Keeper of the Light (24 page)

“I have to do it. I’ll be all right. I’m just…” She shook her head. “You know how nuts you can get in the middle of the night.” She lay down again and snuggled next to him, and it was another minute before she spoke again.

“Let me just ask you something, though,” she said. “Hypothetically.”

“Mmm?”

“If I died, how long would you wait before you started going out with someone?”

“
Annie.
Cancel the damn surgery.”

“No. I mean it, Alec. Tell me. How long?”

He was quiet for a moment, aware of how quickly he could lose her. She could, in a perfectly voluntary surgery, leave him forever. He pulled her closer. “I can’t imagine ever wanting to be with anyone else,” he said.

“You mean, sexually?”

“I mean period.”

“Well, God, I wouldn’t want you to be alone
forever.
But if I did die, would you wait a year please? I mean, that’s not too long to grieve for someone you completely and thoroughly adore, is it? That’s all I ask. Then you can do whatever you like, although it would be nice if you could think of me from time to time, and find your new woman lacking in almost every way.”

“Why not in every way?” he asked, smiling. “Go for broke, Annie.” He raised himself up on his elbow and kissed her. “Maybe we’d better make love one last time since you already seem to have a foot out the door.” He slipped his hand to her breast, but she caught his fingers.

“You didn’t promise yet, Alec,” she said. “Just one year. Please?”

“I’ll give you two,” he said, certain then that it was a promise he would have no trouble at all keeping.

She felt better in the morning, a cheery optimism replacing her maudlin mood. Alec, however, felt worse, as though she had transferred her fear to him. By the time they boarded the plane for Chicago on Tuesday, he was sick with nervousness. He sat with his head flat against the seatback, trying to ignore the nausea pressing in on him, while Annie held his hand and rested her head on his shoulder. She read him the article she’d torn from the
Beach Gazette
that morning, the article describing her trip to Chicago, yet another one of Annie O’Neill’s saintly deeds.

She had to stay in the hospital the night before the surgery and Alec took a room in the hotel across the street. He watched television the entire night. If he fell asleep he might miss the alarm, and Annie would be taken into the OR before he’d have a chance to see her.

He walked over to the hospital before dawn and went into her room as soon as they would let him. She looked beautiful, her hair falling around her shoulders, a smile of contentment on her face.

“Oh, Alec.” She reached for his hand. “You didn’t sleep.”

“Yes, I did,” he lied.

She shook her head. “You have circles under your eyes. You look awful.”

He tried to smile. “Thanks.”

The nurse came in, telling them it was time for Annie to be wheeled to the operating room. Alec leaned over to kiss her, leaving his lips on hers for a long time. When he pulled away she whispered, “Don’t be scared.” They wheeled her out of the room and he struggled to keep his tears and his terror in check as he watched her disappear down the hall.

The surgery went smoothly, and Annie was practically euphoric by the time he saw her back in her room.

“My first thought when I came out of the anesthetic was,
‘I’m alive!’”
she told him with a tired smile. “I was sick as a dog. It was
wonderful.
”

Sitting on the plane was not easy for her. She fidgeted, adjusting her seat belt in an effort to get comfortable, but she didn’t utter a word of complaint.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, when they were somewhere over Virginia. “There are some changes I want to make about us.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“We need more time together.”

“Fine,” he said.

“I propose that we meet for lunch one day a week.”

“Okay.”

“A two-hour lunch,” she said. “In a motel.”

He laughed. “I see.”

“I really need this, Alec.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “We never get time away together, without the kids around. It’s so important. It’s more important than you know, than I can possibly explain to you.”

They met on Fridays, from twelve to two, in any motel that would take them. In the winter it was easy to find a room, but during the summer, they paid an exorbitant price for the privilege of two hours in a prime-season motel. By that time, though, Alec knew those couple of hours were worth any amount of money. The intimacy they shared in the motel rooms spilled over to the other days of the week, and he saw a change in Annie. Her occasional moodiness, her periods of withdrawal, completely disappeared. Amazing that two hours a week could change so much.

“I’ve never been happier in my entire life than I’ve been this past year,” she told him. They’d been meeting for well over a year by then, and her contentment was so complete that when the depression took hold of her late in the fall, it was impossible to miss. She grew nervous. Jumpy. She was tearful when they made love on those afternoons in the motel room, quiet as they ate the lunch she’d brought. She avoided his eyes when she spoke to him. Sometimes she’d cry for no reason at all. He’d find her weeping in the bathroom as she soaked in the tub, or he’d wake up in the middle of the night to hear her crying softly into her pillow. It seemed far worse than the other times, or maybe it was just that it had been so long since he’d seen that misery in her.

“Let me in, Annie,”
he’d say to her.
“Let me help.”
But she seemed no more aware of the reason for her distress than he was, and so he settled for holding her close to him, for trying to still her trembling with his arms.

Then suddenly, she was gone. In the hospital that Christmas night, he’d remembered his promise to her and it had seemed ludicrous to him that she’d asked him to grieve for only one year. He couldn’t imagine
ever
being interested in another woman. A year seemed no longer than one rotation of the lighthouse beacon.

Until he met Olivia, a woman as unlike Annie as a woman could be. She’s a friend, he told himself now as he coasted gently on the glider. She’s married to another man and carrying that man’s child.

Maybe he should call her earlier in the evening, before he got into bed, the bed that still seemed filled with Annie’s presence. Maybe he shouldn’t call her at all.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
T
WO

Tom Nestor helped Olivia load the bags of magazines and paperbacks into the trunk of her car after her lesson that Saturday. The Manteo Retirement Home wasn’t far from the Battered Women’s Shelter, and since she was volunteering there tonight, she thought it was about time she made good on her promise to get the magazines out of the studio.

“Thanks for doing this,” Tom said.

“I meant to take them long before now,” Olivia said as she got in behind the steering wheel.

“Hey, Olivia,” he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze through the window. “The panel’s a real peach.”

She smiled at him and then glanced down at the panel she’d finally completed that morning, a geometric blend of colored and clear glass that was pretty enough to hang in one of her windows—one of the windows Paul would be unlikely to see if he stopped by the house.

She drove into Manteo and parked across the street from the retirement home, directly in front of a small antique shop. Her eyes were drawn to the sidewalk in front of the little shop, where three antique dolls dressed in satin and lace sat on three splintery old wicker chairs. This must be where Annie had bought her daughter’s birthday gifts. She would have to tell Alec.

She got out of the car and shaded her eyes to look at the retirement home. It was a lovely old house, painted sky-blue with sparkling white trim. A broad porch ran its entire width. From the street, Olivia could see that several of the front windows were filled with stained glass panels, no doubt made and donated by Saint Anne.

She lugged the bags out of the trunk of the Volvo and walked across the street and up the sidewalk to the house. Although she’d been out of her air-conditioned car for only seconds, she was already perspiring. It was the hottest day of the summer so far and there was no breeze at all.

About a dozen sturdy-looking white rocking chairs lined the porch, but only a couple of them were occupied—one by a shriveled old woman who looked too frail to be sitting out side in the heat, the other by a white-haired woman wearing sneakers and holding a newspaper on her lap.

“Hello, there, young lady,” the woman in sneakers said as Olivia started up the steps. “You’re bringing us some magazines?”

Olivia set the bags down on the top step and shaded her eyes again. The woman sat clear-eyed and stick-straight in the rocker, but this close up, Olivia could see she was quite old, her face lined and leathery. Someone had carefully trimmed and shaped her short white hair.

“Yes,” Olivia said. “Is there someone inside I should leave them with?”

“Sandy’s in there.”

“Eh?” The second woman leaned forward, and the woman in sneakers spoke loudly into her ear.

“She’s brought us magazines, Jane, you know, like Annie used to do?”

Jane gave a slight nod before leaning back in her chair again and closing her eyes.

“You knew Annie?” Olivia stepped under the porch roof, out of the sun.

“Indeed I did.” The woman held out one long-boned hand to Olivia. “I’m Mary Poor, keeper of the Kiss River Lighthouse.”

Olivia smiled and shook her hand, struck by the strength in the woman’s slender fingers. “I’m delighted to meet you, Mrs. Poor. My name’s Olivia Simon.”

“
Olivia.
Pretty name. Kind of old-fashioned.”

“I think you know my husband, Paul Macelli,” Olivia continued. “He interviewed you about the lighthouse.”

Mary Poor narrowed her eyes at Olivia. “He’s got you running around, doing Annie’s old chores?”

Olivia was speechless for a moment, trying to figure out which of them was confused. “No,” she said finally. “I’m taking stained glass lessons from the man Annie used to share her studio with and…”

“Tom, am I right? Tom what’s-his-name. Wears his hair like a girl.”

“Yes, that’s right. Tom Nestor. Do you know him?”

“Oh.” Mary smiled, displaying lovely straight teeth for a woman her age. “I met him once or twice,” she said. “So it’s Tom who’s got you doing Annie’s work.”

Jane started to snore softly from the chair at Mary’s side.

“Well, no,” Olivia said. “I saw the pile of magazines, and Tom told me that Annie used to bring them over here, so since I’m volunteering at the women’s shelter, I figured I could…”

“You’re working at that hell hole?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Oh, no, child, you shouldn’t be there.” Mary patted the arm of the empty rocker next to her. “Sit down,” she said.

Olivia looked at her watch. She was running late, but she was curious about this old woman. She sat down in the rocker.

“You’re a pretty girl,” Mary said.

“Thank you.”

“You remind me of my daughter, Elizabeth. She had your color hair—dark and silky—and eyes like yours, with a little sad look to them.”

Olivia leaned away from her. She did not want sad-looking eyes.

“You don’t look a thing like Annie, though.”

“I know,” Olivia said. “I’ve seen pictures of her.”

“I bet you’re not like her in any way at all.”

Olivia felt insulted, and Mary did not miss her look of dismay. She hurried on.

“And that’s just fine, child,” she continued. “You be you, let Annie be Annie. Would you have done what she did? Jumped in front of a woman about to get her head shot off by her husband?”

Olivia had wondered about that herself. “Well, I like to think I…”

“The hell you would. Instinct takes over and you fight for yourself, for your own hide. And that’s the way it
should
be.” Mary licked her lips and looked out toward the street, toward the little shop where the dolls sat baking in the sun. “Annie was a really fine girl,” she said, “but she could be a fool sometimes.”

Olivia did not know what to say. She stared at the newspaper in Mary Poor’s lap, folded to the crossword puzzle, which had nearly been completed.

“That husband of yours,” Mary said.

“Paul?”

“Paul. He’s a very high-strung sort, isn’t he? You need to feed him kale with sea salt and lemon.”

Olivia laughed.

“Kale with sea salt for those nerves of his. And you tell him it’s about time he came back. I have plenty more I can tell him and Lord knows how much longer I can keep it straight in this old noggin.” She touched her fingertips to her temple.

“You seem very lucid to me, Mrs. Poor.” Olivia stood up. She bent down to pick up the bags, nearly straining her back with the weight of them.

“You make this the last time you bring magazines by here, all right?” Mary said.

Olivia frowned. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought…”

“You can come visiting anytime, child, but not doing Annie’s chores for her.”

Mary leaned back in the rocking chair after the girl had gone and closed her eyes. She had done enough of the crossword puzzle for now, and she knew that Jane would be asleep until suppertime. She should take a little rest herself, but her mind kept returning to the girl’s face. Had she really looked like Elizabeth? Probably not. To be honest, she could barely remember Elizabeth’s face at all. It was frozen in her memory at the ages she’d been in the few pictures she had of her. Three, eight, fifteen. That last picture had been taken the day before she ran away. She remembered well how she’d looked the very last time she’d seen her, though, two years ago, when she’d been lying in a casket. Mary never would have recognized her. Elizabeth had been fifty-eight years old, gray-haired and waxy-pale.

A friend of Elizabeth’s in Ohio had sent Mary the letter, telling her that Elizabeth had collapsed at work and never regained consciousness. Mary wanted to go to the funeral, she told Annie. She needed to pay her last respects.