“Did you mean it when you said I could talk to you about Annie?”
She didn’t let the disappointment show in her face. “Yes.”
“I need to. You were right when you said there was no one else I could talk to. No one who cares about me as much as you do.” He tapped his fingers nervously on the table. “This isn’t easy, but ever since you stopped over and you were so…kind, I just thought maybe I should try telling you the truth.”
Olivia locked her hands together in her lap. “I thought I knew the truth.”
He shook his head. “You know most of it. You know I fell in love with someone I couldn’t have, and that I sort of got crazed in that process. But what you don’t know is…” He looked up at the wooden ceiling and took in a deep breath. “Oh, Liv.” He shook his head at her. “I’m so sorry. When we got married I couldn’t imagine doing anything like this. Anything that would hurt you.”
“You slept with her.”
Paul licked his lips. “It was just one time,” he said. “Right before Christmas. I felt as though I had to, as though…”
“More than you had to honor your vows to me?” She thought the pain in her chest might kill her. He’d made love to both of them. He’d compared them, and Annie had emerged victorious.
“I should have left you earlier,” he said. “I didn’t feel good about it, but I convinced myself that you were somehow to blame, with your late hours and…” He stopped talking and looked out into the darkness again.
“And what?”
“Just the kind of person you are. A little rigid, while Annie was so free-spirited and full of life and…”
“Stop it!” Olivia stood up. “You must think I have no feelings at all.”
He looked up at her and continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I just got swept up into it. She was such a good person.”
“Oh yes, she sounds wonderful. She was cheating on her husband, Paul. How good is that?”
“It was my idea, not hers. I pushed her. I mean, I didn’t rape her, she wanted to do it, but…”
“Paul, I said I’d listen, but I can’t. It just hurts too much.”
He stood up and, to her surprise, took her in his arms. She didn’t fight him. She couldn’t. It had been too long.
“I still care about you, Liv,” he said. “But she destroyed me. I wish to hell that we never moved here. I wish I’d never met her.”
He smelled warm and familiar, yet all she could see when she closed her eyes was the image of him in bed with Annie. She pulled away from him with a whimper. “Go home, Paul,” she said. “Go back to your little shrine.”
He hesitated for a moment before turning to leave. Olivia waited until she heard his car pull out of the driveway. Then she walked into the kitchen and removed the peacock feather from the window. She took it outside to the end of the pier, lifted it over her head in the darkness, and brought it down hard on the piling, listening with enormous satisfaction to the breaking of the glass.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Paul ran into Alec in the supermarket—literally—their carts colliding as he turned the corner by the dairy case. Alec broke into a smile when he saw him, and Paul nearly groaned with dismay. He was trapped.
“Paul!” Alec gave him a hearty handshake. “You’ve been on my mind a lot lately.”
“I have?”
Alec leaned on his cart as though he was settling in for a long discussion. “The lighthouse material you sent me is terrific. I talked to Nola about it, and with a little more information we can put together a booklet rather than a brochure. The printer’s agreed, and we’ve figured out a way to distribute it nationally.”
“Fantastic,” Paul said. He rearranged the packages in his cart to avoid looking at Alec.
“I have an idea for your next interview with Mary Poor,” Alec said. “Get her to talk about herself. People used to call her the ‘Angel of the Light.’ I have a few old articles about her I can send you so you’ll know what to ask her, in case she turns out to be the modest type. Then maybe later in the summer we can get her to give a few of us a tour of the keeper’s house. Does she seem up to it?”
“A tour of the house?” Paul moved his carton of vanilla ice cream from one side of his cart to the other. “I’m not sure,” he said. “She was sitting in a rocking chair when I spoke with her, so I don’t know how well she gets around.” He was not at all certain he could handle another interview with the old woman, much less a tour of the house. How much could his nerves take? He had gotten sick after the first interview, had to pull off on a side street in Manteo to throw up in the gutter.
“Well, we’ll see,” Alec said. “By the way, why didn’t you tell me you did that article in Seascape on my wife?”
Paul tried to read his tone. Alec was smiling; there was nothing accusatory in his face. It was more that he thought Paul was being modest. “Oh, well. I didn’t know what kind of memory that would be for you.”
“It was a very nice tribute to her. She loved it.”
Paul smiled himself. He’d never known that. She had never said that to him. “Thanks,” he said. “That means a lot. How did you figure it out?”
“Your wife was the doctor on duty the night Annie died. I guess you knew that, huh?”
Paul froze. “Yes.”
“So, I’ve spoken with her—with Olivia—a few times to understand exactly what happened that night. You know, I just needed to sort it out in my head.”
“Right.” How much had Olivia told him? Paul’s palms began to sweat on the bar of the shopping cart.
“Olivia’s been very helpful to me,” Alec said. “It helps knowing she was the one treating Annie.”
“Yes, I…it must.”
“Did you know that you and Annie were in the same class at Boston College?”
How the hell did Alec know that? “Uh, yes. It came out during the interviews.”
“You didn’t remember her from back then?”
“There were a lot of students in that class.”
Alec looked down at his grocery cart and Paul followed his eyes to the frozen foods, cans of vegetables. “Annie would have a fit if she could see this,” Alec said, nodding toward the cart.
“Well, I’ve gotten into the frozen stuff myself, lately,” Paul said. “Speaking of which, we’d better get going before everything thaws.” He started to push his cart past Alec.
“Right,” Alec agreed. “Oh, by the way, I’m reading The Wreck of the Eastern Spirit.”
Paul turned back to look at him. “How…?”
“I’d mentioned something about how well you wrote to Olivia, and she thought I might like to take a look at it. That’s when you two met, huh? It must have been something, watching her in action.”
“Olivia?” he asked, stupidly, the memory jarring him. She had been young and pretty, caring and efficient, and he had been genuinely smitten. He had seen something in her that made him think, yes, she could be the one to help him forget, and for the longest time she had unwittingly done exactly that.
Alec rested his elbows on the bar of the shopping cart again. “As I’m reading about the train wreck, though, it makes me realize how poorly equipped our little emergency room is to handle a major trauma,” he said. “Like a gunshot to the heart.”
Paul was disturbed by Alec’s candor. Did he think they were friends? “I guess that’s true.” He glanced toward the inviting open aisle behind Alec’s head, then looked at his watch. “Well, I’ve got to get this stuff home,” he said. “I’ll see you at the next lighthouse meeting.” He pushed his cart away, cringing, knowing that his exit had been totally graceless.
Something seized him as he pushed the cart past the meat aisle. A sort of panic. He could not focus his eyes on the list he’d written an hour earlier. He stared down at the steaks and chops and bloody roasts. He abruptly took his hands from the cart, did an about-face, and walked out of the store, picturing his ice cream melting through the seams of the carton, dripping into a pool
on the floor.
He got in his car and drove the two blocks to the beach at Nags Head. It was still early, just seven-thirty in the evening, and the beach was nearly empty. A few fishermen stood close to the water and occasionally a couple walked past him, hand in hand. He sat down in the sand and waited for the tension to leave his body.
Alec had spoken to Olivia. At length. Obviously, though, she had not told him anything earth-shattering or he never would have treated Paul with such goodwill, such respect. God. He had spent so much of his time and energy hating that man. Half his life.
A young couple and their dog ran along the water’s edge, laughing. The woman’s long hair was a true brown, and yet in the fading sunlight Paul could almost kid himself into thinking it was red.
Boston College. There were a lot of students in that class. Alec had bought it. Paul shook his head. How could Alec believe that anyone could have been on the same campus with Annie Chase and not have known her?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Paul had been cast as the lead in Boston College’s freshman production of Angel Street. He had been an average student in high school, disdaining math and science in favor of literature and poetry and the endless melodrama of his own imagination. He’d also been president of the drama club, and he had a natural talent for which he was awarded a scholarship to B.C. His family would not have been able to afford to send him to a good school any other way, although his father’s Philadelphia fireworks business had done well during Paul’s high school years, and his mother had tucked away nearly every cent she’d earned as a maid. Still, there were six Macelli children—Paul and his five sisters—and they were all bright, all ambitious. They would all want to go to school.
His was the first role to be cast in Angel Street. He could tell, as Harry Saunders watched him read for the part of Jack Manningham, that no one else would have to bother reading. So he sat, relaxed and relieved, next to Harry in the front row of the auditorium, while other anxious freshmen read for their parts.
Annie Chase auditioned for the part of the flirtatious maid on a whim. She’d come with a girlfriend and had agreed to try out in order to give her friend courage. She skittered up the stairs when it was her turn, and her hair seemed to fill the stage. Harry, who’d been slouching in his seat, leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees.
“Go ahead, please,” he said, and she read a line or two in a throaty voice before she began to laugh. It was a giggle, really, a sound only Annie Chase could make, and its rippling, ringing tone was a surprise given the huskiness of her voice. Everyone in the theater turned to look at her, their own faces slowly breaking into grins. Paul smiled himself. He glanced at Harry, who was nearly laughing.
“Do you want to try that again, Miss Chase?”
“Sure.” She read again, this time making it nearly to the end of her soliloquy before the giggles got her, and although she seemed like a young girl clearly out of control, and although the reading itself had not been anything outstanding, Paul was not surprised when Harry cast her in the role. Neither was he displeased.
“She’ll grab the audience,” Harry said, speaking to Paul as though he were a colleague. “She’ll grab them and she won’t let go. We just have to get her—and that hair—under a little bit of control without taking the life out of her.”
Harry needn’t have worried about that. It was impossible to sap the life out of Annie Chase. She sparkled, she bubbled, she drew people to her like a minstrel on a busy street.
He fell in love on that stage at Boston College. Annie came late to rehearsals and no one seemed to mind. It was as if they were all waiting, holding their breath for her arrival, letting the smiles spread across their faces when she finally bounded onto the stage.
He had to kiss her. It was in the script, and for several nights before the first time, he lay awake imagining that kiss. He wished he didn’t have to do it in front of Harry Saunders and the rest of the cast. He wanted to kiss her in private.
When the afternoon of the kiss finally arrived, he made it quick and light.
“Again,” Harry said from the front row. “Longer this time, Macelli.”
He kissed her longer, trying to keep his wits about him, and when he pulled away from her she was grinning.
“You’re not supposed to smile, Annie,” Harry said. “You’re supposed to look seductive.”
She giggled. “Sorry.”
“You two better practice on your own till you get it right.” Harry gave Paul a knowing nod.
So they practiced. They met in his dorm room or hers, reading their lines, working up to the kiss and away from it, the rest of their lines anticlimactic. When they had finished rehearsing for the day, he would read her his poetry if they were in his room, or look at the jewelry she was making if they were in hers. She’d form gold and silver into intricate shapes for earrings and pendants and bracelets. He loved watching her work. She’d tie her hair back in a leather strap which was rarely up to the task, and her long red tresses would spill out bit by bit as she worked with the glittering metal.
Paul felt the addiction taking hold of him. He’d known her for just a few weeks, but she was constantly on his mind. He’d call her, ostensibly to read through their lines, but they wound up talking about other things, and he treasured every word he got from her, playing their conversations over and over again in his mind as he lay in bed.
Then the gifts began. On opening night, she surprised him with a gold bracelet she’d made for him. The following day, he found a basket of pine cones outside his door, and the day after that, she arrived in his room carrying a macramé belt.
“I stayed up all night making this for you,” she said.
She pulled the belt he was wearing out of the loops of his jeans and began fitting the new belt through. It was slightly too wide, and the pressure of her fingers as she worked with the belt made him hard in an instant. He turned away from her, embarrassed.
She looked up at him from her seat on his bed.
“Paul,” she said, her dark blue eyes big and sad. “I don’t get it. Don’t you want me?”
He looked down at her, startled. “I…yes. But I didn’t think you…”
She groaned, curling her fingers into the pockets of his jeans. “God, Paul, I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out how to make you fall in love with me.”
“I’ve been in love with you for weeks,” he said. “Here. I can prove it.” He pulled out the top drawer of his desk and handed her a poem, one of many he’d written about her in the past few weeks. It made her cry.
She stood up to kiss him, a far longer, far steamier kiss than the one they’d shared on stage. Then she walked over to his door and turned the lock. He felt his knees start to buckle and wondered how he would get through this. “I’ve never made love before,” he admitted, leaning awkwardly against his desk. He’d had a number of girlfriends in high school, two in particular, who were drawn to his sensitivity and his poems, but he was still very much a virgin.
Annie, however, was not.
She smiled. “So that’s it,” she said, as though that explained everything. “Well, I’ve been doing it since I was fifteen, so you don’t have a thing to worry about.”
Her words shocked him at first. Disappointed him. But then he felt relieved, because as she began kissing him, touching him, it was quickly obvious that she did indeed know what she was doing.
“You are to do absolutely nothing,” she said. She undressed him to his boxer shorts and rolled him onto his stomach. Then she straddled him and began a long, deep massage, her hands soft and cool at first, heating up as she worked them over his skin. She rolled him onto his back and took off her T-shirt and bra. Paul reached up to touch the creamy white skin of her breasts, but she caught his hand and set it back down at his side.
“You may look but you may not touch,” she said. “I told you, you have to just lie here. Tonight is entirely for you.”
She made love to him the way she did everythi
ng in her life—generously, putting his pleasure ahead of her own.
In the weeks that followed, he realized that she could give endlessly, but she could not take. When he’d try to touch her during their lovemaking, she’d brush his hand away. “You don’t need to do that,” she’d say, and he soon realized that she meant it, that she’d be overcome with discomfort, thrown completely out of equilibrium, when he tried to turn the tables and give to her, in bed or out.
He bought her flowers once, for no particular reason, and her smile faded when he gave them to her. “These are way too pretty for me,” she said, her cheeks crimson. Later that day, she gave the roses to another girl in the dorm who had admired them.
He bought her a scarf for her birthday, and the next day she took it back, slipping the twelve dollar refund into the pocket of his jeans. “Don’t spend your money on me,” she said, and she would not listen to his protests. Yet her gifts to him kept coming, and he grew increasingly uncomfortable accepting them.
One day he and Annie were eating lunch in the cafeteria when they were joined by a pretty brunette Annie had known in elementary school. “You were the nicest girl at Egan Day School,” she said to Annie. Then she turned to Paul. “She was by far the most popular kid in the entire school. She was one of those girls you wanted to hate because she was so popular that she left no room at all for the competition, but she was so nice you just couldn’t help but like her.”
That night Annie lay next to him in his bed and told him how she had earned her popularity. “I have an enormous allowance,” she said, her voice oddly subdued, almost flat. “I bought the other kids candy and toys. It worked.”
He pulled her closer. “Didn’t you think you were likable just as you were?”
“No. I thought I was an ugly little girl with terrible red hair. My mother fussed with my hair every morning, and she’d say how horrible it was, how bad I looked. I’d end up crying practically every day on my way to school.”
“You’re so beautiful. How could she do that to you?”