Diane Chamberlain - Keeper of the Light

Later, he asked Annie why she had made him go, and she wept and apologized and told him she’d been confused, she didn’t know what she was saying.

How scared she must have been to have sent him away when she needed him most. How terrified that, somehow, with just one look at that newborn baby, he would know. Had she watched him carefully after that, studying his face every time he studied his daughter’s? Had she looked for his suspicions? Had she tried to tell him the truth once or twice or dozens of times? Or did she know that never, never would he have believed her capable of anything less than complete fidelity?

He stayed up until nearly midnight, tormenting himself with picture after picture, until he was so drained he could barely climb the stairs to his room. Still, he couldn’t sleep. Too many memories. Too many clues he’d missed. They’d argued about sterilization. She’d insisted she have her tubes tied rather than Alec have a vasectomy because, she said, she couldn’t bear to have him go through the pain and discomfort. Coming from Annie, that explanation had sounded perfectly rational. And what about all those times she’d tried to keep Tom Nestor sober and closedmouthed around him? And all the times he’d catch her crying for no apparent reason? Oh, Annie.

His mind was churning. There was a coiled tightness in his muscles he had not felt in months. He needed to do something. Go somewhere. He needed to see the ligthhouse.

He got up long before sunrise and left a note for Lacey on the kitchen table. Then he drove through the dense, early-morning fog to Kiss River.

He was nearly to the lighthouse when he spotted the horses at the side of the road, and he pulled over to watch them. They looked ethereal in the fog—clearly visible one minute, mere shadows the next. He could make out the colt who had been hit by the Mercedes. He was grazing close to the side of the road; apparently he had learned nothing from his experience. Alec could see the faint scar on the colt’s hindquarters where he had stitched the wound closed. With Paul’s help. The cloisonné horse. She’d treasured it. Had she?

Alec growled at himself. He wished he could turn his thinking off. Shut it down.

He drove on to the lighthouse. The white brick blended into the fog and he could barely see it from the parking lot. He let himself in and began climbing the steel steps of the eerie, echoey tower, and he didn’t stop until he reached the top. He stepped out onto the gallery. He was above the fog here, and the lantern must have shut off only minutes earlier in anticipation of daylight. The sun was rising over the sea, a breathtaking spectacle of pink and gold, lighting up the sky and spilling into the water.

Alec walked around to the other side of the gallery and looked toward the keeper’s house. Through the fog, he could just make out a second bulldozer and a backhoe tucked into the bushes near the side of the house.

He sat down on the cool iron floor of the gallery, facing the ocean and the sunrise. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the black gallery wall, waiting for the lighthouse to work its usual magic on his nerves.

Had she come up here with any of them? Did she ever make love with them up here? On the beach below?

Stop it!

He opened his eyes again, drumming his fingers next to him on the floor of the gallery. He sat forward and peered over the edge of the gallery. Below him, the ocean crept ever closer to the base of the lighthouse. Through the thinning fog, he could see the white-tipped waves nibbling at the few feet of sand remaining between the water and the brick. Damn, it was close.

…we should just let it go.

Alec sat back again, slowly, a small smile on his lips. For the first time, Annie’s words elicited no fear in him. None at all.

He left Kiss River and drove down the island. No one would ever guess it had been foggy an hour or so earlier. The sun was already blazing across the Banks, and as Alec drove over the bridge into Manteo, it lit up the boats on the sound.

He parked in front of the retirement home, but that was not his destination. Instead, he walked across the street to the quaint little gray and white antique store, frowning when he noticed the closed sign in the front window. It had not occurred to him that it was too early for the shop to be open.

There was a car in the driveway, though. He peered through the front door and could see light coming from a room at the back of the shop. He knocked, and in a moment a woman came to the door.

She opened it a few inches. “Can I help you?” she asked. She was sixty or so, Alec guessed. Gray-haired and grandmotherly.

“I know you’re not open yet, but this is important,” he said. “I’m looking for an antique doll for my daughter. I think my wife used to buy them here for her.”

“Annie O’Neill?”

“That’s right.”

She opened the door wide. “You must be Alec.” She smiled. “Come in, dear. I’m Helen.”

He shook the hand she offered.

“I’m so pleased to meet you,” she said. “Annie bought the dolls for her daughter’s birthday, right?”

“That’s right. I’m a little late with it this year.”

“Better late than never.” Helen leaned against a glass counter filled with old jewelry. “Annie was such a good customer. Such a lovely person. She gave me that.” She pointed to a stained glass panel hanging in the front window. The little gray antique shop stood against a background of grass and trees. Yet another creation of Annie’s he had never seen.

“It’s nice,” he said.

“I was so sorry to hear about…everything,” Helen said, as she led him into a small back room, where dolls sat here and there on pieces of antique furniture. One of them—an imp with red hair—caught his eye immediately.

“Oh, that one.” He pointed toward the doll. “Without a doubt.”

“I had a feeling you’d pick her. It’s the first one with red hair I’ve seen, and when I got it in a month or so ago, I thought to myself, wouldn’t Saint Anne have loved this one? Her face is a very high-quality pearly bisque, and she has her original human hair. That all makes her quite expensive, though.” A small white tag was attached to the doll’s arm, and Helen turned it over so Alec could see the price written on it.

“Wow.” He smiled. “Doesn’t matter.”

Helen picked up the doll and carried it to the front of the store. She stuffed some tissue paper into the bottom of a large box and placed the doll inside. “Annie used to like to wrap them up herself,” she said. “I think she made the paper. But I suppose…would you like me to wrap it for you?”

“Please.”

She cut a length of blue and white striped wrapping paper from a roll and began taping it around the box. “Annie came in here all the time,” she said, cutting off a piece of tape. “She just lit up the store. We still talk about her.” She attached a premade bow to the top of the box and slid it to him across the counter. “Everyone misses her so much.”

“She’d like that,” Alec said, handing her a check. “I think being forgotten was one of her biggest fears.”

He could hear Lacey’s music blasting from upstairs when he got home, but he stopped in the den first to call Nola.

“I have some news,” he said, “and you’re not going to like it. Brace yourself, okay?”

“What’s that, hon?”

“I’m resigning from the lighthouse committee.”

There were two beats of silence before Nola spoke again. “You’re joking,” she said.

“No.”

“Alec, why in God’s name would you…?”

“I couldn’t begin to explain it to you, Nola. I nominate you as the new chair, and I wish all of you great luck with your endeavors.”