Kiss River (3 page)

He moved slowly, aware that Gina had a death grip on the railing behind him, and it was a while before they exited through the tiled foyer. The waves washed over their feet and legs once they’d descended the three concrete steps into the water. Sasha bounded toward them, splashing their arms and faces as they waded to the dry sand where Lacey stood.

Gina nearly ignored Lacey as she squatted low to the ground to pet Sasha, and Clay’s opinion of the woman instantly rose a few notches. Sasha rolled in the sand, exposing his stomach to the stranger, and Gina obliged by rubbing his belly.

“That’s Sasha,” Clay said. “And this is my sister, Lacey. Lacey, this is Gina…?” He couldn’t recall her last name.

“Higgins.” Gina stood up, wiping her sandy hand on her shorts before extending it to Lacey.

“Are you a friend of Clay’s?” Lacey asked as she shook Gina’s hand, and Clay heard the hope in her voice. His sister would love nothing better than for him to have a new woman in his life.

Gina smiled at her. “No,” she said with a slight laugh. “I’m a trespasser, actually. I was up on the lighthouse when it got dark and your brother rescued me. That’s all.”

“Really?” Lacey raised her eyebrows at him.

“She came in from the road,” he explained.

“I walked around the chain,” Gina said. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see—”

“No big deal,” Lacey said, waving her unlit flashlight through the air. Her long red hair was tied back against the breeze, and her fair skin glowed white in the darkness. “We don’t own this place.” She glanced from Gina to Clay and back again, and he could almost see what she was thinking.
Right age, very attractive, perfect for Clay.
“Are you here on vacation with your family?” she asked. “Or with a bunch of girlfriends?” Clay nearly groaned at her transparent probing. Why didn’t she just come right out and ask the woman if she was available to be fixed up with her pathetic brother?

“I’m alone,” Gina said. “Just here for a few days.”

“She’s a lighthouse historian,” Clay said.

“Amateur,” Gina added, glancing away from him. She was probably still embarrassed over her pronunciation of Fresnel.

“Well, listen.” Lacey swatted a mosquito that had landed on her bare shoulder. “Have you eaten? Would you like to stay for dinner?”

“Oh, no,” Gina protested.

“We know absolutely every minute detail there is to know about the lighthouse,” Lacey coaxed. “We can tell you everything.” He knew his sister would not take no for an answer. He understood how her mind worked. It wasn’t so much that she was hoping to fix Gina up with him, or that she was eager to tell her stories about the lighthouse. It was that she couldn’t bear to think of anyone being alone.

“I bought plenty of fresh tuna for dinner, so you might as well stay,” Clay said, surprising himself as well as Lacey. “Then one of us can drive you back out to your car.” The truth was, he didn’t want her to go, either. He wanted to see her in the good light of the kitchen. He wanted to find flaws in that perfect face.

Gina looked down at Sasha, who was leaning against her thigh. She scratched the dog behind his ears.

“All right,” she said. “That’s so nice of you. I have to admit, I was a little nervous about walking back through those woods, with the wild horses and pigs and all.”

He and Lacey stared at her, then started to laugh.

“Wild pigs?” Lacey asked.

“I’d heard there were wild pigs,” Gina said. “Boars, I mean.”

“A long, long time ago,” Clay said, wondering where she’d received that piece of information. Whatever lighthouse source she was using had to be ancient. She hadn’t known the Kiss River had been destroyed. And wild pigs?

“The horses were moved way up past Corolla and fenced in,” Lacey explained. “Too many were getting killed because of the traffic. And it used to be open range here, long ago. Full of cows and hogs, and some of them did run wild. Mary Poor, who used to be the keeper, told me about them. I think there’s still some wild boar up in the wildlife refuge.”

“You know Mary Poor?” Gina asked. The name was obviously familiar to her.

“I did,” Lacey said. “She died a few years ago, but I used to visit her in the nursing home where she was living.”

“I’d love to hear more about her,” Gina said.

“Sure,” Lacey said, motioning in the direction of the house. “Let’s get dinner started and I’ll tell you all about her.”

The three of them began walking toward the house, sand sticking to their damp feet. Gina was tall and long-legged, and she carried her sandals dangling from her fingertips. Watching her, Clay nearly forgot about the charcoal.

“I’ll fire up the grill,” he said, breaking away from the women to make his way to the shed where he kept the charcoal. He was only half-surprised when Sasha elected to stay at Gina’s side rather than walk with him. His dog could be as manipulative as his sister.

When he brought the grilled tuna steaks into the kitchen, he found Lacey and Gina making salad and boiling cobs of corn. They were deep in conversation, deep in that world of women that was so natural for them and so elusive to men like him. They were talking about the history of the light station, Lacey entertaining Gina with tales of the keepers, Mary and Caleb Poor. She knew far more than he did, due to both her interest in the subject and her relationship with Mary, and Gina kept her eyes on his sister while she tore apart the leaves of romaine, clearly enraptured.

In the light of the kitchen, Lacey and Gina looked like two women in a painting, one a redhead, the other raven-haired. Both beautiful. Both slender, fair-skinned. His twenty-four-year-old sister looked tougher than Gina, though. The muscles in Lacey’s arms and legs were tight and defined. Her face was fuller. She not only had her mother’s vivid hair and artistic talent, but her dimples as well, along with that pale, freckled skin that needed serious protection from the sun. Although she was also fair, Gina looked as though she might be able to tan well, but he doubted her skin had seen the sun in years. She was older than he’d thought, a couple of years older than himself. Thirty maybe. The damp sea air had found its way into her hair, which had taken on the same windblown, wild look that would mark Lacey’s hair if she were to let it loose.

He put the plate of tuna steaks on the porcelain-topped table and Gina brought over the salad, while Lacey carried the platter of corn.

“Where do you live?” Clay asked, taking his seat at the table. He passed Gina the tuna steaks, motioning to her to help herself.

“Bellingham, Washington,” Gina said. “It’s north of Seattle.”

“Washington!” Lacey said. “What are you doing out here?”

“I had time off,” Gina said, reaching for the salad, and, Clay thought, measuring her words. “I teach school, so I have summer vacation, same as the students. I’m familiar with the lighthouses on the Pacific Northwest, and I wanted to visit some in the East. I thought I’d start here.”

Clay laughed as he transferred one of the steaks to his plate. “Well, you picked the wrong one to start with,” he said. “To
morrow you can drive up to the Currituck Light. That one’s in great shape and open to the public.”

“Bodie’s not that far,” Lacey added. “And Hatteras is only a couple of hours from here. You probably know that they moved the Hatteras lighthouse a few years ago because it was going to fall into the sea, just like this one did”—Lacey nodded toward the beach—“so you might find that really intriguing. They have a video there you can watch.”

Gina nodded. “Thanks,” she said, poking corn holders into the ends of the cob on her plate. “I’ll be sure to see them all. But right now I’m a bit distressed over the fact that the Kiss River lighthouse is crumbling away. And I don’t understand why no one has tried to see if the lens is still in one piece.”

“I agree with you,” Lacey surprised him by saying. “I think they should have at least salvaged the lens.”

“You’ll have to fight Dad on that one,” Clay said.

“Why your father?” Gina looked from him to Lacey.

“He’s got OCD,” Lacey said with a flash of her dimples. “Obsessive-compulsive disorder. He used to be obsessed with saving the lighthouse. He led the Save the Lighthouse committee. After the hurricane, he became obsessed with keeping it the way it is and leaving the lens in the ocean.” She held up a hand to ward off the obvious question. “Don’t ask me to explain why my dad is the way he is, because I can’t.”

“Is he…does he…have some say in what happens to the lighthouse and the lens?” Gina asked.

“Not officially,” Lacey said. “But when it comes to the locals, everyone follows his lead.”

There was silence at the table for a moment, filled only by the crunch of corn and the chink of forks against the plates. Gina took a swallow of iced tea.

“This is the first time I’ve eaten fresh tuna,” she said, putting down her glass. “It’s wonderful.”

“My favorite,” Lacey agreed.

“You must get a lot of salmon where you live,” Clay said.

“Tons.” Gina nodded. She cut another piece of the fish with the side of her fork, but didn’t bring it to her mouth. “If I wanted to look into getting the lens raised,” she said, returning
to the more difficult topic, “is your father the person I should talk to?”

Clay didn’t understand her apparent interest in the lens, but after growing up with his father, he was accustomed to an unexplained fixation on the Kiss River light. He nodded. “If you don’t have his backing, you can forget about getting anyone else’s,” he said. “But…and don’t take offense at this, please…you have to keep in mind that you’re an outsider here. People won’t much care what you want. The fact that you’re a lighthouse historian, though, might give you a little credibility.”

Gina’s huge, dark eyes were on him as she set down her fork. “Where would I find him?” she asked. “Your father?”

“He’s a vet,” Lacey said. “He works at Beacon Animal Hospital in Nag’s Head.”

“Is that far from here?”

“Half an hour,” Clay said. He pictured Gina walking unannounced into the animal hospital, and his father’s response when he realized the purpose of her intrusion. “If you want to contact him, though, I’d call him first. And don’t get your hopes up.”

“I won’t.” Gina smiled at him, but it was a quick smile that seemed somehow false. “So,” she said, “what sort of work do the two of you do? I assume you’re in construction?”

Lacey shook her head. “I’m a part-time vet tech at the animal hospital,” she said. “And a full-time stained-glass artist.”

She sold herself short, Clay thought. Vet tech and stained-glass artist just scratched the surface of who his sister was. She also volunteered on a crisis hot line, tutored kids at the local elementary school, read to residents in the nursing home where Mary Poor used to live and attended Al-Anon meetings in support of her biological father, Tom Nestor, who was also her stained-glass mentor and—at long last—a recovering alcoholic. She gave blood regularly and had donated her bone marrow the year before. She had, in short, turned herself into their mother, who the locals used to call Saint Anne. Lacey’s gradual metamorphosis into Annie O’Neill made Clay uncomfortable.

“And how about you?” Gina was looking at him.

He finished chewing a mouthful of salad. “Architect,” he said.

“Really?” Gina asked. “What sort of architecture?”

“Residential,” Clay said. “I have an office in Duck.”

For the first time that evening, he felt the too-familiar dark cloud slip over his shoulders. It used to be that, even before Clay would say he was an architect, he’d say that he trained dogs and their owners for search and rescue work. That had been his avocation and his passion, but he hadn’t put Sasha through his paces once since Terri’s death, and he no longer bothered to return the calls from people looking for training. Lacey had nagged him about it at first but quickly learned that approach could only backfire. It made him angry. It made him wonder if she’d loved Terri at all. She used to say that Terri felt more like a sister than a sister-in-law. Then why didn’t she understand that he just didn’t feel like doing a damn thing that reminded him of his wife?

“What grade do you teach?” Lacey asked their guest.

“Junior high,” Gina said. “Science.”

That explained her knowledge of brass and the electrolyte bath, Clay thought.

“Rough age,” Lacey said, and Clay had to smile to himself. Lacey had been one of the roughest fourteen-year-olds imaginable.

“I love it,” Gina said. “I love the kids.”

“Do you have any of your own?” Lacey asked.

Gina didn’t answer right away. She toyed with her salad for a moment, pushing a cherry tomato around with her fork. “No,” she said. “Someday, I hope.”

“Are you married?” Lacey asked. God, Clay thought. His sister could be so damn nosy. But his eyes fell to Gina’s hands, searching for a wedding ring. She wore two rings, actually: on her right hand, a small ruby in a white-gold or platinum setting, and on her left hand, an onyx set in silver. Her fingers were long and slim, like the rest of her, and her nails were unpainted, pink and rounded, cared for but not pampered.

Gina shook her head. “Not married,” she said.

Clay stood up and lifted his plate from the table to carry it to the sink. He had never been very good at sitting still for long, especially not for after-dinner small talk. He was just like their father that way, filled with a nervous sort of energy that had driven Terri crazy and was now doing the same to his sister. Lacey had long ago given up on asking him to stay seated for a while after dinner.