Downstairs, he took Annie’s tool case from the closet in the den and carried it into the kitchen, setting it by the back door. Then he poured himself a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee.

He had to see the lighthouse today. He needed more pictures of it before they moved it, because once it was moved it wouldn’t be the same. The view would be different. The air around the gallery wouldn’t smell the same. It wouldn’t feel the same.

He opened the drawer next to the refrigerator and took out the stack of lighthouse pictures. It had been many weeks since he’d looked through them. He propped them up against his juice glass and sat down to eat.

“Dad?”

He looked up to see Lacey in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Hi, Lace,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure. Why?”

“You look…I don’t know.” She sat down at the table and hugged her arms across her chest. Her eyes fell to the photographs on the table. “Why do you have them out?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, lifting the top picture, one he had taken from inside the lens itself. The landscape was upside down in the curved glass. “I was looking through them to see if I’ve missed anything. I want to make sure I’ve got every angle of it before they move it.”

Lacey scrunched up her face. “You have every possible angle anybody could ever have, Dad.”

Alec smiled. “Maybe.”

Lacey took an orange from the fruit bowl in the middle of the table and began rolling it back and forth between her hands. “Do you want to do something today?” she asked.

He looked across the table at her, surprised. “What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Anything. You can choose.”

“Do you want to go to the lighthouse with me?”

“Dad.” She looked bruised, and he thought she was going to cry. “Please don’t start going there all the time again. Please.”

“I haven’t been in a long time, Lacey.”

“I know. So why do you have to go today?” She did start crying now. She raised her feet to the chair and hugged her legs to her chest. The orange rolled off the table and she didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I get up this morning and all of a sudden everything’s, like, gone back the way it was.”

“What do you mean, back the way it was?”

Her eyes had found Annie’s tool case by the door. “Why is that there?” she asked, pointing.

“I’m going to drop it by the emergency room for Olivia.”

“She can come here to use it.”

He shook his head. “She can’t come over here anymore, Lace. She needs to spend her time with her own family, not with us.”

“She doesn’t have a family.”

“She has Paul.”

Lacey made a disdainful noise. “He’s an asshole.”

Alec shrugged. “Regardless of what you think of him, he’s still her husband.”

“I thought you liked her.”

“I do like her, Lacey, but she’s a married woman. Besides, Mom hasn’t been gone all that long.”

“Mom’s dead.” Lacey glared at him. “She’s burned up into fifty million little ashes that the sharks probably ate for dinner the night after her funeral. She’s nothing but shark shit, now, Dad.”

If he’d been sitting closer to her, he would have slapped her. So it was just as well the table was between them. Her cheeks reddened quickly. She had frightened herself.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was small and she kept her eyes glued to the table. “I’m really sorry I said that, Daddy.”

“She was a very special person, Lace,” he said, gently. “She can’t be replaced.”

Lacey was quiet for a moment. She drew invisible lines on the table with her fingertips. “Can I still call Olivia?”

“Sweetheart.” He set down the picture. “You have a reasonable curfew now, so I really don’t see much point to you disturbing her every night, do you?”

“But…when would I get to talk to her?”

She looked waiflike, with her funny hair and red nose, and her big, sad blue eyes. “I’m sorry, Lace,” he said. “I let things get out of hand and you got caught in the middle. Why don’t you call her…not today, though, she has some things to work out today…but in a few days, and then you and she can arrange how and when you can talk. You’re welcome to talk with her if she’s willing, but I’m not going to be seeing her anymore.”

Olivia was taking a quick lunch break in her office when Kathy brought in the tool case and set it on her desk.

“Alec O’Neill left this for you,” she said.

Olivia nodded. “Thanks, Kathy.”

“And there’s a compound fracture on its way in.”

“Okay. I’ll be right there.”

She set down her peach as Kathy left the room, and opened the case, spreading it flat. The tools were neatly arranged, as she had left them the last time she was at Alec’s. Tucked into one of the pockets was a white envelope with her name on it, and inside she found a note in Alec’s handwriting.Tools are for you, for as long as you want them. Put them to good use. I spoke to Paul last night—he knows you need to talk to him. Lacey’s upset to learn you aren’t coming over anymore. I told her she could call you in a few days. Hope that’s okay with you. I wish you the best, Olivia.Love, Alec

She was not going to cry again. Absolutely not. Still, she needed a minute to herself. She hit the lock on her office door and turned to lean her back against it, eyes closed, arms folded across her chest, and she stood that way until the distant sound of the ambulance siren brought her back to life.



CHAPTER FORTY-NINE


A young girl was standing on the sidewalk in front of the retirement home. Mary had just finished the crossword puzzle when she looked up from the rocker to see the girl shading her eyes and looking, Mary thought, directly at her. The girl started up the walk, and Mary dropped the folded newspaper to the floor.

“Are you Mrs. Poor?” the girl asked when she reached the porch. She had very odd hair. Bizarre. Red on top and black at the ends. Mary knew who she was. She recognized the vibrant red the girl had tried to cover up. She knew that fair, freckled skin, and those wide blue eyes and deep dimples.

“Yes, young lady,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

The girl pointed to the rocker next to Mary. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

“Well, now, I wish you would.”

“My name is Lacey,” she said, sitting down. “I’m Annie O’Neill’s daughter… Do you remember her?”

Mary chuckled. “As well as I remember my name,” she said. “You look like your mama, don’t you?”

Lacey nodded, then touched her hair. “Except for this,” she said. She glanced out at the waterfront and then returned her eyes to Mary, leaning sideways in the chair. “This is going to sound pretty weird, I guess, but I know my mother used to talk to you when she had a problem, so I was wondering… Well, I just thought I could, like, try it, too.”

“What kind of problem can a young girl like you have?”

“It’s really complicated.” Lacey looked at her uncertainly, thinking, no doubt, that Mary was older than she’d expected her to be, too old to help a young girl out of a predicament.

“You don’t happen to have a cigarette, now, do you?” Mary asked.

“What?” Lacey looked stunned. Then she stood up and pulled a crushed pack of Marlboros from the pocket of her shorts. “I don’t really think I should give you one,” she said, holding the pack away from Mary. “Aren’t you, like… I mean… Isn’t it bad for your health?”

“No worse than for yours.” Mary held out her hand, and Lacey rested the beautiful tube of tobacco on her fingers. Mary lifted the cigarette to her lips, inhaling deeply as Lacey lit it for her. She began to cough—hack, actually—until tears ran down her cheeks, and Lacey patted her worriedly on the back.

“I’m all right, child,” Mary was finally able to say. “Oh, that’s lovely, thanks.” She gestured toward the rocker next to her. “Now sit down again and tell me your problem.”

Lacey slipped the cigarettes back in her pocket and sat down. “Well.” She looked at the arm of the chair, as though what she had to say was written there. “My father got really depressed after my mother died,” she said. “He’d just sit around the house and stare at pictures of the Kiss River Lighthouse all day long, because they reminded him of Mom, and he didn’t go to work and he looked awful.”

Mary remembered the year following Caleb’s death. Lacey could have been describing her back then.

“Then my Dad started being friends with a woman named Olivia, who was also the doctor who tried to save my mother’s life in the emergency room the night she was shot…”

“She was?” Mary remembered the young woman who’d dropped magazines off at the home. She’d had no idea Olivia was a doctor, much less the doctor who’d tried to help Annie. And married to Paul Macelli, wasn’t she? Good Lord, what a mess. She drew again on the cigarette, cautiously this time.

“Yes.” Lacey had taken off her sandals and raised her feet to the seat of the chair, hugging her arms around her legs. It was a position Annie might have squirmed her way into. “Anyway,” she continued, “she’s married to Paul Macelli, the guy who’s been talking to you about the lighthouse. But she’s really in love with my father.”

Mary narrowed her eyes. “Is she now?”

“Oh, definitely. I can tell by the way she talks about him and stuff. And the thing is, he really likes her too, but he says he won’t see her anymore, partly because she’s married, even though she’s actually separated, but mostly because he thinks it’s too soon since my mother died for him to feel that way.” Lacey stopped to catch her breath. “She’s not much like my mother,” she said, “and that bothers him, I guess. I really loved my mother, but everybody talks about her like she was a goddess or something.”

Lacey looked up as Trudy and Jane walked out onto the porch. Their eyes bugged out when they caught sight of Mary’s cigarette. Mary nodded to them, and they seemed to understand she wanted time alone with her young visitor. They walked down to the end of the porch and sat in the rockers there.

“Well, anyway,” Lacey said, “so now my Dad’s gone back into this little cocoon he was in before he got to be friends with Olivia. He looks bad, and he thinks about the lighthouse all the time, and I can’t stand being around him. He gets so weird. And Paul. I don’t understand why Olivia would like him more than my father. He’s so dorky.”

Mary smiled. She was not sure what dorky meant, but she was certain the girl’s assessment was accurate.

“Excuse me for saying that. I guess he’s, like, a friend of yours since you’ve been talking to him about the lighthouse and all.”

“You can say whatever’s on your mind, child.”

Lacey lowered her feet to the porch and sat back in the chair, her head turned toward Mary. “Did I explain this well enough? Can you see what the problem is?”

Mary nodded slowly. “I can see the problem far better than you can,” she said.

Lacey gave her a puzzled stare. “Well,” she said, “my mother always said you were a very wise woman. So if she came to you with a problem like this, how would you help her?”

Mary took in a long breath of clean air and let it out in a sigh. “If I had truly been a wise woman, I would never have helped your mother at all,” she said. But then she leaned over to take the girl’s hand. “You go home, now, child, and don’t worry yourself over this. It’s a matter for grown-ups, and I promise you I’ll attend to it.”



CHAPTER FIFTY


Mary had a plan. Some might say it was cruel, but she could think of no other way to change the destructive legacy Annie had left behind her. Three people’s lives were in turmoil. Four, actually, if she counted Annie’s daughter. She would have to play the old, eccentric fool—a role she was not fond of, but which she knew how to employ when necessary. It would be necessary tomorrow, when she took the members of the committee on their tour of the keeper’s house. And it would be necessary now, when she called Alec O’Neill to make her demand.

She steeled herself for the phone call, using the private phone in Jane’s room so that no one would hear her and wonder what the hell was going on with old Mary. It rang three times before Alec answered it.

“Hello, Mary,” he said. “We’re all set for nine o’clock tomorrow. Is that still a good time for you?”

“Perfect,” Mary said. “Perfect. Now who did you say is coming along?”

“Myself, and Paul Macelli, and one of the women on the committee, Nola Dillard.”

“Ah, well, I won’t be able to do it then.”