“Will you be all right alone tonight?” he asked.

“Yes.” She reached into her purse for her keys. “As soon as you woke me up and I got a whiff of Outer Banks air, I felt better.” She leaned her head back against the seat and looked over at him. “Even though I only have one friend here—namely, you—it feels like home.”

Alec smiled at her. Then, on an impulse, he made a U-turn at the next intersection.

“What are you doing?” Olivia asked.

“I’m taking you someplace. You’ve earned the right to see it.”

“The lighthouse!” she said as he took the right turn off the highway toward Kiss River.

The road leading out to the lighthouse was dark, the trees forming a green-gray tunnel for the Bronco. Alec pulled into the small parking lot, surrounded on all sides by shadowy bayberry bushes. Night had fallen quickly over Kiss River, and the beacon was already on. It flashed as they got out of the Bronco, illuminating Olivia’s white, awestruck face.

“It’s spooky out here,” she said. The keeper’s house was dark, and no one was in sight as they walked across the field of sea oats, Olivia craning her neck to look up at the light. “Two hundred and ten feet is taller than I’d imagined.”

Alec held up one of the keys on his key ring. “I’m not supposed to have this,” he said. “Mary Poor gave it to Annie years ago.” He opened the door and stepped into the dark hallway, feeling on the wall for the light switch.

“Oh, my God,” Olivia said as light filled the hall and illuminated the circular staircase. She walked forward and looked up. “Two hundred and seventy steps.”

“They’ll probably be better to manage with your heels off.” He waited for her to slip off her shoes before he started up the stairs. “You don’t have a problem with vertigo, do you?” His voice echoed off the sloping, white brick walls.

Olivia looked straight up at the eerily lit circles of stairs above her. “I guess I’ll find out,” she said.

They stopped at the third landing for Olivia to catch her breath. From the narrow window they could just make out the outline of the keeper’s house, asleep in the darkness.

The circle of stairs grew tighter and he could hear Olivia’s breathing as well as his own. “We’re almost there,” he said.

They had reached the narrow landing, and he unlocked the door to the gallery, stepping back to let Olivia out first.

“It’s extraordinary,” she said as a warm wind swept across their faces. She looked up. “Look how close we are to the stars. Oh.” She started as the lens directly above them flashed its light over their heads, and Alec laughed.

He leaned his elbows on the railing and looked out at the ocean. The moon lit up the water, and the waves looked like glittering strips of silver rushing toward the shore.

“Once I locked Annie and myself up here for the night,” Alec said. “I dropped the key to this door over the railing.”

“Intentionally?”

“Yes.” It seemed unbelievable that he’d once had such a spontaneous idea of fun. “We couldn’t get down until morning, when Mary Poor let us out.” He smiled at the memory and felt suddenly close to Annie. If Olivia were not here, he would talk to her.

Olivia leaned on the railing next to him. “Thanks for this,” she said. “For letting me come up here. I know you think of the lighthouse as yours and Annie’s.”

He nodded, acknowledging the truth in her statement. “You’re welcome.”

They watched the lights of the boats slip across the horizon for a while longer. Then Alec filled his lungs one last time with salt air. “You ready to go down?” he asked.

Olivia nodded and stepped back through the door to the landing, but something on the ground caught Alec’s eyes. “Just a sec,” he said. He walked around to the sound side of the gallery and gripped the cool iron railing in his hands as he stared into the darkness between the keeper’s house and the woods. The flash of light cut a path between him and the ground, and in that clear white light he saw a bulldozer standing next to two fresh, deep scars in the earth.

He walked Olivia to her front door. He held one arm out to her, and she stepped into his hug. He softly kissed her temple.

“Thanks for your help today,” he said.

She took a step away from him and smiled. “Thank you for yours. It was a little more than you bargained for.” She unlocked her door, then turned to face him again. “You don’t have to call me tonight, Alec.”

“Are you saying you’ve had enough of me for one day?”

“No.” She hesitated for a moment. “It’s just that I feel very close to you today, and I’m not so sure that’s good.”

His heart did a little flip before he thought of Annie. Will you wait a year?

He nodded. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then.”

His house was empty when he got home. He heated a slice of frozen pizza in the microwave and sat down at the kitchen table to eat it, that morning’s Beach Gazette spread out in front of him. There, in the upper right-hand corner of the front page, was a picture of Annie. Alec set the pizza down and lifted the paper. The headline was bold, the letters enormous: K.D.H. EMERGENCY ROOM ACCUSED OF COVER-UP IN O’NEILL DEATH. He read through the article twice, the muscles in his hands contracting into fists. Then he picked up his car keys and stormed out of the house.



CHAPTER THIRTY


Olivia was relieved to get out of her suit and stockings and into the shower, where she scrubbed away the more painful remnants of the day. Then she put on her robe, poured herself a cup of tea, and sat down at the kitchen table with the pieces of stained glass she had cut at the studio the week before. She was wrapping the smoothed edges of the glass with copper foil when there was a knock at her front door. She looked up, startled by the anger in the sound.

She set down the piece of glass she’d been working on and walked into the living room. The room was dark, just a dim pool of light spilling across the carpet from the kitchen. She walked quietly to the window nearest the door, where she peered out to see Alec standing in the porch light. He was dressed in white shorts and a navy blue T-shirt, and he was raising his fist to knock again.

She tightened the sash of her robe and opened the door. “Alec?”

He walked into the living room and thrust a copy of the Gazette in front of her.

“Have you seen this?” he asked. He was angry, and she stepped away from him, away from the unfamiliar flame in his eyes.

She took the paper, raising it into the stream of light from the kitchen, and read the headline: K.D.H. EMERGENCY ROOM ACCUSED OF COVER-UP IN O’NEILL DEATH.

She frowned at him. “A cover-up?” she said. “I don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, Alec.”

He pulled the paper from her hands. “It seems as though you left out a few details when you told me what happened the night Annie was brought to the ER.” He spoke with a controlled sort of calm, yet she could hear anger behind the words.

She pulled her robe more snugly around her, remembering the messages from the reporter on her answering machine the night before. She was afraid she did know what lay below that headline. There certainly had been no “cover-up” of Annie’s treatment in the ER, but everyone involved had known better than to discuss the case publicly. There were people—including some of the ER staff—who thought her attempt to save Annie had been preposterous. Reckless. Alec knew enough about medicine that, with the facts presented to him by someone other than herself, he might draw a similar conclusion.

Right now, he had the same accusatory look in his eyes that he wore in that photograph in Annie’s studio, and she wished there was a way to change that, to bring back his smile. She was about to lose something that had become precious to her. Alec’s friendship. His trust.

“Shall I read it to you?” he asked, and he began reading without waiting for her reply. “Olivia Simon, one of the Kill Devil Hills Emergency Room physicians vying for the position of medical director, was involved in a cover-up in the death of one of the Outer Banks’ most beloved citizens, Annie Chase O’Neill. So states Dr. Jonathan Cramer, another emergency room physician who is also in the running for the director’s position. ‘Dr. Simon has made serious mistakes in judgment,’ Cramer said yesterday. ‘She often acts as though she owns the emergency room.’ He cited in particular the O’Neill case. Ms. O’Neill was shot last Christmas while working as a volunteer at the Manteo Battered Women’s Shelter. Cramer stated that, ‘in that type of case, usual procedure is to stabilize the patient and send them by helicopter up to Emerson Memorial, where they have the facilities to deal with severe trauma. We can’t handle that sort of thing here. I argued that we should prepare the patient for transport, but Dr. Simon insisted we treat her in the ER. Annie O’Neill didn’t stand a chance.’”

“Oh, Alec, that’s crazy,” Olivia said, but Alec continued reading, and Olivia knew this one article was enough to kill any chance she’d had at the directorship position.

“Dr. Simon worked in the emergency room of Washington General in the District of Columbia for ten years prior to coming here. ‘She’s used to the heavy stuff in D.C.,’ Cramer said. ‘She doesn’t understand the limitations of a small facility like this.’

“Michael Shelley, current director of the free-standing emergency room, denied any cover-up and said the entire case was being blown out of proportion. Dr. Simon could not be reached for comment.

“Because,” Alec said with a biting touch of sarcasm, “as we all know, Dr. Simon had unplugged her phone.” He dropped the paper on the coffee table and stared at her. “Why didn’t you tell me there was some question about how to treat her?” he asked. “Why did you hide the facts from me?”

Olivia sank wearily into the nearest chair and looked up at him. He stood in the center of the room, directly in the light spilling from the kitchen, like an actor caught in the spotlight.

“Alec,” she shook her head. “There was no cover-up. I didn’t tell you there was a question about treating her because in my mind there was no question. Jonathan Cramer dislikes me and he’s afraid I might be selected over him for the director spot. He’s looking for a way to hurt me.”

“Right this minute I don’t give a damn what he’s doing to you,” he said. “I want to know what happened to my wife.”

“I’ve explained everything that hap…”

“You made it sound like you only had one option.”

“I felt like I did.”

He paced, out of the spotlight, into it again. “It’s always struck me as insane—the idea of one lone physician performing open heart surgery, whether you had the necessary instruments or not. I tried to put that thought out of my mind, but this article just…” He shook his head and turned to look at her again. “Why didn’t you send her up to Emerson?”

This way her blood’s on your hands.

“I didn’t think she could possibly make it, and…”

Alec gestured toward the newspaper on the coffee table. “This guy obviously thought her chances were better if she went up, and he’d been working there longer than you. Didn’t you stop to consider that he might have known what he was talking about?”

“I really thought that surgery…”

“You don’t do that kind of surgery in that kind of setting, Olivia. You don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to figure that out. You’d intubate her, put a couple of IV lines in her, and get her out of there as fast as you could.” He stood directly above her now, and his voice had risen, hurting her ears. “If you’d sent her to Emerson, maybe she would have had a chance. Maybe she’d still be alive.”

Tears spilled over Olivia’s cheeks. She looked up at Alec. “Jonathan was scared,” she said. “He’d never seen that kind of wound before, and he had no idea what to do with it. Think about it, Alec. Please. She had two holes in her heart. Jonathan neglected to mention that to the press. How do you stabilize a person with two holes in her heart? I had no choice but to operate. She would have died in that helicopter. I have absolutely no doubt about it. She was losing blood so quickly.”

Olivia paused. Above her, Alec was breathing hard, his eyes still narrowed, angry, but he was listening to her, hearing her out.

“Jonathan walked out on me when I said we should operate. He left me alone to take care of her. I realized that I was taking a risk when I elected to do surgery, especially by myself. Maybe it was crazy of me to try. I knew I was walking a fine line, legally and medically. But not ethically.” She brushed the back of her hand across her wet cheek. “Sending her up, making her someone else’s responsibility, would have been the easy way out, but she would have died. I did what I thought was right, and if we could have somehow closed that hole in the back of her heart she might very well have made it.” Her hand started to throb, her fingers grew hot with the memory. She looked up at Alec again. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”