the word free. “It’s way too soon,” he said.

  “What about that doctor? She’s pretty and…”

  “And married and pregnant.”

  “Don’t you miss sex?” she asked bluntly.

  “I miss everything,” he snapped, suddenly angry, and Randi took a step backward. “This is not some high school game, here, Randi. I’ve lost my wife. My right arm, you know? Annie wasn’t replaceable.”

  “I know that,” Randi said in a small voice. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Let me do things at my own pace, okay?” He picked up his keys from the desk and started for the door.

  “Alec,” she said. “Please don’t be angry.”

  “I’m not.” He opened the door and looked back at her. “I shouldn’t expect you to understand, Randi. Don’t worry about it.”

  He was sweating by the time he reached the Bronco. He sat for a moment with the door open, letting the air conditioner blow the heat from the car. Then he pulled onto the road, heading north, his car practically operating on autopilot. In a short time, he had reached Kiss River. There might be tourists at the lighthouse this time of day, but he knew how to escape them.

  He turned onto the winding, wooded road that led out to the lighthouse. He had to stop for a minute as one of the wild mustangs—the black stallion he had treated for an infection last fall—leisurely crossed the road in front of him. He drove on until he reached the small parking lot, surrounded on all sides by thick, scrubby bayberry bushes. He got out of the Bronco and took the footpath that led to the lighthouse.

  The ocean was rough today. It broke wildly over the jetty, and he felt the spray against his face as he neared the lighthouse. It rose above him, the white brick sun-drenched and blinding. There were a couple of kids on the crescent of sand that made up the small, ever-shrinking Kiss River beach, and a few tourists milling around, some of them reading the plaques, others shading their eyes as they looked skyward toward the black iron gallery high above them.