Keeper of the Light (34 page)

He stood up after a while, testing his legs, testing his equilibrium. He was okay. He brushed his teeth, then found his T-shirt. The clock on the night table read 3:15.
3:15?
He must have passed out. He opened his bedroom door, but the hallway was dark. One of the cats whisked by his legs, startling him, as he made his way down the hall to Lacey’s room. He knocked on her door, opening it when there was no answer. Her overhead light was on, but she lay fully dressed and asleep on top of her bedspread, one of her china-faced dolls clutched tightly in her arms. The smell of beer emanated from her, as if she’d bathed in it.

Alec got a blanket from her closet and laid it over her, tucking it around her shoulders. Then he sat on the edge of her bed and gently shook her arm.

“Lacey?”

Her eyes remained shut, her breathing deep and regular. He’d really blown it. She’d wanted to talk to him tonight. She’d
needed
to, isn’t that what she said? She’d even called him Daddy, but he had not been there for her.

She’d been drinking. It was undeniable now. He would have to talk to her, somehow preventing the discussion from turning into one more fight. It was good she was asleep. It would give him time to think through how to handle this. He wouldn’t come down hard on her tomorrow. He wouldn’t come from a place of anger. He would try to handle it the way Annie would have, and he’d tell her he loved her before he said anything else.

He leaned forward to brush the dark hair off Lacey’s forehead and saw the clean, straight line of red roots at her scalp. He stood up with a sigh and turned out the light, leaving his daughter alone, with her chin pressed against the cold china cheek of her doll.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
O
NE

The call from Nola woke him the next morning. “Did you get a chance to see yesterday’s
Gazette,
hon?” she asked.

Alec rolled over to look at the clock, wincing as the bottle of tequila connected with his ribcage. It was nine-thirty, and there was a jackhammer in his head.

“Yeah, I did,” he said.

“I got so furious when I read it. I can just imagine how terrible you must feel, Alec. Do you think you should sue?”

He looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve spoken to Olivia Simon,” he said. “It was a judgment call, and she did what she thought was best. I’m convinced she was right. By the way, do you know who she is?”

“Olivia Simon?”

“Yes. She’s Paul Macelli’s wife.”

“You’re kidding. I didn’t know he was married.”

He thought he detected some disappointment in Nola’s voice. Perhaps she’d been interested in Paul herself. “They’re separated, but I think it’s temporary.” He drew in a breath, bracing himself for her reaction to what he was about to say. “She went up to Norfolk with me yesterday.”

Nola was quiet for so long that he wondered if she was still on the line. “She did?” she asked finally.

“Mmm. She’s had public speaking experience, so I had her take the radio interview.”

Nola hesitated again. “I could have done that, Alec.”

He had not even considered asking Nola. He could not imagine spending that much time alone with her. “Well, Saturday’s your big day at work.”

“True, but what does Olivia Simon know or care about the lighthouse? And with this brouhaha about her mishandling of Annie’s treatment—it’s a little like sleeping with the enemy, don’t you think?”

He laughed. “No, Nola, your metaphor’s a bit off base.”

“Well, hon, I think there are going to be some repercussions from this. I got a lot of phone calls yesterday from people who are upset over it and want to do something about it.”

Alec sighed. “Try to diffuse it, okay, Nola? Annie’s gone. Nothing’s going to bring her back.”

Clay was alone at the kitchen table when Alec came downstairs. He was eating half a cantaloupe filled with cottage cheese, and Alec’s stomach turned at the sight. He put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster and poured himself a cup of black coffee before taking a seat across from his son.

“Is Lacey up yet?”

“Uh-uh.” Clay looked up at him. “You look like you crawled out of a toxic waste dump.”

“Thanks.” Alec rubbed a hand over his chin. He hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. Hadn’t even showered yet. He didn’t want to miss seeing Lacey.

Clay stuck his spoon upright in the cantaloupe. “I’ve made a decision, Dad,” he said. “I’m not going to college this year.”

“What?”
The toast popped up in the toaster, but Alec didn’t bother to take it out.

“I’m going to stay home a year. Lots of kids do that.”

“You have a straight-A grade point average and a scholarship to Duke and you’re going to stay home and sell surfboards?”

Clay looked down at his cantaloupe. “I think you need me here,” he said. “I think Lacey needs me.”

Alec laughed. “You and Lacey get along like oil and water.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens to her. I’m afraid if I go away I’ll come back and she’ll be pregnant and using coke or something.”

Alec reached across the table to lay his hand lightly on his son’s arm. “Clay, what is it? Are you afraid to leave home?”

Clay drew his arm away. “Yeah, I’m afraid, but not for myself.”

“You’re going to college. I can certainly take care of a fourteen-year-old girl.”

Clay looked up at him, and Alec was surprised at the tears in his eyes. He had seen Clay cry only once since he was small, and that was the night Annie died. “You used to be the greatest father in the world,” he said, “but now I’m not so sure you
can
take care of a fourteen-year-old girl. I’m not so sure you can even take care of
yourself.
” He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Dad, listen to me, all right?” he said. “I was at a party last night and some guys I know came in and told me they’d just come from a party where they saw Lacey. She was ripped, Dad. Wasted. They said she went into one of the bedrooms with some guy and then later with another. And that’s just while they were there.”

The coffee started to burn a hole in Alec’s stomach. He stared wordlessly at his son.

“They didn’t know who the guys were or I would have found them and beat the shit out of them.”

“Okay,” Alec said. “Thank you for telling me. Let this be my problem, though, all right? I’ll handle it. I’m her father, not you.” He reached for the toast, thinking of Annie. She would never have forced Clay to go to school if he didn’t want to. “The choice is yours about college, Clay, but don’t stay here because of Lacey.”

He turned on his answering machine to take the calls from friends and acquaintances incensed over the way Olivia had managed Annie’s case in the ER, angered by something they knew nothing about. Then he showered and shaved in an at tempt to pull himself together, struggling unsuccessfully to keep his mind off the image of Lacey in a strange bedroom, being pawed at. Used.

He woke her at noon. Her face was puffy and pale, and she groaned when she opened her eyes. He’d left the overhead light off and the shades pulled, but still the faint light made her wince. She sat up slowly, leaning against the headboard, the china doll lying face down at her side.

“You wanted to talk to me last night,” he said. He would be careful not to call her Annie.

“I don’t remember,” she said in the sullen voice he had come to equate with her lately. There was a string of hickeys, red and round, on her neck, disappearing under the neckline of her T-shirt.

“I think we do need to talk.”

“Not now. I don’t feel well.”

“You’re hungover, and that’s one of the things we need to talk about. You’re way too young to be drinking.” He cursed himself as she frowned. Wasn’t he going to start this conversation by telling her he loved her?

“I only had one beer,” she said, and tempted though he was to accuse her of lying, he bit his tongue.

He picked up the doll and rested it on his lap. Its brown eyes were painted on; they stared blankly at the ceiling. Alec looked back at his daughter. “I was thinking last night that it’s been a while since I told you I loved you,” he said.

She dropped her eyes to the blanket covering her knees and picked at a thread coming loose from the binding. She’d made a tactical error in cutting her hair—it was no longer long enough to cover her eyes.

“I do, Lace. Very much. And I’m worried about you. Clay told me that some of his friends saw you…go into a bedroom with a couple of different guys last night.”

Her face shot up. There was alarm in her eyes, but she attempted a laugh. “They must have me mixed up with someone else.”

“You’re a smart kid, Lace, but I think drinking throws your judgment off and you end up doing things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Guys will take advantage of you. You’re too young to…”

“I’m not
doing
anything, and even if I was, so what? Mom turned out okay.”

“She did start young, that’s true, but it was because she was searching for love. You know what her parents were like—she never felt loved by them. You know
you’re
loved, don’t you Lace? You don’t have to have sex to get guys to like you.”

“I’m
not.
”

Alec’s eyes were drawn to the wall above Lacey’s head where a long-haired musician, his leather pants stitched into a genital-hugging cup at the crotch, smirked at him. He looked back at his daughter. “I guess we should talk about birth control,” he said.

Lacey flushed, her cheeks the color of the welts on her neck. “Please shut up.”

“If you need birth control, you can get it. Do you want me to make a doctor’s appointment for you?”

“No.”

He looked down at the doll, touching the delicate little white teeth with the tip of his finger. “Well, maybe it’s not negotiable. If you’re getting involved with…boys, you probably should see a doctor whether you want birth control or not.”

She stared at him incredulously. “
Mom
would never have made me go.”

He felt his patience slipping. “Look, Lacey, if you want to act like an adult, then you’re going to have to face the responsibilities that come along…”

“Mom would never have gotten on my case like this, either,” she interrupted him. “She would have believed anything I said. She would have trusted me.”

He threw the doll down hard on the bed and stood up. “Well, I’m not Mom,” he said, unable to keep the anger out of his voice. “And she’s not here. You’re stuck with me because she thought a bunch of goddamned battered women needed her more than we did.”

Lacey flung her blanket aside and jumped to the floor, turning to glare at him across the bed. “Sometimes I think you wish Zachary Pointer had killed me instead of her,” she said. “I bet you lie awake at night and think, why couldn’t it have been Lacey? Why did it have to be Annie?”

He was too astonished to speak. He stared after her as she ran out of the room, her footsteps quick and sharp in the hallway, and the bathroom door slammed shut so loudly he winced.

He stood there for a few minutes more before beginning to make her bed. He folded the edge of the sheet neatly over the blanket, tucked the spread under her pillow, and sat the doll up against the headboard. Then he walked downstairs to the den, where he could spend the rest of the day lost in his work on the lighthouse.

C
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They gave her the tourists in the emergency room over the next couple of days, because the locals—at least those coherent enough to be choosy—refused to see the doctor who had taken Annie O’Neill from them.

On the Tuesday after Jonathan’s vitriolic story appeared in the
Gazette,
Mike Shelley asked to see her. He was on the phone when she walked into his office, and he gestured for her to sit down. She watched the lines deepen in his forehead as he listened to his caller. Whatever he had to say to her wasn’t going to be good.

She had felt very much alone these past couple of days, despite a reserved sympathy from most of the ER staff. “We’re behind you,” Kathy Brash said to her. “We know what you went through that night,” Lynn Wilkes added, but their voices were whispers, as though they were afraid of being too public with their support. Jonathan had his allies as well—people who watched her every move, who waited for her to make another error in judgment.

She had heard nothing from Paul since he’d left for Washington, and nothing from Alec since the night she’d stood naked and willing in his arms. She cringed to remember that night. He’d been serious when he said they should avoid each other. For the past couple of nights she lay in bed, waiting for ten-thirty to come, hoping that the phone would ring. She’d finally drop off to sleep, waking up in the morning to the realization that he hadn’t called. Perhaps by now he blamed her too.

Mike hung up the phone and gave her a tired smile. “I need to show you something I received this morning,” he said. He pulled a sheaf of paper from a large envelope and pushed it across the desk to her. “A petition. Three hundred names, all asking for your resignation. Or, I guess, asking me to force you to resign.”

She looked down at the yellow lined paper. Across the top of the first sheet someone had typed:
In light of her inadequate handling of the medical emergency which resulted in the death of valued community member Annie Chase O’Neill, the following people call for the immediate resignation of Olivia Simon, M.D.”

She let her eyes brush over the names, lifting the second sheet, the third, trying to determine if Alec’s signature was among the many, but she could not read that quickly, and the names began to blur in front of her. She looked up at Mike.

“I have no intention of asking you to leave, Olivia, but I thought you should know what we’re up against. I’m sorry this has gotten so out of hand.”

Mike had made his own statements to the press, and although he vehemently denied any cover-up, he was reserved and cautious in the words he used. Olivia understood. His position was political as well as medical, and he couldn’t afford to alienate the community. It didn’t matter what he said, anyway. People were hearing only what they wanted to hear. Even after all these months, they wanted a scapegoat, someone to blame for the loss of their beloved Saint Anne.