LITMIR.BIZ

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after her, but he saw the red blur of her hair as she ran past the kitchen window and out to the street. Alec lifted the phone back to his ear. “She took off,” he said.

      “Well, I know she’s upset. She’ll have to take biology and algebra in summer school if she wants to pass the year.”

      Alec shook his head. “I don’t get it. She’s always been a straight-A student. Shouldn’t I have known about this sooner? What about her last report card? I would have noticed if she was slipping.” “Straight C’s.”

      He frowned into the phone. “She must not have shown it to me. That’s so unlike her.” He’d never seen a C out of either of his children. For that matter, he’d never seen a B.

      “Your son’s kept up with things quite well despite losing his mother, hasn’t he? I hear he’s going to be class valedictorian.”

      “Yes.” Alec sat down again at the table, suddenly exhausted. If it were not for the lighthouse meeting, he would go back to bed.

      “And he’s going to Duke next year?”

      “Yes.” He watched his son get up from the table. Clay took a peach from the fruit bowl and waved as he walked out the door.

      “I think Lacey’s a little concerned about what that’ll be like, having her brother gone, just the two of you in the house.”

      Alec frowned again. “Did she say that?”

      “It’s just a feeling I got. She seems to have had a very difficult time adjusting to her mother’s death.”

      “I—well, I guess if her grades are down …” She was failing. He’d had no idea. “I haven’t picked up on anything unusual.” He hadn’t looked for anything. He’d let his children fend for themselves these past few months.

      “You’re a veterinarian, right, Dr. O’Neill?”

      “Yes.”

      “Lacey said you’re not working right now.”

      He wanted to tell her it was none of her business, but he held his tongue for Lacey’s sake. “I’ve taken some time off.” He’d thought he’d take a few weeks off after Annie died. The weeks turned into months, the months accumulated at breakneck speed, and he still had no intention of returning to work.

      “I see,” Janet Green said, her voice dropping a degree or two to the level of pure condescension. “By the way, are you aware Lacey’s had two detentions in the last few months for smoking on school grounds?”

      He started to tell her that Lacey didn’t smoke, but obviously this woman knew his daughter better than he did. “No, I didn’t know that,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.”

      He got off the phone and sat down at the table again, drained. This weariness was new for him. He was known for his energy, for his inability to sit idly for more than a minute or two. Now he was too tired to wash the spaghetti pot.

      They ate spaghetti a few times a week. It was easy. Boil water, open a jar of sauce. Every once in a while one of the kids would cook, but they were not much more inventive than he was.

      Annie used to make everything from scratch. Even bread. Two loaves of honey whole wheat every Saturday. The house would fill with the smell. This kitchen had been alive back then. She’d leave certain items on the countertops—a row of fruit along the backsplash, or colorful packages of exotic teas on the windowsills—so she could admire them while she worked.

      Back in those days, Annie would usually get home ahead of him and create something wonderful in the kitchen, and often—in his memory, it was every other day or so—he’d come home and invite her into the bedroom and she would hand the spoon over to one of the kids, who would groan and resign themselves to another late dinner. Annie, the flush of longing already burning in her cheeks, would tell them, “Remember, loves, it’s elegant to dine late.”

      That was the way this house operated back then. Annie had been a firm believer in spontaneity. “This is a house without rules,” she’d say. “We have to trust ourselves and our bodies to tell us when to sleep, to eat, to get up in the morning. To make love.”

      It had only been in the last couple of years that the kids realized there were plenty of rules in this house—they were just not the same rules their friends lived by, but rather the peculiar rules of Annie’s creation. She allowed no clocks in the house, although Alec always wore a watch. Lacey and Clay were free to make their own decisions in the matter, both of them following their mother’s example until last year, when Clay began wearing a watch identical to Alec’s. Before that, Clay and Lacey were often late for the school bus, or on a few bizarre occasions, extremely early. They had never had a curfew, which made them the envy of their friends. Even when they were small, they were allowed to go to bed anytime they pleased. They regulated themselves quite well, actually, which probably had something to do with the fact that the O’Neills did not own a TV.

      Lacey and Clay were never punished for their few misdeeds, but were rewarded frequently, just for existing. When they were young, Alec had often felt like a spectator in all of this, Annie setting the tone for the way they were raised. He caught on quickly, though, discovering that if you treated kids with respect they behaved responsibly. Lacey and Clay had always been a testimony to their methods. “The most important thing is that you’re having fun and you’re safe,” Alec would tell them before they went out. He took delight in that, in trusting them when the parents of their friends weighed their kids down with warnings, threats, and reprimands.

      On a whim, Alec got up from the table and went upstairs to Lacey’s room. He opened the door and shook his head with a smile. The room was a wreck, the bed unmade, clothes heaped everywhere, the hamper in her corner overflowing. Her desk was stacked with books and tapes and papers, and the walls were covered with posters of decadent, noxious-looking musicians. On the shelf that ran around three sides of her room, at the level of his shoulders, sat her antique dolls, providing a weird contrast to the depraved young men. There were thirteen of the dolls, neatly spaced on the shelves he’d built five years ago. Annie had given her a doll for each birthday. Right now they looked out at Alec with placid smiles on their haunting, small-toothed mouths.

      She’s smoking, damn it. Should he talk to her about it? What would Annie have done? An open discussion at the dinner table, most likely, with no accusations, no expectations, no demands. Alec let out a long sigh. He wasn’t up to it.

      Tripod hobbled into the doorway and leaned heavily against Alec’s leg. Alec gave the dog a perfunctory scratch behind one ear as they stared together into the disaster that was Lacey’s room. Annie had been no sterling housekeeper—she was notoriously disorganized—but she’d been a master at cramming things into closets and cupboards, and the house always had the appearance of neatness. Lacey’s room had certainly never looked like this when Annie was alive, but Alec could hardly hold his daughter responsible for the mess in this room when it only reflected what was going on in every other room in the house.

      He leaned against the door jamb and shut his eyes to block out the reproachful, saucer-eyed stares of the dolls. “I’m screwing up, Annie,” he said, and he felt Tripod turn his head to look up at him at the defeated tone of his voice.

      At ten-twenty that morning, Alec pulled into the parking lot of the Sea Tern and slipped into the space between Nola Dillard’s BMW and Brian Cass’s old station wagon. He was late again, but he was loaded with excuses this time. First the call from Lacey’s counselor, which admittedly had not taken that long but which had forced him to spend a good hour thinking about his life. Then there was the call from Randi, begging him to come back to work. She was handling just about everything since he’d left, and she’d been tolerant at first. Very understanding—a quality of Randi’s he had always criticized her for. She let people walk on her, and now he was doing the walking. Well, she was starting to fight back. This was the third phone call this week, but he wasn’t about to bend. He told her once again he wasn’t ready to return to work. He wasn’t sure he would ever be ready.

      “Here

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