“Paul?” Alec called from the living room. “We’re about to get started.”

“I’ll be right there,” he called back, but he didn’t make a move toward the door. “Why did you sleep over her house?” he asked.

“Because my father had to take my brother to college and was going to be gone all night. So Olivia is, like, really close friends with my father and she said I could stay there.”

Paul stared at the cloisonné horse on the other side of the room. “I didn’t realize she was friends with your… I guess she’s helped him with the talks he gives on the lighthouse, right?”

“Well, they only did that once.” Lacey held the can to her lips again, leaning back to swallow the last of the soda. “They go out sometimes,” she continued. “You know, to dinner or whatever, and sometimes she comes over here at night to use my mother’s stained glass stuff.”

“Your mother’s…?”

Lacey let out an exasperated sigh. He must be sounding as dense as he felt. “Her stained glass stuff,” she said. “You know, her tools and things.”

There was laughter from the living room. Paul set the empty water glass in the sink, his hand shaking badly. He struggled to make his face unreadable as he turned back to Lacey.

“But Olivia doesn’t work with stained glass,” he said.

“God, you must not have seen her in a while. She takes lessons at my mother’s studio every Saturday morning from Tom Nestor. He’s the guy who…”

“I know who he is.” Paul tried to picture Olivia at Annie’s work table in the studio. He tried to imagine her out to dinner with Alec, laughing with him, telling him…what? She’d been here at Alec’s house. Annie’s house. Playing mother to Annie’s daughter.

“Paul?” It was Nola this time, an irked quality to her voice.

“I’d better go,” he said.

“Yeah,” Lacey grinned. “You don’t cross Nola Dillard and live to talk about it.”

He knew the moment he sat down on the sofa that he could not stay. His confusion was turning to anger. What the hell did Olivia think she was doing?

Alec was talking about the upcoming tour of the keeper’s house, now scheduled for the following Tuesday.

“Alec?” Paul interrupted him, standing up, and everyone raised their eyes to him.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said, “but I’m going to have to leave. I’m not feeling well. I thought I could make it through the meeting, but…” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you want to lie down for a while?” Alec asked.

“I have some aspirin,” Sondra Carter offered.

“Is it something you ate?” Nola asked.

“No.” He began backing away from them, the color rising in his face. “I’m sure I’ll be all right once I’m out in the fresh air.”

They were quiet as he walked the few steps to the front door and let himself out. Once outside, he wondered what they were saying about him. Probably not much. They would probably just get on with the meeting, and later Alec would call him to make certain he was all right. That would be exactly like Alec. He wondered what kind of sympathy and understanding he’d been giving Olivia these past couple of months.

He drove south toward Kitty Hawk, fifteen miles over the speed limit, trying to think of what he would say to her when he finally saw her face-to-face. Anything he said was sure to come out as a growl. There was no way he could do this calmly.

The house was dark when he arrived, her car gone. Damn. He was ready. He was bursting to have this out with her.

He sat down on the front deck. Where was she? Who was she off with tonight? Maybe she was at the Battered Women’s Shelter. He could go over there. He closed his eyes, smiling ruefully at the image of yet another irate husband creating a stir at the shelter.

He sat on the deck for nearly an hour before he gave up and drove home to his little cottage in South Nags Head. He would find her in the morning. Saturday morning. Lacey had told him where she would be.

Olivia arrived home around ten. She thought of calling Paul to tell him about Mike’s offer, but she needed time to think it through herself. Besides, she did not look forward to talking to Paul these days.

She had just gotten into bed when Alec called.

“The roses are beautiful, Alec,” she said. “Thank you.”

“I really owe you for your help with Lacey,” he said. “It changed things overnight. She’s talking to me, and I suddenly feel as though I have some control in my house.”

“She’s basically a good kid.”

“I know that.” He sighed. “This morning she told me she doesn’t want to do anything about birth control, that she doesn’t want to have sex again for a while. I don’t know if that’s realistic, though. Once a kid starts, how does she stop?”

“If she’s getting more from you, maybe she won’t need so much attention from guys at parties.”

“I hope you’re right.” He was quiet for a moment. She thought she could hear him stretching, turning, and she knew he was in bed. “Well,” he said, “how are you doing?”

“I was offered the director position tonight.”

“You’re kidding! Why didn’t you call me the second you heard? That’s fantastic, Olivia.”

She could see the moon from her bed. It was nearly full and surrounded by stars. “I’m afraid to tell Paul. It’s going to bring things to a head.”

“He didn’t stay for the meeting tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“He just came for a few minutes and then left. He said he wasn’t feeling well.”

“Did he say what was wrong?”

“He didn’t offer any details. When are you going to tell him about the job?”

“Sometime tomorrow. I need to think about what I really want before I talk to him.”

Alec was quiet for a moment. “I wish you’d take it,” he said. She heard him draw in a long breath and let it out again. “Olivia,” he said, “are you in bed?”

“Yes.”

“You know…sometimes I want to say things to you that I’m not sure I should say.”

“Like what?”

“Well, that I appreciate you and admire you. That I miss you when I haven’t seen you for…”

Her beeper went off, and he stopped talking.

“I heard that,” he said. “I’d better let you go.”

Olivia closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I have to go to the studio tomorrow to pick up the oval window and make an enlargement of a print. Could you have lunch after your lesson?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”

She hung up the phone and called the ER. There’d been a fire in one of the soundside cottages in Kitty Hawk. Three burn victims were coming in. Expected time of arrival: ten minutes.

She quickly got out of bed and pulled on her pink and white striped jersey dress. She brushed her teeth, ran a comb through her hair. It wasn’t until she was in her car on the way to the ER that she allowed herself to think about Alec.

She wished he’d gotten to finish what he’d started to tell her.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow at lunch.



CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN


Through the studio door, Olivia saw Alec and Tom standing by the work table. Tom was taping the small oval window between two pieces of cardboard, and Alec was laughing. They looked up when she opened the door.

“Morning, Olivia,” Tom said, as he set the packaged window down on the table. “I have to give Alec a hand in the darkroom, so go ahead and get set up here and I’ll be back in a minute.”

Alec didn’t say a word to her, but he didn’t need to. The warmth in his smile said enough.

Olivia sat down at the table and pulled the piece of glass she’d been working on from her tote bag. She would need Tom’s help on this. She’d already destroyed two pieces of glass trying to make this particular shape.

She cut out the pattern piece with her three-bladed scissors and had just glued it to the glass when Tom came out of the darkroom. He sat down next to her, and laughed when she told him the problem she was having with the cut.

“Well, you’re trying to do something impossible here,” he said, pulling a piece of scrap glass from the pile on his desk. He showed her a different way to score the glass, and she was attempting to follow his instruction when the studio door suddenly burst open. Olivia looked up to see Paul charging toward her, his face red, his eyes angry, and she dropped her hands from the glass to her lap.

“I don’t believe this,” Paul said, his voice far too loud. “I heard you were doing this, but I thought it couldn’t possibly be true.”

She glanced toward the darkroom. Alec must have heard Paul’s voice, because he opened the door a few inches. Olivia could just make out the frown on his face.

“Stained glass, Olivia?” Paul had his hands on the work table, and he leaned toward her, his face inches from hers. “The Battered Women’s Shelter? Taking care of Annie’s daughter? What are you trying to do, turn yourself into her?”

“Paul…” Olivia stood up, trying to think of the words that would put an end to his outburst, that would erase what he had already said, but her voice wouldn’t work. Everything in the room seemed frozen. Next to her, Tom had stopped breathing, and Alec stood fast in the doorway of the darkroom, his hand locked on the knob. Only Paul moved, his arms thrashing in the air, his face tinted blue one minute, yellow the next.

“I hear you’re great friends with her husband,” he said. “Are you sleeping with him too, Olivia? Are you doing it in Annie’s bed?”

“Stop it, Paul.” Olivia’s voice was a whisper compared to his. “You have no right to…”

Paul stalked toward the door, but whipped around once more to face her. “You think I’m nuts,” he said. “What you’re doing is sick, Olivia. Really crazy.” He turned on his heel and stamped out of the studio, slamming the door behind him. The stained glass panel hanging from the door swung loose for a moment, and Olivia cringed as it crashed against the door knob, splintering several of the small pieces of glass..

She sat down again as a stillness filled the studio, a silence so complete that when she began turning her ring on her finger, she could hear the faint chafing sound it made against her skin.

Alec pushed the darkroom door open and stepped into the room. “It was Annie,” he said. “The other woman, right? Paul’s obsession?”

She looked up at him. His smile was gone. There was an iciness in the faded blue of his eyes. “Yes,” she said.

“You told me you were trying to be more like her, like the other woman. You used me, Olivia.”

She shook her head.

“Paul used me too, didn’t he? He got to see Annie’s house and…the oval windows, and the pictures in the den. Jesus.” Alec pounded his fist on the work table. “He picked my brain about her. You did too.” He raised his voice an octave to imitate her. “‘What was she really like, Alec?’ You had me spilling my guts to you.”

“Alec, I know it must look that way, but…”

“Well, I’ll tell you something, Olivia.” He was standing right in front of the table, and she forced herself to look up into his eyes. “If you were trying to be like Annie, you’ve failed miserably. You’ll never be anything like her, and I’m not just talking about your lack of artistic talent.” He lifted the graph paper on which she had carefully drawn the design of hot-air balloons and crumpled it between his fists before throwing it to the floor. “I’m talking about the way you lie and deceive and manipulate. Annie was always open, always honest. She couldn’t have lied if her life depended on it.”

She could see nothing except the anger in Alec’s eyes. The rest of the room had blurred, darkened.

Alec picked up the wrapped oval window from the work table and looked down at Tom. “I’ll come back for the enlargement tomorrow,” he said. “Right now I need to get out of here.”

Olivia watched him leave, and then she was alone with Tom, uncertain how to break the silence.

“You know,” he said, his voice very soft after Alec’s rage, “I knew Paul had more than a casual interest in Annie. I’d be in here sometimes when he’d come in to talk to her, and it would be obvious. Annie thought it was my imagination, but I, uh…” He ran his big hand over his face, as though he suddenly felt very weary. “Well, let’s just say I understood how Paul felt.”

He pulled a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it before he continued. “After she died, he couldn’t stop buying her work. He spent a small fortune. I’d try to slow him down, but he had one thing on his mind, and that was Annie. I didn’t think you knew, though, so I kept my mouth shut about it.”

He took a drag on the cigarette and looked toward the front door. “In all the years I’ve known Alec, I’ve never seen him that angry. I should remind him that he’s the one who asked you to go to lunch with him. I was a witness, remember? It wasn’t like you went after him.”