LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      Alec tried to make himself invisible as he approached the door in the white brick foundation. He glanced over at the old keeper’s house. It looked as though no one from the Park Service was around today. Good. He slipped a key from his pocket and into the lock, jiggling it a little before the door opened. Mary Poor had given the key to Annie years ago, and she had cherished it. Controlled it jealously.

      He disappeared inside, locking the door behind him. It was cool, almost chilly. There were birds somewhere in the tower. He couldn’t see them, but he heard the echoing flap of their wings, the occasional chirp that ricocheted off the rounded brick walls. The brick was white in here as well, although the paint was crumbling, flaking onto the floor in a coarse white powder.

      Alec began the long climb to the top up the steel circular staircase, not bothering to stop at the six rectangular windows that marked the landings along the way, and by the time he reached the claustrophobic room below the lantern, he was winded. He was not getting enough exercise these days.

      He opened the door and stepped into the sunlight on the gallery. He sat down, close to the tower so he could not be seen from below, and breathed in the damp, salty air.

      Glassy blue water stretched out in front of him for as far as he could see. He had a clear view of the jetty, and it made him remember the funeral and the welcome numbness that had befriended him back then. From the moment Olivia Simon told him Annie was dead, he’d felt nothing. He didn’t cry, didn’t even feel close to crying. Nola helped him make the arrangements, weeping most of the time and talking about how Annie usually did that sort of thing, how good she was at rallying people together at a time of crisis, and he’d muttered some form of agreement from inside the comforting protective capsule that had formed around him.

      The funeral was held in the largest church in the northern Outer Banks, but even it was not big enough to hold everyone who wanted to come. Someone told him later that people stood in the vestibule and spilled out onto the front steps and into the parking lot.

      Alec sat between Clay and Nola. Lacey had refused to come and he didn’t press the issue with her, although person after person wanted to know where she was. He was too dazed to realize that his response “—she didn’t want to come—” was not enough.

      Even Annie’s mother was there, and Alec let her sit in the back of the church, although Nola begged him to try to make peace with the woman.

      “Annie would never have let her sit back there, Alec.” She spoke quietly in his ear.

      “I don’t want her near me,” he said, and he wished he could stop Clay from turning around to get a glimpse of the grandmother he had never known.

      Alec listened as people recounted how Annie had touched their lives. They walked up to the podium in the front of the church, one after another, ending finally with the county commissioner, who spoke of how Annie had been “woman of the year” for four years in a row, how she’d donated stained glass panels to the library and the community center, how she’d fought for the rights of people who could not fight for themselves. “She was our Saint Anne,” he said. “You always knew you could turn to her for help. The word ‘no’ was simply not in her vocabulary.”

      Alec listened to it all from behind the wall he’d built around himself. He did not like it, this recitation of her generosity. It was her generosity that killed her.

      Nearly everyone met on the cold beach at Kiss River afterward to watch Alec and Clay walk out on the windy jetty with Annie’s ashes. It wasn’t until Alec let them fly, until he watched in horror as the wind caught them and carried them away from him with cruel speed, that the numbness gave way to a searing pain. The ashes had been all that was left of her and he’d cast them away. He stared after them, stunned, until Clay tugged at his arm.

      “Let’s go back, Dad,” he said. By the time they reached the beach once again, Alec was weeping freely and leaning on his son. Arms reached for him, and he was quickly pulled into a loving circle. Clay, Nola, Tom, Randi. Everyone. They moved closer to him until they formed one black mass with Alec at its core, completely surrounded, completely alone.

      Alec leaned forward and looked directly down from the gallery. The ocean was closer to the lighthouse than the last time he was up here, or perhaps that was his imagination. Whatever the Park Service decided to do to save it, he wished they would hurry up.

      He patted his pocket for the illicit key. Mary! Alec had a sudden brainstorm. He would call that journalist, Paul Macelli, as soon as he got home and tell him to get in touch with Mary Poor. He hoped the old woman was still alive, still thinking clearly. She would be loaded with anecdotes. Paul might not even need the historical collection if Mary was lucid enough to help him out.

      Alec stood up and drew in a long breath of salty air. He felt better, although he could still hear Randi’s voice, telling him about the joys of being “free.” He shook his head. Randi couldn’t possibly understand, he told himself. He shouldn’t hold it against her.

      He thought of the doctor. Olivia. The woman whose husband had left her for an illusion. She knew how he felt. He could tell by the way she spoke to him, by the empathy in her eyes. She had understood completely.

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      Paul lay on his bed, staring at the colors in his ceiling. It was six in the evening, his favorite time in this room. The slant of the sun was just right to lift the tropical fish from the stained glass panel at his window and transpose them onto his ceiling, a bit distorted perhaps, but shimmering with blue and green and gold. He could easily lie here watching them until darkness fell. He had spent many evenings in this house watching his room grow dark, and this evening in particular he was anxious for darkness, for sleep. He wanted to sleep away the call from Alec O’Neill. He wanted to pretend he had not picked up the phone in the kitchen an hour earlier to hear the enthusiasm in Alec’s voice. How could he sound so content, so pleased with life? He had an idea, Alec told him. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Paul could interview the old lighthouse

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