Keeper of the Light

by Diane Chamberlain

  The waitress appeared in the room and poured Alec a cup of coffee. “Help yourself to a doughnut, Dr. O’Neill,” she said.

  Alec nodded and set his notebook on the table. He looked at Nola, wondering what she had been trying to tell him.

  “Okay,” he said. “This morning we’re brainstorming fundraising ideas.”

  Walter ran his hand over his thinning gray hair. He cleared his throat and began speaking in a deep, syrupy voice. “We were talking before you came in, Alec. And the truth is, we’re not altogether in agreement on something.”

  Alec tensed. “What are you saying, Walter?” he asked. He would have to come on time from now on. Didn’t want to invite a mutiny.

  “Well…” Walter cleared his throat again and glanced at the others. He’d obviously been selected as their spokesperson. “While we’re all in agreement on the goal of this committee—raising funds to save the lighthouse—we’re not in agreement on how the lighthouse ought to be saved. Me for one, I don’t want to bust my tail raising money and then have them screw the whole thing up by trying to move the damn thing and topple it over in the process.”

  “I agree,” Sondra said. “Either our money goes to building a sea wall around the lighthouse, or they get none of it.”

  “Hold it.” Alec raised his hand. “You all know the choice on how the lighthouse is saved is not ours to make.”

  “That’s right,” Nola said. Her white-blond hair was pinned up as usual and she wore her gray power suit this morning, a blue Dorsett Realty pin attached to the lapel. She pointed a long red fingernail at Walter. “The Park Service wants to save the lighthouse as much as we do, Walter. They won’t agree to something they’re not absolutely certain will work. Come on, folks,” she pleaded. “We’ve worked so hard and the money’s starting to come in. Now that it’s getting close, y’all are chickening out.”

  “I’m just afraid they’ll make the wrong choice.”

  Walter sounded close to tears, and Alec understood his concern. Everyone in this room loved the Kiss River Lighthouse and understood its fragility. Up until a few weeks ago, the plan had been to build a sea wall around it. Within a few years, the lighthouse would be on its own small island in the sea. An aesthetically appealing solution. Now, quite suddenly, the Park Service had changed its mind and was speaking very seriously about moving it—building a track, lifting it up, and sliding it 600 yards inland, all at the cost of several million dollars. It was a frightening and impossible concept to comprehend. Not only did he understand Walter’s fears; he shared them.

  “Nola’s right,” Alec said. “We have to trust the engineers to come up with the best solution. We can’t second-guess them.”

  Nola winked at him. “I move we get on with the meeting.”

  “I second the motion,” Brian said.

  There was some grumbling, but no one left the table, and Alec led them through an hour of ideas. A silent auction. An educational brochure to generate interest. More talk shows and speaking engagements. It wasn’t until he was driving home that he let his own fears surface. Engineers were human. Fallible. What if they destroyed the lighthouse by trying to save it?

  He was at his desk in the den when Lacey got home from school. He spotted her through the window. She was out on the sidewalk talking to Jessica Dillard, Nola’s daughter and Lacey’s best friend. Jessica was grinning, but there was a meanness in the grin, an ugly superior quality that surprised him and made his heart ache for his daughter. Jessica stood with one hand on her hip. Her sleek blond hair rested on her shoulders and she had a cigarette elegantly balanced between her fingers. She looked very much like her mother.

  Alec leaned closer to the open window.

  “You should try it, Lacey,” Jessica was saying. “You’re so lame this year. You’ve forgotten how to have fun.”

  Lacey said something he couldn’t hear before turning toward the house. Try what, he wondered? Alcohol? Marijuana? Sex? He shuddered and turned to face the door, his chair creaking. “Lacey?”

  She stepped into the den, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Things okay with you and Jessica?”

  “Yes.” Lacey let a wall of red hair fall over her left eye, cutting him out. He wouldn’t push her. Not now.

  “I signed you up for summer school. Biology and Algebra.”

  “Only losers go to summer school.”

  “I’m afraid you don’t have much choice.”

  She looked up at him with her one exposed eye. “Are you going to ground me?”

  “Ground you? Of course not.” He’d never grounded his kids. “But I want you to promise me that if you start having that much trouble with school again, you’ll let me know.”

  “Okay.” She swept her hair back over her shoulder and turned to leave the room. In the doorway, she hesitated and looked back at him. “I’m sorry, Dad. I just haven’t been able to do my work this year.”

  “I know what you mean, Lacey,” he said. “I haven’t been able to do mine, either.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Paul was still in bed when he heard the interview on the radio. They were talking about the Kiss River Lighthouse. At first he thought he was dreaming, but the voice began to make sense, to clear his head. He opened his eyes to the blue and gold light streaming through the stained glass panel hanging in his bedroom window. He lay very still, listening.

  The woman’s name was Nola Dillard and she was talking about the Save the Lighthouse Committee. “We’re going to lose the Kiss River Lighthouse within three years if erosion continues at its current rate,” she said.

  Paul rolled onto his side and turned up the sound as Nola Dillard continued to speak of the disaster facing the tallest lighthouse in the country. When she was finished, Paul pulled his phone book out of the nightstand and dialed the number of the radio station.

  “How can I reach the woman who was just interviewed about the lighthouse?” he asked, propping himself up against the headboard of his bed.

  “She’s still here,” the male voice on the other end of the phone told him. “Hold on.”

  There was a thirty-second wait. He could hear voices in the background. Laughter.

  “This is Nola Dillard,” a woman said.

  “Yes, Ms. Dillard. My name is Paul Macelli and I just heard you talk about the Kiss River Lighthouse. I’d like to help.”

  “Great!” she said. “The bottom line is money, Mr….?”

  “Macelli. I’m afraid there’s not much I can do for you financially, but I have some spare time and energy. I’d be happy to help in some other way. I didn’t realize the lighthouse was in jeopardy.”

  There was a silence. He had somehow stumbled, said something wrong.

  When she spoke again, her voice had developed a barely perceptible chill. “Are you a new resident of the Outer Banks, Mr. Macelli?”

  So that was it. He was an outsider. He thought of telling her about the summer he’d lived here long ago, the summer after he got his masters degree, but he stopped himself. He had told no one about those few months in the Outer Banks, not even Olivia.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m new here, but I work for the Beach Gazette. Surely there’s some way I can help.”

  Nola Dillard sighed. “Well, I tell you what, hon. We’re having a committee meeting Thursday night at the Sea Tern Inn. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes.” Oh, yes. Two of his interviews with Annie had been in that restaurant. He’d avoided it since her death.

  “Meet me out front about seven forty-five. I’ll talk to the committee first and clear the way for you a bit, all right?”

  He thanked her and got off the phone. At least she hadn’t asked him what his interest was in the lighthouse. He would have said something about being a history fanatic, someone who couldn’t bear to lose the past. It would have been the truth.

  Nola Dillard was a striking woman. Early forties, probably. Pale-blond hair pinned up in back, enormous gray eyes, and skin a little too lined
from a tan she probably nurtured year-round.

  She reached her hand toward him and he shook it. “We’re all set, Mr…. Paul, is it? I’m Nola. Come on in.”

  He followed her through the familiar main room of the restaurant, with its heavy wooden tables and sea-lore accents, to a small room in the back. The committee members sat around one long table, and they looked up when he entered. There were three men and one woman besides Nola. He glanced at their faces and was startled when his eyes found Alec O’Neill at the head of the table. He recognized him immediately, from the glimpse he’d had of him with Annie, and more so, from the photograph of him in her studio—the black and white picture that had frightened him a little with its dark, unsmiling countenance and a threat in his pale eyes. Those eyes were on him now as Nola guided Paul toward the head of the table. He glanced quickly at the exit. Should he take off, make an absolute fool of himself? Nola’s hand was soft at his elbow, pushing him forward, as Alec rose from his chair.

  “Paul, this is Alec O’Neill, our venerable leader. Alec, Paul Macelli.”

  Alec O’Neill raised his dark eyebrows in Paul’s direction. Paul shook his hand, mumbling a greeting, his tongue suddenly too big for his mouth. He nodded his way around the rest of the group and took a seat next to Nola. A waitress came into the room and asked him what he’d like to drink. His first thought was something stiff and fiery, but a quick look around the room told him alcohol was out. Alec himself was drinking what looked like lemonade.

  Paul ordered iced tea. He leaned back in the chair, loosening the collar of his shirt.

  Alec looked at him with those riveting eyes and Paul felt totally exposed. Could he possibly know? Perhaps he recognized Paul’s name as the man who’d written the article about Annie in Seascape.

  “Nola says you’re a journalist,” Alec said.

  “Yes. I work for the Gazette, but I freelance too. So, if there’s any way you think I can help, just let me know.” He laughed nervously, the color rising in his cheeks.

  Alec took a swallow of his lemonade. “Well, I think there probably is a way you can help us. We need to educate the public. I handle speaking engagements locally and around the state, but we need to shift our publicity to the national level. The Kiss River Lighthouse is a national monument, so it shouldn’t be up to the locals to support the preservation effort. We’re talking about putting together a brochure of some sort on the history of the lighthouse, something that would have wide distribution.” Alec leaned back in his chair. “Do you think you could help with that?”

  “Of course.” Paul had dropped his eyes to Alec’s hands sometime during the last few minutes. Alec’s fingers were long, tanned, and angular. Paul thought of him touching Annie with those hands, pulling her close to him in their bed. Hands she welcomed on her body. Alec still wore his wedding ring. From this distance it looked like a plain gold band, but he knew that up close it would be inlaid with the same gold braid that had graced Annie’s ring. What had Alec done with her ring? She’d been cremated. What did they do…

  “So, paper and printing will be donated,” Alec was saying, and Paul quickly returned his gaze to Alec’s face, to his eyes, ice-blue and unavoidable. “It’s the compilation of the facts and the actual writing that we need.”

  “Is there a historical collection I can use?” Paul asked, and then he had a sudden, disconcerting thought. What if the old lighthouse keeper, Mary Poor, was still alive? She couldn’t be, he reassured himself. She’d been an old woman the last time he had seen her, and that had been many long years ago.

  “There’s a private collection,” Alec said. “I’ll check into getting you permission to look at it. But for now, how about just covering our efforts in the Gazette?”

  “Fine,” Paul said, and he sat back, glad to have the attention of the room off him as Alec shifted the topic to a silent auction. He would leave the moment the meeting was over.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was Mary Poor’s ninetieth birthday and she was quite content. She sat on the porch of the blue, two-story house that had been her home for the past two years and watched the early morning sunlight turn the boats on the waterfront purple, then pink, then yellow. She had gotten used to this view, to the gentle rhythm of the rocker, to sharing her porch with others her age. She had expected to live out her life at Kiss River, but she knew she was luckier than most to have had sixty-five years under the warmth of the beacon.

  She still spoke of the lighthouse to anyone who would listen. Over and over again, she recounted tales of the storms, the wrecks, the sea. She knew she sounded like the others when she rambled on that way, trapped in the past, but she didn’t care. It was a conscious decision she made to allow herself to babble, a privilege that came with age.

  The doctor who examined her yesterday had marveled at her keen vision, her fine hearing, and her strength, despite the tortured bone in her hip. Mary had talked politics with the man, showing off. “You’re sharper than I am, Mrs. Poor,” the doctor had said, and Mary was certain he had not been patronizing her.

  “So, if I’m in such good shape, why can’t I have a cigarette?” she’d asked him, but he’d only laughed, and slipped his stethoscope into his bag.

  Mary rarely let others know just how capable she still was. She wanted to enjoy some of the pleasures of old age, of being taken care of, pampered. She even let Sandy, one of the girls on the staff, cut her short, snow-white hair now, although she could still do it perfectly well herself if she had to.

  She tried to keep up with things. She watched the news, television still an amazement to her. She’d had one at Kiss River, but all it ever brought into her house there was static and splintery gray lines. She kept up with the newspaper, too. Right now the Beach Gazette rested on her lap, and when the boats on the waterfront finally lost their color and the show of the sunrise was over, she picked up the paper and began to read. Her favorite part was the crossword puzzle, but she always saved that until last, until she’d read everything else and needed something to work on as she waited for Trudy or Jane to get up and join her on the porch.

  She read the front page and then opened the paper. She was folding the page back when she saw the picture: the tall, glittering white brick lighthouse against a dark sky. A little well of pain surfaced briefly in her chest, then subsided. In the corner of the picture she could just make out the northern tip of her old house, her husband Caleb’s family home, the house the Park Service now owned. The headline read, Erosion Threatens Kiss River Lighthouse. There was a byline. Paul Macelli. Mary narrowed her eyes. Paul Macelli? They’d let anybody write about Kiss River these days. She read the article through. A committee had been formed to save the lighthouse. Alec O’Neill was chairman. Mary smiled when she read that. It fit.

  She rested the paper on her lap again and thought about Alec O’Neill. She had learned of Annie’s death too late to get to her funeral, and she’d wept, unable to remember the last time she’d cried over a loss. But Annie. A kindred spirit. Like a daughter in a way, although Mary’s own daughter, Elizabeth, had never listened to her with such interest. Mary could tell Annie anything, and Annie had told her all, hadn’t she? “Mary,” she’d said one night, after the fire had burned out and they’d drunk brandy, coffee, “you know me better than anyone in the world.”

  Mary had loved her, fiercely, with a lay-down-her-life-for-her sort of love. She thought of that after Annie died. Why couldn’t it have been her instead? She’d lived long enough, while Annie was just beginning, really. In more ways than one. Mary felt that blind sort of love that led her to do the things she did for Annie, to see to Annie’s happiness without bothering to think through the consequences, without stopping to think that what she did might be wrong.

  For a while after Annie died, Mary couldn’t imagine going on without her visits to look forward to. She’d seen Annie less since moving here to the old folks’ home, but the younger woman had still come once or twice a week, with gifts more often than not. Things Ma
ry didn’t need, but that was Annie, and Mary would never tell her not to bother. Annie’s visits were shorter here. There were always people around; she watched her words.

  It was her last visit that haunted Mary, that stayed in her mind. She told herself Annie was gone now, what did it matter? But Annie had been so distressed that afternoon as she sat with Mary in the living room, surrounded by the other residents of the home. The dimpled smile was gone, and she struggled to hold back tears. Mary had finally taken her up to her bedroom and let her weep, let her talk about what she’d done. Mary had absolved her, like a priest in a confessional. She actually thought of that later, that Annie had died forgiven.

  Mary had sent a card to Alec and her children. Sandy took her out to buy it, and she made that girl drive her to four or five card stores before she found one with a white lighthouse on it. She lay awake for one full night trying to decide what to write. She composed long dissertations in her mind on how extraordinary Annie was, how terribly she would miss her, but in the end she wrote something simple, something anyone might write, and sent the card off.

  Alec O’Neill. She had never been able to look that man in the eye. “I won’t hurt him,” Annie had said, too many times to count. “I’ll never hurt him.”

  Mary looked down at the article again, reading it through once more. They needed historical information on the lighthouse. Incidents. Anecdotes. Soon they would be looking for her. Who would come? Alec O’Neill? Paul Macelli? Or maybe someone from the Park Service. That would be best. If she saw Alec or Paul—well, she sometimes said too much these days. She might tell them more than they wanted to hear.