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“Bother me.” He felt his face cloud over. “You’re my daughter, Lacey.”
The phone rang on the wall behind him.
“That’s probably her,” Lacey said. Her face had gone white beneath her freckles.
“You’re in deep shit now, O’Neill,” Clay said as Alec stood up to answer the phone.
“Dr. O’Neill?” the woman said, her tone formal, removed.
“Yes.”
“This is Janet Green, Lacey’s counselor.”
He had an immediate image of her: dark hair sprayed into place, too-pink lipstick, a smile wide and false. Someone too cold, too rigid to be working with teenagers.
“Lacey mentioned you’d be calling.” Lacey had certainly waited until the last minute. He watched his daughter pick at her raisin bran, her head bowed, her long red hair falling like curtains on either side of the bowl.
“I live near you,” Janet Green continued. “I’d like to stop by this afternoon and talk with you about Lacey. Save you a trip in.”
Alec looked around him. Last night’s dishes, streaked red with tomato sauce, cluttered the counter next to the sink. The spaghetti pot was still on the stove, one long strand of spaghetti stuck to its side in the shape of a question mark. Pieces of mail and old newspapers littered the countertops, and his pictures of the lighthouse were strewn everywhere. “Let’s just talk on the phone,” he said. “Well, did she tell you why I want to see you?” “She said her grades aren’t very good.” “No, they’re not. She’s really plummeted, I’m afraid. She has nothing above a C and she’s failing biology and algebra.”
“Failing?” He shot Lacey a look. She leaped from her chair as though he’d touched her with a live wire, swung her book bag from the counter to her shoulder, and flew out the door. He lowered the receiver to his chest. “Lace!” he called after her, but he saw the red blur of her hair as she ran past the kitchen window and out to the street. Alec lifted the phone back to his ear. “She took off,” he said.
“Well, I know she’s upset. She’ll have to take biology and algebra in summer school if she wants to pass the year.”
Alec shook his head. “I don’t get it. She’s always been a straight-A student. Shouldn’t I have known about this sooner? What about her last report card? I would have noticed if she was slipping.” “Straight C’s.”
He frowned into the phone. “She must not have shown it to me. That’s so unlike her.” He’d never seen a C out of either of his children. For that matter, he’d never seen a B.
“Your son’s kept up with things quite well despite losing his mother, hasn’t he? I hear he’s going to be class valedictorian.”
“Yes.” Alec sat down again at the table, suddenly exhausted. If it were not for the lighthouse meeting, he would go back to bed.
“And he’s going to Duke next year?”
“Yes.” He watched his son get up from the table. Clay took a peach from the fruit bowl and waved as he walked out the door.
“I think Lacey’s a little concerned about what that’ll be like, having her brother gone, just the two of you in the house.”
Alec frowned again. “Did she say that?”
“It’s just a feeling I got. She seems to have had a very difficult time adjusting to her mother’s death.”
“I—well, I guess if her grades are down …” She was failing. He’d had no idea. “I haven’t picked up on anything unusual.” He hadn’t looked for anything. He’d let his children fend for themselves these past few months.
“You’re a veterinarian, right, Dr. O’Neill?”
“Yes.”
“Lacey said you’re not working right now.”
He wanted to tell her it was none of her business, but he held his tongue for Lacey’s sake. “I’ve taken some time off.” He’d thought he’d take a few weeks off after Annie died. The weeks turned into months, the months accumulated at breakneck speed, and he still had no intention of returning to work.
“I see,” Janet Green said, her voice dropping a degree or two to the level of pure condescension. “By the way, are you aware Lacey’s had two detentions in the last few months for smoking on school grounds?”
He started to tell her that Lacey didn’t smoke, but obviously this woman knew his daughter better than he did. “No, I didn’t know that,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.”
He got off the phone and sat down at the table again, drained. This weariness was new for him. He was known for his energy, for his inability to sit idly for more than a minute or two. Now he was too tired to wash the spaghetti pot.
They ate spaghetti a few times a week. It was easy. Boil water, open a jar of sauce. Every once in a while one of the kids would cook, but they were not much more inventive than he was.
Annie used to make everything from scratch. Even bread. Two loaves of honey whole wheat every Saturday. The house would fill with the smell. This kitchen had been alive back then. She’d leave certain items on the countertops—a row of fruit along the backsplash, or colorful packages of exotic teas on the windowsills—so she could admire them while she worked.
Back in those days, Annie would usually get home ahead of him and create something wonderful in the kitchen, and often—in his memory, it was every other day or so—he’d come home and invite her into the bedroom and she would hand the spoon over to one of the kids, who would groan and resign themselves to another late dinner. Annie, the flush of longing already burning in her cheeks, would tell them, “Remember, loves, it’s elegant to dine late.”
That was the way this house operated back then. Annie had been a firm believer in spontaneity. “This is a house without rules,” she’d say. “We have to trust ourselves and our bodies to tell us when to sleep, to eat, to get up in the morning. To make love.”
It had only been in the last couple of years that the kids realized there were plenty of rules in this house—they were just not the same rules their friends lived by, but rather the peculiar rules of Annie’s creation. She allowed no clocks in the house, although Alec always wore a watch. Lacey and Clay were free to make their own decisions in the matter, both of them following their mother’s example until last year, when Clay began wearing a watch identical to Alec’s. Before that, Clay and Lacey were often late for the school bus, or on a few bizarre occasions, extremely early. They had never had a curfew, which made them the envy of their friends. Even when they were small, they were allowed to go to bed anytime they pleased. They regulated themselves quite well, actually, which probably had something to do with the fact that the O’Neills did not own a TV.
Lacey and Clay were never punished for their few misdeeds, but were rewarded frequently, just for existing. When they were young, Alec had often felt like a spectator in all of this, Annie setting the tone for the way they were raised. He caught on quickly, though, discovering that if you treated kids with respect they behaved responsibly. Lacey and Clay had always been a testimony to their methods. “The most important thing is that you’re having fun and you’re safe,” Alec would tell them before they went out. He took delight in that, in trusting them when the parents of their friends weighed their kids down with warnings, threats, and reprimands.
On a whim, Alec got up from the table and went upstairs to Lacey’s room. He opened the door and shook his head with a smile. The room was a wreck, the bed unmade, clothes heaped everywhere, the hamper in her corner overflowing. Her desk was stacked with books and tapes and papers, and the walls were covered with posters of decadent, noxious-looking musicians. On the shelf that ran around three sides of her room, at the level of his shoulders, sat her antique dolls, providing a weird contrast to the depraved young men. There were thirteen of the dolls, neatly spaced on the shelves he’d built five years ago. Annie had given her a doll for each birthday. Right now they looked out at Alec with placid smiles on their haunting, small-toothed mouths.
She’s smoking, damn it. Should he talk to her about it? What would Annie have done? An open discussion at the dinner table, most likely, with no accusations, no expectations, no demands. Alec let out a long sigh. He wasn’t up to it.
Tripod hobbled into the doorway and leaned heavily against Alec’s leg. Alec gave the dog a perfunctory scratch behind one ear as they stared together into the disaster that was Lacey’s room. Annie had been no sterling housekeeper—she was notoriously disorganized—but she’d been a master at cramming things into closets and cupboards, and the house always had the appearance of neatness. Lacey’s room had certainly never looked like this when Annie was alive, but Alec could hardly hold his daughter responsible for the mess in this room when it only reflected what was going on in every other room in the house.
He leaned against the door jamb and shut his eyes to block out the reproachful, saucer-eyed stares of the dolls. “I’m screwing up, Annie,” he said, and he felt Tripod turn his head to look up at him at the defeated tone of his voice.
At ten-twenty that morning, Alec pulled into the parking lot of the Sea Tern and slipped into the space between Nola Dillard’s BMW and Brian Cass’s old station wagon. He was late again, but he was loaded with excuses this time. First the call from Lacey’s counselor, which admittedly had not taken that long but which had forced him to spend a good hour thinking about his life. Then there was the call from Randi, begging him to come back to work. She was handling just about everything since he’d left, and she’d been tolerant at first. Very understanding—a quality of Randi’s he had always criticized her for. She let people walk on her, and now he was doing the walking. Well, she was starting to fight back. This was the third phone call this week, but he wasn’t about to bend. He told her once again he wasn’t ready to return to work. He wasn’t sure he would ever be ready.
“Here he is.” Nola Dillard stepped toward him as he walked into the meeting room at the back of the restaurant. Her jaw had a peculiar set to it. She clutched his arm, her heavy, flowery perfume filling the air between them, and whispered close to his ear. “We’ve got problems, hon.”
“Thought you got lost, Alec.” Walter Liscott stood up and pulled out the chair at the head of the table for him.
“Sorry I’m late.” He took the seat Walter offered him.
The entire Save the Lighthouse Committee was assembled in front of him. Two men in addition to himself and two women, already well into their coffee and doughnuts. They had undoubtedly grown accustomed to his tardiness by now. Sondra Carter, the second woman on the committee and the owner of a small boutique in Duck, had suggested it was his little tribute to Annie, who had never been on time for anything in her life.
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 fund-raising 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.
