Keeper of the Light

“Why not? I could support you better. And Clay. I’d adopt Clay. I could…”

“Don’t talk that way!” She sat up. “You said you’d take whatever I was willing to give. This is it.”

“But I love you.”

“And I love Alec.”

For the first time, he was furious with her. He pushed her aside and got out of the bed, but she quickly grabbed his arm. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did.”

“You hardly ever see him. He’s gone all the time, leaving you with a baby and…”

“Because he worries about money. It’s the only kind of work he can get right now. If we wanted to live in a city, he wouldn’t have to work so hard, but we want to live here. So that’s the price we have to pay.”

He looked down at her. “You’re using me.”

“No.”

“You are. I’m just filling a need when Alec’s not around, right? Good old Paul.”

“Don’t say that.” She began to cry, reaching for him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and he put the argument aside.

She held his hand when she walked him out to his car that night. “I’ll never leave Alec, Paul. If you want me on those terms, you can have me. Otherwise, don’t come here again.”

Of course he continued to come, enduring the knowing nod from Mary Poor, the telltale creaking of the bed. He never lost the hope that Annie would reconsider. The Lost Colony play closed on Labor Day and he got a job as a waiter in Manteo. It was hardly what he’d been trained to do, but he could not leave. Then things suddenly, abruptly changed.

For several days in a row, the red scarf did not appear. He worried she was ill, or angry with him, and he had made up his mind to call her when he spotted the scarf hanging once again from the corner of the deck. He drove to Kiss River that afternoon, greatly relieved.

“She’s upstairs,” Mary Poor said when she met Paul at the door. Paul could never look this woman squarely in the eye. He felt disliked by her, his presence merely tolerated. “She’s not feeling well.”

Annie looked terrible. Her hair was tied back and the skin around her eyes was puffy. There were lines in her face he had never noticed before, at the corners of her mouth and across her forehead.

“What’s wrong?” He touched her forehead for fever, but it was cool. “Poor Annie. You look awful.” He tried to draw her into his arms, but she pulled back.

“We can’t make love,” she said, sitting down on the bed.

“Of course not. Not with you feeling so bad.”

“No, that’s not it.” She was agitated. Hot-wired. “We need to talk.”

Alec must have found out. This would be it, then. Things were finally coming to a head and in the next few minutes, Paul would learn either that he had won or lost.

Annie kneaded her hands together in her lap. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

“What’s happened? Does Alec know?”

“No. I’m just…disgusted with myself.” With that she jumped up from the bed and ran down the hall to the tiny upstairs bathroom. He heard her getting sick. He thought then of how she wouldn’t let him use rubbers because they could interfere with his pleasure. She’d assured him, though, that he didn’t need to worry, that she had replaced the strange bevy of birth control devices she’d used in college with a diaphragm. Exactly how foolproof was a diaphragm?

Her skin was damp and gray when she returned to the room. He forced her into his arms, and she clung to him, weeping.

“You’re pregnant.” He spoke quietly into her hair.

“No!” She pulled away, wild-eyed. “Please Paul, just leave the Outer Banks and don’t come back.”

“I won’t go. Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Please.” She started sobbing, far too loudly. She pleaded with him to leave, all the while clutching his arm. He heard Mary Poor’s slow footsteps on the stairs, and he grabbed Annie’s hands to try to calm her as the door swung open.

Mary walked into the room, and suddenly she did not seem the old woman Paul had thought her to be. She stood very tall, a light burning in her blue eyes. “Get out now and stop upsetting her,” she said. She sat down on the bed and pulled Annie’s head against her shoulder, and Annie clung to her. “Hush, Annie. You’ll make yourself sick again.” Mary looked up at Paul. “Get out,” she said, her voice soft now, not unkind, and Paul felt his own tears starting.

“Don’t I have a right to know why?”

“Leave now,” Mary said.

Annie clung more tightly to Mary, drawing her knees up, trying to fit all of herself into the protection of the old woman’s arms, and Paul had no choice but to leave. He returned to his apartment, where he packed up his belongings. He left the Outer Banks that same night, after taping his family’s address and phone number in Philadelphia to the door of Annie’s studio.

Twelve going on twenty. Of course she’d been pregnant. What other reason could there have been for her secretive behavior and his sudden dismissal? If she had told him during the interviews that Lacey was thirteen, he would have done the math. He would have figured it out.

Oh, Jesus. He opened the drawer of his night table and pulled out the stack of photographs the Gazette photographer had taken of Annie at her home. There was one of