Keeper of the Light

“Yeah. She hated that, but if I could see the man who killed her and I had a knife, I’d slice him up.” Her hands were balled into fists as she spoke, and Sylvie opened one eye to observe the unprotected bowl of ice cream on the floor in front of her. “I could do it,” Lacey said. “I could kill him and I wouldn’t ever feel bad about it.”

Olivia nodded, certain Lacey meant what she said.

“I keep imagining what it must have felt like to have that bullet shoot into her chest.”

“Your father told me you were with her when it happened. That must have been terrible for you.”

Lacey poked at her ice cream. “I was standing right next to her,” she said. “I was in charge of the green beans, and she was in charge of the salad. This man rushed in and started yelling at this lady in the food line. Mom could never stay out of anything. She stepped right in front of the lady and said, ‘Please put the gun away, sir. It’s Christmas.’ And he shot her. Bam.” Lacey winced, and a visible shiver ran through her arms. “I keep seeing her face. Sometimes when I’m in bed at night, that’s all I can see. Her eyes got real wide, and she made a little noise like she was surprised, and where the bullet went through her shirt, there was a little speck of blood.” She looked up at Olivia. “I blamed you for a long time, because I was so sure she’d be all right. I couldn’t imagine her dying. Then it seemed like once you got to her you made things worse. My father says you didn’t, though. He said you tried really hard to save her.”

“He’s right, Lacey. I did.”

Lacey ate a few more mouthfuls of her sundae before looking at Olivia from under a shock of two-toned hair. “Do you like my father?” she asked.

“Very much.”

Lacey lowered her eyes again. “He’s been a little better since he started…being friends with you,” she said. “He used to walk around like he was sleepwalking or something. He hardly ate anything and he didn’t care what he wore and all his clothes got too big for him. He looked like a scarecrow, and all he’d do was carry around his stupid old pictures of the lighthouse and stare at them every chance he got. He used to sleep with my mother’s old sweatshirt.”

Olivia ached for Alec. She was embarrassed by this glimpse into his dark and private world.

Lacey took the last bite of her banana, now swimming in a chocolate soup. She swirled her spoon around in the bowl with her stubby fingers and their chewed-off nails. “I met your husband at the lighthouse meeting the other night,” she said, glancing up at Olivia. “I thought he looked kind of nerdy. No offense.”

Nerdy? Olivia supposed that a forty-year-old man with wire-rimmed glasses and cerebral good looks would probably strike a fourteen-year-old as nerdy. “No offense taken,” she said.

“Do you think my father’s handsome?”

Olivia shrugged noncommittally, aware she was treading on dangerous ground. “I suppose so.”

“My mother used to say he was hot. They were, like, completely and totally in love.” Lacey moved her wrist back and forth, her watch sparkling in the light from the table lamp. “Nola would love to get into my father’s pants,” she said, her eyes glued to the watch.

“That’s sort of a crude way to say she’s interested, don’t you think?”

Lacey grinned at her. “I think you’re kind of prissy. I mean, if you think my father’s handsome, don’t you sometimes wonder what it would be like to go to bed with him?”

Olivia struggled to keep the shock from her face. She leaned forward and spoke slowly. “What I think, or what your father thinks, or what Nola thinks about that sort of thing is very personal, Lacey. It’s not your place to speculate about it.”

Lacey’s eyes filled in a half-second’s time. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, crimson patches forming on her throat and cheeks. Her lower lip trembled in a way Olivia could not bear to watch. She set her own bowl of melting ice cream on the floor and moved forward to take Lacey in her arms. Lacey held her tightly, her delicate shoulders shaking with her sobs.

“It’s okay.” Olivia kissed the top of her head. She remembered being held this way a lifetime ago by Ellen Davison, who never pressed her to tell her why her body ached and bled, who never once suggested she go home again. She remembered the surprising strength in Ellen’s slender arms, strength that let her know she could finally turn her burden over to a grown-up who would keep her safe.

“My father hates me,” Lacey wept.

“Oh, no, honey. He loves you very much.”

“There was just that drop of blood on her shirt, so I told him she’d be all right. He was so scared. I wasn’t used to that—I’d never seen him look scared of anything before—and I kept telling him not to worry. He believed me that she’d be okay. He blames me for getting his hopes up.”

Olivia felt Lacey’s fingers on her back, clutching her blouse.

“It could have been me,” Lacey said. “I was thinking the same thing my mother was, that I should just jump in front of that lady. Maybe he wouldn’t have shot a kid, and then nobody would’ve gotten hurt. I think my father wishes I’d been the one to get shot. For the longest time after she died, he wouldn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t even look at me and he kept calling me Annie.” Lacey stiffened beneath Olivia’s arms. “I hate him. He forgot my birthday. He thinks Clay’s so wonderful because he’s smart and got a scholarship to Duke and everything and I ended up having to go to summer school. He just wishes I’d go away. He wouldn’t care if I stayed out all night long. He wouldn’t care if I never came home.”

Olivia’s own tears fell onto Lacey’s hair. It was Alec Lacey should be talking to, Alec who needed to listen to his daughter’s fears. It was Alec who needed to tell her he would do everything in his power to make her world right again.

But Alec wasn’t here, and perhaps he wasn’t capable of listening to Lacey yet, or of coping with fears that were so much like his own, and so Olivia pulled Lacey more tightly into her arms. She would hold her for as long as it took to make her feel safe.

CHAPTER FORTY- TWO

Every time Alec glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw the lines across his forehead and the deepening crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. Maybe he’d spent too much time in the sun over the last few years. Or maybe he was just getting old.