“A few weeks after Caleb was buried, Chester had the nerve to ask me to marry him. Needless to say, I turned him down. I’d finally found the cure for my wicked imagination, but it came with a big price tag.”

Mary talked a while longer and felt a change in Annie, a silent drawing in. Annie had wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and now she pulled it tighter, staring at the flames as Mary spoke. After a while, they heard a faint cry from upstairs.

“He’s awake,” Annie said softly.

Mary nodded. “You’d better get home.”

Annie rose, letting the shawl drop from her shoulders to the chair. Her footsteps were heavy and slow on the stairs. Mary listened to her reassuring Clay with her cooing and clucking.

When Annie returned downstairs, she handed the baby to Mary, resting him on the older woman’s lap. “Let me stoke the fire for you before I go,” she said, as she always did. She stirred the wood for many minutes, and Mary watched the flames leaping around her head. When Annie finally stood up and lifted Clay into her arms, her face was flushed, and heat poured from her hands and her clothes. She didn’t meet Mary’s eyes, and for a moment Mary wished she had not spoken so freely. She had risked too much in telling her. She had risked this special friendship.

Mary stood up and walked Annie out onto the porch. Annie turned to face her, hugging her baby close to her against the wind.

“Mary,” she said. “Your longings…your fantasies…they didn’t make you a bad person.”

Mary breathed in a quick, silent sigh of relief. “No,” she said.

She watched as Annie walked through the darkness toward her car. Halfway there, she turned back to Mary, and in a voice so soft she could barely be heard over the sound of the sea, said, “Mary. We are more alike than you know.”

For just a moment she was illuminated by the beacon of the lighthouse and Mary saw the shine of her cheeks, the stubby hand of her child coming up to touch her chin, and then the world was dark again.



CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX


Paul’s car was in her driveway when she got home from the emergency room that Thursday evening. Olivia felt a disconcerting mix of joy and anger. Should he be allowed to come and go as he pleased? What if he’d walked into the room that was to become the nursery and discovered the crib?

Inside, the house smelled of garlic and olive oil and wine, familiar smells of Paul’s cooking. She walked into the kitchen, and he smiled at her from the stove where he stood over the skillet, a fork in his hand like a conductor’s baton and his old red smock apron tied around his waist.

“Hi,” he said. “I thought I’d surprise you. Scampi.” She had told him once, long ago, that his scampi was an aphrodisiac.

She set her purse on the table. “Could you let me know before you come over in the future?” she asked. “I don’t think it’s fair for you to…just walk into this house.”

He looked surprised that her first words were critical, that she did not appear overjoyed to see him. “I’m still paying my share of the mortgage,” he said.

“It isn’t a matter of money,” Olivia said. “You left me. I’m entitled to at least some privacy.” She wanted to look down at her stomach to see if there was any telltale bulge.

He rested the fork on the counter and turned to face her. “You’re right. I didn’t think. I just wanted to surprise you. I wanted to do something nice for you, Liv. Do you want me to leave?”

She shook her head. “No.” There was a surly edge to her voice that surprised her as much as it did him. “I want you here,” she said, gently now. “Let me change my clothes.”

Once in her bedroom, she put on the one pair of jeans she could still fit into and a long, baggy T-shirt. Soon, she was going to have to give in and buy maternity clothes. People would know then. Paul would know.

She returned to the kitchen. “Can I help?” she asked.

“It’s ready,” he said. “Just sit down.” He gestured toward the kitchen table. She still had not replaced the table in the dining room.

She sat down, and Paul set a plate covered with fat garlicky shrimp and wild rice in front of her. He was a natural cook, one of those people who could turn out stunning meals without ever consulting a cookbook. He had always been far more domestically inclined than she. Their plan had been for him to stay home with their children while she went off to work.

He tilted the bottle of wine above her glass but she held her hand over the rim. “No thanks,” she said, and he looked down at her in surprise. “I’ve stopped for a while.”

“Why?”

It would have been easier just to let him pour the wine. She didn’t have to drink it.

“Cleaning up my act a little,” she said.

He sat down. “I was hoping to get you drunk tonight so I could seduce you.”

She felt her cheeks redden and looked down at her plate.

Paul leaned across the table to rest his hand on her arm. “You’re really furious with me,” he said.

“You’ve done some things that are hard for me to simply overlook.”

He nodded and leaned back again, pouring wine into his own glass. “I guess I can’t blame you,” he said, “but I did something today you’ll approve of.”

“What’s that?”

“I donated two of Annie’s stained glass panels to the library.”

She was truly surprised. “You did?”

He sipped his wine. “I can’t just quit cold turkey, Liv, but I’m working on it. The two underwater scenes in my living room. Plus the little oval in my car. The librarian was thrilled. Those panels are probably worth a lot more now that she’s…been gone awhile.” He pursed his lips for a second, as though acknowledging that Annie was dead still hurt him. “I’ll get rid of the rest of them in a week or two, as soon as I find the right place to donate them.”

“That’s good, Paul.” She tried to smile at him. “Whether we get back together or not, you really need to put her behind you.”

He flushed. “What’s your game, Olivia? Are you playing hard to get or what?”

“I’m not playing any game at all.” She looked at him, at the warm hazel eyes behind his glasses. “This is hard for me, trying to figure out how to behave with you. I’m terrified of trusting you, of letting my guard down around you. I’m afraid to commit myself to you when I’m not certain you can make a commitment yourself.”

“It worked before,” he said. “We just need to get away from here.”

She ate in silence for a moment before looking up at him again. “I’ve received a job offer,” she said. “At Emerson Memorial.” She described the call from Clark Chapman, as a smile spread across Paul’s face.

He set down his fork and leaned across the table again, reaching for her hand this time. “It’s a sign, don’t you think? A good omen. We move to Norfolk and start over. Start fresh. Tell him yes, Liv. Call him tonight and tell him.”

She shook her head, but left her hand in his. “I need to think about it,” she said. “I can’t jump into it that quickly.”

After dinner, he served her strawberry mousse in the living room, she on one end of the sofa, he on the other. She wondered how she could get him out of the house before he tried to touch her. He seemed to have no intention of leaving. He took off his shoes and raised his legs to the couch. “I reread The Wreck of the Eastern Spirit last night,” he said.

“Why?”

“I wanted to feel good. To feel close to you. It made me remember how I felt during those days when I was watching you in the ER and falling in love with you. Remember how wonderful it was?”

She laughed, bitterly. “It was wonderful all right. Forty-two people died. It was fantastic.” She regretted her nastiness as soon as she spoke. Paul stood up, a hurt expression on his face.

“You’ve changed,” he said. “You’ve become…callous.”

“I’m just afraid to feel close to you.”

“What do I have to do, Liv?”

“To start with, you could get rid of the rest of the stained glass.”

He nodded. “All right. Tomorrow.”

An arrow of fear passed through her, as she realized that even if he got rid of every tangible trace of Annie O’Neill, she still might not want the man who was left. “You made love to her,” she said softly. “That’s what hurts most. You can’t throw that away, and I’m always going to feel like that memory is still with you. If we ever make love again, I’ll think you’re comparing me to her. Or imagining I’m her.”

He looked stricken. “Oh, no.” He sat down, pulling her into a hug. “I love you, Liv,” he said. “I just lost my mind for a while, that’s all.” He tipped her head back to kiss her and she allowed the kiss, hoping she would feel something tender for him, but she wanted to bite his lips, to draw blood. She pulled her head away, awkwardly crossing her arms low on her stomach to keep him from touching her.

He leaned away from her. “I guess you don’t want me to stay over tonight.”

She shook her head.

“I miss you.”

She looked up at him. “I miss you too, Paul,” she said. “I’ve missed you very, very much, but I need to be sure of you. Call me again when you’re over Annie, when you’re one hundred percent finished with her.”

She stayed seated on the sofa while he put on his shoes. Then he leaned over to squeeze her knee, not speaking to her, not looking at her, and she knew he was close to crying, that once outside, he would probably let the tears come.

She unzipped her jeans when he left, sighing with relief as she drew in a long, deep breath. She rested her hand on her gently rounded stomach and her eyes went to the phone. It was ten-thirty-five and it hadn’t rung.

Alec.

She had to admit the truth to herself: She was four months pregnant by a man she was no longer certain she loved, and she loved a man still in love with his dead wife.



CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN


The baby moved.

Olivia lay very still. Outside her bedroom window, the first pink light of dawn tinged the sky above the sound.

Again. The flutter of bird wings.

It stopped. She closed her eyes, resting her hands flat on her stomach. Had she dreamt it? No. Too real. Paul’s child.

When she opened her eyes again, the sun was full in the sky, and her room glowed with a clear yellow light. She lay still for a moment, struggling to feel…something. Maybe it had been a dream. Maybe her imagination.

She had the day off, and so she was still in her robe a half hour later when she picked up the Beach Gazette from her front deck and carried it into the kitchen. She’d been tense reading the paper lately, but this morning there should be some mention about Jonathan leaving the ER.

Indeed, there was an article on the front page. Jonathan Cramer had resigned suddenly, the article stated, offering little else except a recap of the mud-slinging situation, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions about his sudden retreat. This would not be enough, she thought, disappointed.

She was halfway through her blueberry muffin when she came to the letters to the editor. She would skip over them today. There were usually half a dozen furiously assailing her for her handling of Annie’s case. She was about to turn the page when she noticed the name at the bottom of the last letter. Alec O’Neill. She flattened the page out again and began to read.I’m writing to express my dismay over the negative press and outpouring of hostility toward the Kill Devil Hills Emergency Room physician who tried to save the life of my wife, Annie Chase O’Neill. As a veterinarian, I’m well aware of human fallibility in making medical decisions, particularly under the stressful conditions a trauma case presents. Even so, I feel assured that the best possible decisions were made in Dr. Simon’s attempt to save Annie’s life. I understand the anger and readiness to find a scapegoat in the community because I’ve experienced those feelings myself in the last seven months, but those of you familiar with Annie’s generous spirit know that she never would have maligned another person or harmed his or her career. If you trace Annie’s activism in the Outer Banks, from her advocacy for the Kiss River Lighthouse keeper, Mary Poor, to last year’s fight to keep a child with AIDS in school, you will see that she focused her energy only on helping others. Attacking the very person who risked her own well-being to try to help her is not a way to honor Annie’s memory.It’s ludicrous to think that a woman with two holes in her heart could possibly have survived the forty-five-minute flight to the nearest trauma center. Dr. Simon went beyond the call of duty to treat Annie in our local emergency room rather than wash her hands of the case by transporting her to Emerson and certain death on the way. She deserves our support, not our criticism.