Olivia looked at the sheet, then at Lacey. “Let me help you with it.”
The girl colored. “You don’t have to.”
“I’d like to.” She kicked off her shoes and sat down on Lacey’s unmade bed. “Come on,” she said, patting the space next to her.
Lacey joined her on the bed, and Olivia talked about Punnett squares and dominant and recessive genes until Lacey had a grasp of the concepts herself. They were comparing earlobes and trying to roll their tongues—which she could do, but Lacey could not—when they heard Tripod barking downstairs.
“Anybody home?” A female voice called out from the kitchen.
“It’s Nola,” Lacey said. She raised her voice. “We’re up here, Nola.”
They heard footsteps on the stairs and then an attractive blond woman dressed in a dark blue suit appeared at Lacey’s door, holding a pie in her hands. This was the woman who had “designs” on Alec, Olivia remembered.
“Oh, excuse me, Lacey,” Nola said. “I didn’t know you had company.”
Olivia leaned forward on the bed and lifted her hand to shake Nola’s. “I’m Olivia Simon,” she said.
“She’s a friend of Dad’s,” said Lacey.
“I’m just helping Lacey with her biology.” Olivia felt as though she owed Nola some sort of explanation. “Alec had an emergency at the animal hospital.”
“Oh.” Nola looked a little lost. She patted a strand of her pale hair back into place above her ear. “Well, I brought this pie over for him. You’ll let him know, Lacey?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll leave it on the kitchen counter. It’s his favorite, strawberry rhubarb.”
Nola left the room, and neither of them spoke again until they heard the back door open and close downstairs. “She’s my best friend’s mother,” Lacey said. “I think she wants to be my mother, too.”
“You mean…marry your father?”
“Exactly.”
“Would you like that?”
“Yeah, about as much as I’d like to die in a stampede of elephants.”
Olivia laughed.
Lacey drew little circles in one corner of her homework paper. “I don’t think my father will ever get married again.”
“No?”
Lacey shook her head. “He loved my mom too much.”
Olivia looked up at the row of dolls. They were a little spooky-looking, with their huge, watchful eyes. “It’s nice you have all these dolls to help you remember her,” she said. “Do you have a favorite?”
Lacey stood up and walked over to the other side of the room to take one of the dolls—a beautiful black-haired toddler—down from the shelf. She plopped back on the bed and set the doll in Olivia’s lap just as they heard a car pull into the driveway.
“Dad’s home,” Lacey said, but she didn’t move from Olivia’s side.
“Olivia?” Alec called from the den.
“We’re up here,” she and Lacey chorused, and Lacey giggled.
They heard him climb the stairs and then he appeared in the doorway, unable to mask his surprise at finding the two of them looking like lifelong buddies, Lacey clutching her biology book, Olivia with the raven-haired doll in her lap.
“Well… Hello.” He smiled.
“How’s the dog?” Olivia stood up. “She’ll survive.”
“Olivia helped me with my homework.”
“And Nola stopped by with a pie for you,” Olivia said. She had a pleasant sense of belonging in this house, standing there in bare feet, a welcome guest in the bedroom of Alec’s daughter. “It’s your favorite,” she said. “Strawberry rhubarb.”
“She worked her fingers down to bloody stumps hulling those strawberries just for you, Dad.”
“Don’t be catty, Lacey,” Alec said, but there was laughter behind his smile. He looked at Olivia. “Want some pie?”
“Yes.” Lacey jumped up from her bed. “I’ll go cut it.”
Alec looked after Lacey as she raced out of the room and down the stairs. He turned to Olivia. “She’s acting like a human being,” he said. He ran his fingers down her arm and squeezed her hand before letting go. “What did you do?”
Olivia’s mood was light on the way home. She was humming when she pulled into her driveway, smiling as she walked up the front steps. But she nearly stumbled over an enormous floral arrangement sitting on the deck. The fragrance of the flowers filled her head as she knelt down to read the card propped up against the vase.
Wish you were here so I could give these to you in person. I love you, Liv,
Paul
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The committee meeting was again at Alec’s. Paul would have preferred to meet almost anywhere else, but he supposed this was some sort of test to see if he could be in Annie’s home without succumbing to his memories again. He had given away two more of the panels that morning, leaving him with just the large one in his bedroom and a few smaller panels scattered throughout his house. This was probably the most difficult thing he would ever have to do in his life, but it was absolutely necessary. He couldn’t go on the way he’d been.
He’d watched Olivia on the news the night before. A reporter was interviewing her in front of the emergency room, discussing the shift in public opinion since Jonathan Cramer’s resignation and the publication of Alec’s letter in the Gazette.
“What we should learn from Ms. O’Neill’s case is how critical the need is for better emergency services in the Outer Banks,” Olivia said. “Whoever becomes director of the Kill Devil Hills Emergency Room should work toward that end.”
She looked very pretty, very sexy in her scrubs, and she sounded bright and in perfect command of the interview. Seeing her in that forum inspired him to write a poem about her—how long since he’d done that?—which he left in an envelope in her mailbox on his way to the meeting.
Now in Alec’s kitchen, he had a sense of déjà vu. Alec was filling baskets with pretzels and popcorn, while Paul poured wine into glasses on a tray. Only this time, he intentionally avoided looking at the blue cloisonné horse on the shelf in front of him.
He glanced over at Alec. “Olivia mentioned that you and she had speaking engagements in Norfolk a few weeks ago.”
“Yes,” Alec said. He was taking napkins out of the cupboard above the sink. “She did a great job.”
“Thanks for writing that letter to the Gazette,” Paul said. “It’s really made a difference for her.”
“It was the least I could do.”
Paul tipped the bottle over another glass. “I know these last few months have been hell for Olivia,” he said. “I haven’t been much help to her. I have a lot of making up to do.”
Alec had started toward the living room with the baskets and napkins, but now he stopped and looked at Paul, a smile coming slowly to his lips. “Take good care of her, okay?” Then he looked past Paul’s head, and Paul turned to see a girl in the doorway between the kitchen and den. “This is my daughter, Lacey,” Alec said. “Lacey, this is Paul Macelli. Dr. Simon’s husband.”
Alec left the kitchen then, and Paul smiled at the girl. She was tall and fair-skinned, with Annie’s blue eyes, but her hair was half black and half red. She eyed him as she took a handful of pretzels from the bag on the counter.
“You’re the one who got my age wrong.” She leaned back against the cabinets.
“What do you mean?” he asked, setting the bottle down. Her hair was absolutely ridiculous.
“In that article about my mother in Seascape. You said I was twelve, but I was actually thirteen. I’m fourteen now.”
Paul frowned. “I could swear your mother said you were twelve.”
She popped a few pretzel sticks in her mouth. “Everybody got on my case about it,” she said, chewing. “I mean, twelve, God.” She gave him a narrow-eyed look of disapproval as she swept past him. “I’m going out, Dad,” she called into the living room, and then she disappeared through the back door.
Paul stared after her. He
would swear on a stack of Annie’s stained glass panels that she’d said her daughter was twelve.
He was anxious during the meeting. Alec talked about the progress being made on moving the lighthouse. The track was already under construction, he said, and the site was swarming with engineers and surveyors.
Paul barely listened. Mothers didn’t get confused about the ages of their children. His mother could rattle off all six of their ages at any point in time. There was only one reason he could think of for Annie to have lied about Lacey’s age.
The moment the meeting was adjourned, he thanked Alec and nearly ran out to his car. He drove home in a trance, and once inside his little cottage, began digging through the box of tapes he kept in the spare room. He found the three tapes he’d made of his interviews with Annie and carried them, along with his tape recorder, into his bedroom. He sat down on the bed and skimmed through the tapes with the fast forward button until he found the one he was after. Drawing in a long breath, he leaned back against the wall and pushed the play button.
He could hear the clinking of silverware from another table in the Sea Tern. Then his question. “Tell me about your kids.”
“Well…” Annie’s voice cut through him. It had been so long since he’d heard it. A little husky, and here, a little halting. He thought now that he understood the reason for the slow, careful manner of her speech. “What would you like to know about them?”
“Everything,” he said. “I assumed you didn’t name them Rosa and Guido.”
Paul winced now as he heard himself ask that question, as he remembered the angry look she’d shot him.
“You promised not to…” Annie said, and he interrupted her quickly.
“I’m sorry. Okay. Clay and…?”
“Lacey.”
“Lacey. How old are they?”
“Clay is seventeen, and Lacey is twelve going on twenty.”
Paul pressed the rewind button. “…twelve going on twenty,” Annie repeated.
Paul turned the machine off and closed his eyes. There was only one reason she’d lie. He thought of the girl in Alec’s kitchen, the girl with Annie’s eyes, Annie’s red hair pushing out the black, and once he started thinking, he couldn’t stop.
He’d received his master’s degree in communications when he was twenty-four years old. He suddenly saw his future mapped out in front of him, and there was a gap in it only one person could fill. He hadn’t seen Annie in over four years, not since she’d left him at Boston College to set out on her own. He could not look for a job, he couldn’t commit himself to his own future until he’d made one last attempt to include her in it.
He moved to Nag’s Head in late spring, renting an efficiency apartment two blocks from the water. He auditioned for a role in The Lost Colony, a play on the history of the Outer Banks that ran each summer in Manteo, and easily won a part. He found Annie and Alec’s number in the phone book, but didn’t call. Instead, he drove to the address listed in the directory—a little soundside cottage in Kitty Hawk. He arrived very early in the morning and parked a block away, sipping coffee, his eyes on the house. Around seven, he saw a tall dark-haired man leave the cottage and get into a beat-up truck standing in the driveway. That had to be Alec. Paul felt a mixture of hatred and envy as he watched him drive away. He waited another fifteen minutes to be sure that Alec hadn’t forgotten anything he would need to return for. Then he started his car and drove the block to the cottage, studying himself in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t changed much in the past four years. He still wore the same wire-rimmed glasses. His hair was a little shorter, but that was about it.
He got out of the car and walked quickly to the front door, knocking before he had a chance to change his mind.
Annie opened the door. For a moment, she didn’t seem to recognize him. Then she let out a squeal of delight. “Paul!” She threw her arms around him and he hugged her, laughing with relief. Behind her, a toddler sat quietly watching them from a playpen. Even from this distance, Paul could see the pale blue eyes that he imagined belonged to his father.
He hugged her a fraction of a second too long, and she pried herself free, her face flushed. “Oh, Paul,” she said, holding one of his hands in both of hers. “I’m so sorry for the way I handled things when we split up. Really, it’s haunted me. I’m so glad I’ve got this chance to tell you.” She pulled him into the room. “Come in, come in.” She stood away from him, her hands on her hips, her eyes appraising. “You look good, Paul,” she said.
“So do you.” She looked incredible.
“This is Clay.” She reached into the playpen and pulled the little boy up into her arms.
Paul touched the boy’s hand. “Guido,” he said softly. Annie looked confused, and then she laughed.
“I’d forgotten about that. And Rosa, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, feeling terribly sad. “Rozer.”
Annie looked at her son. “Can’t you say hi, precious?”
The little boy buried his head in the tempting hollow of her throat.
“He’s sleepy,” she said to Paul. She laid Clay back in the playpen and covered him with a light blanket.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Are you on vacation? Who are you with?” She didn’t wait for any of his answers. “I’d like you to meet Alec—unless that would be difficult for you.” She plunked down on the sofa. “Oh Paul, how did you ever forgive me? It was terrible, the way I did it, but I was so mixed up with my father being sick and all.”
“I know.” He sat down next to her on the sofa and took her hand. “I’m here at least for the summer,” he said, and there was a discernible crack in her smile that he tried to ignore.
“The whole summer?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ve got a role in the Lost Colony play.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said, but her voice was uncertain.
“And I’m staying in a little apartment in Nag’s Head.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
And then she seemed to catch on. “Why here? Why the Outer Banks?”
“Why do you think?”
She shook her head and pulled her hand away. “I’m married, Paul.”
“Happily?”
“Very. I’ve changed a lot. I’m not so…wild anymore. I’m a wife and a mother. I have responsibilities.”
“Well, could I see you sometime? Just two old friends meeting for lunch?”
“Not if you want something more from me.” She had folded her arms across her chest and shifted away from him on the sofa.
“I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me, Annie. If that means one lunch during the entire summer, then that’s what I’ll settle for.”
He wrote his number on a notepad on the coffee table, hugged her once more and left, determined to wait at least a week before he tried to see her again.
The play was his salvation. His role was demanding, and the camaraderie of the cast absorbed his time during the day when they were rehearsing. At night, though, he couldn’t stop himself from imagining Annie in her little cottage, contentedly bedding down with her tall, pale-eyed husband.
The Lost Colony opened on a steamy night that made the heavy costumes intolerable, but the crowd of tourists was enthusiastic. Paul felt good when he stepped backstage for intermission. He had just taken a bottle of Coke from one of the backstage hands when he spotted Annie by the dressing rooms, her eyes fixed on him. One of the male cast walked past her, reaching out to touch her hair. She smiled at the stranger, absolving him, as though she understood he had been powerless to keep his hands to himself.
Paul walked over to her. “I’m glad to see you,” he said.
“You were spectacular, Paul,” she said. “These tights really do something for you.” She touched his hip, and a jolt of electricity shot through him. He looked into her eyes and saw that she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Annie…”
“Shhh.” She touched her fi
ngertips to his lips. “After the show,” she said, smiling. “There’s a place we can go. A friend of mine’s. You can follow me. I have a red VW convertible. You’ll see me.”
He did see her, sitting cross-legged on the hood of the VW under a light in the parking lot. He declined the invitation to go out with the rest of the cast to celebrate. Instead, he followed Annie closely in his own car, hypnotized by the way the air lifted her red hair in the darkness. They drove over the bridge into south Nag’s Head and turned onto Croatan Highway, and he hugged the rear of her car for the next fifteen miles. Where the hell was she taking him? She finally pulled into a sidestreet, where she stopped her car and turned around to call to him.
“Park here and get in my bug,” she said.
He obeyed her and had barely shut the VW’s door before she made a U-turn and was out on the road again.
“Where does your friend live?” he asked as they passed through Southern Shores.
“You’ll see.”
They drove another few miles between dark, shadowy dunes. Paul hunted for a light on the horizon, but aside from the swath of light cut by Annie’s headlights, they were in total darkness.
“Where’s Alec tonight?” he shouted against the wind.
“Working on the mainland. He does a lot of work with farm animals these days.”
“Where’s your little boy?”
“Neighbor.” The car bounced in a rut and he held on to the armrest.
“Where the hell are we going, Annie?”
She pointed into the darkness ahead of them and in a moment he saw a flash of light.
“A lighthouse?”
“The Kiss River Light. We’re going to visit the keeper.”
He fell silent, surrendering. He would let her be his guide.
She turned onto a dirt road and they bounced through the darkness for a few minutes before coming to a clearing. Annie pulled into a small area of packed sand close to the light and closer still to a large white house. Paul got out of the car and looked up at the dizzying tower above them just as the beam of light brushed over his eyes.