Keeper of the Light. Diane Chamberlain

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 Mary 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.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      Olivia bought a strawberry ice cream cone at the deli and sat on a bench across the street from the cedar-sided building that housed Annie’s studio. The front wall of the building was composed of ten large windows. She could see that stained glass panels hung inside them, but from her seat directly under the midday sun, she could not make out their shapes or designs.

      She’d done this one other time, sat on this bench and stared at the studio. It was just a month or so after Paul started talking about Annie, back when she was alive. Already Annie had assumed a larger-than-life dimension in Olivia’s mind, and she’d sat here hoping for a glimpse of the woman that never came. She’d lacked the courage to go inside the studio. She couldn’t be certain of her reactions if she came face to face with her. Paul was very bright, very attractive. If he were trying to seduce Annie, it could only be a matter of time until she gave in. Olivia imagined letting Annie see her, get to know her. If the woman had a shred of decency, she wouldn’t want to hurt her.

      Her reasons for sitting on this bench today were different. Now she just wanted to understand the pull Annie’d had over Paul. She already felt herself changing. She was beginning to enjoy her volunteer work at the shelter, although she had never simply given her skills away before. Her medical training had always included an unspoken focus on pulling in a hefty income.

      At first she had found the work at the shelter painful. She’d take the stories of the shelter residents home with her and lie sleepless in her bed, the tired faces of the women filling the empty darkness of her bedroom. The plight of those women and their children opened old wounds in Olivia she thought had healed long ago. She understood too well how it felt to be a victim, how it felt to be poor and desperate, and she had to continually remind herself that she was strong now. She was skilled. The consummate professional, Paul had once said of her, and she’d thought at the time that he’d meant it as a compliment. Still, seeing the hungry, battered children at the shelter triggered memories of snowy winters spent with one pair of thin-soled shoes, or meals of canned beans and a single hot dog, to be split between herself and her brothers, Clint and Avery.

      She swallowed the last of her ice cream cone and stood up. The beach traffic was heavier now that some schools were out for the summer, and she crossed the street carefully. She was cautious these days, aware that every move she made affected the tiny life forming inside her as well as her own.

      The small wooden sign next to the door read simply, stained glass and photography. She stepped inside, closing the door behind her and shutting out the street sounds. It took her a moment to adjust to the quiet, cool, multicolored beauty of the room. A man sat at a broad work table directly in front of her and he looked up when she walked in. Smoke curled in the air above him as he stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray on the table. He was a large man, with hair the color of shredded wheat tied back in a ponytail, and a ragged mustache above generous lips. His thick hand held some sort of tool, and he raised it from the piece of glass on which he was working.

      “Let me know if you have any questions.” His voice was deep, raspy.

      Olivia nodded, and walked to the right, away from his eyes. She was moving in slow motion, it seemed. She felt drugged, hypnotized, by the sunlit colors on either side of her. The studio was small and high-ceilinged, and the glass walls in the front and back were covered from floor to ceiling with stained glass panels in all sizes. Overwhelming. At first she could barely separate one piece from the next, but then her eye was drawn to a long panel, perhaps five feet by two, of a woman in Victorian garb. Her white dress seemed to flow and sway on the glass, and Olivia was reminded of the small angel Paul had bought for their Christmas tree. The woman peered out, coy-eyed, from beneath the brim of her flowered hat.

      The man at the work table caught her staring. “That one’s not for sale,” he said.

      “It’s beautiful,” Olivia said. “Did Annie O’Neill make it?”

      “Uh-huh. I kept it for myself when she died.” He laughed, a soft, guttural chuckle. “Told myself she would’ve wanted me to have it, since it was my favorite. The ones on the right side there were all Annie’s. Not too much of hers left. Most of it’s been sold.”

      Much of it, she guessed, to Paul.

      “The rest I made,” the man continued. He gestured toward the east end of the studio, where a maze of white temporary walls were covered with framed photographs. “Photographs are mostly mine, too, although Annie was an accomplished photographer in her own right.”

      Olivia walked toward the photographs. The first few walls were covered with color prints—seascapes, sunsets, nature shots—most of them with Tom Nestor’s signature in the lower right-hand corner. There was a surprising delicacy to the pictures for such a large man.

      She turned a corner and found photographs of three people she remembered all too well—Annie’s husband and two children. The shot of the girl was from her shoulders up. She grinned mischievously, deep dimples carved into her lightly freckled cheeks, her full red hair blowing wildly around her face.

      The photograph of the boy had been taken on the beach. He stood shirtless next to his surfboard, his dark hair slicked back and droplets of water sparkling starlike on his chest.

      Between those pictures was a black and white portrait of Alec O’Neill. Olivia was drawn to his eyes, pale beneath his dark brows, the pupils little black daggers that made her shiver. He wore a black cardigan sweater and a white T-shirt, the dark hair on his chest just visible at the neckline.