Keeper of the Light

my mother used to talk to you when she had a problem, so I was wondering… Well, I just thought I could, like, try it, too.”

“What kind of problem can a young girl like you have?”

“It’s really complicated.” Lacey looked at her uncertainly, thinking, no doubt, that Mary was older than she’d expected her to be, too old to help a young girl out of a predicament.

“You don’t happen to have a cigarette, now, do you?” Mary asked.

“What?” Lacey looked stunned. Then she stood up and pulled a crushed pack of Marlboros from the pocket of her shorts. “I don’t really think I should give you one,” she said, holding the pack away from Mary. “Aren’t you, like… I mean… Isn’t it bad for your health?”

“No worse than for yours.” Mary held out her hand, and Lacey rested the beautiful tube of tobacco on her fingers. Mary lifted the cigarette to her lips, inhaling deeply as Lacey lit it for her. She began to cough— hack, actually—until tears ran down her cheeks, and Lacey patted her worriedly on the back.

“I’m all right, child,” Mary was finally able to say. “Oh, that’s lovely, thanks.” She gestured toward the rocker next to her. “Now sit down again and tell me your problem.”

Lacey slipped the cigarettes back in her pocket and sat down. “Well.” She looked at the arm of the chair, as though what she had to say was written there. “My father got really depressed after my mother died,” she said. “He’d just sit around the house and stare at pictures of the Kiss River Lighthouse all day long, because they reminded him of Mom, and he didn’t go to work and he looked awful.”

Mary remembered the year following Caleb’s death. Lacey could have been describing her back then.

“Then my Dad started being friends with a woman named Olivia, who was also the doctor who tried to save my mother’s life in the emergency room the night she was shot…”

“She was?” Mary remembered the young woman who’d dropped magazines off at the home. She’d had no idea Olivia was a doctor, much less the doctor who’d tried to help Annie. And married to Paul Macelli, wasn’t she? Good Lord, what a mess. She drew again on the cigarette, cautiously this time.

“Yes.” Lacey had taken off her sandals and raised her feet to the seat of the chair, hugging her arms around her legs. It was a position Annie might have squirmed her way into. “Anyway,” she continued, “she’s married to Paul Macelli, the guy who’s been talking to you about the lighthouse. But she’s really in love with my father.”

Mary narrowed her eyes. “Is she now?”

“Oh, definitely. I can tell by the way she talks about him and stuff. And the thing is, he really likes her too, but he says he won’t see her anymore, partly because she’s married, even though she’s actually separated, but mostly because he thinks it’s too soon since my mother died for him to feel that way.” Lacey stopped to catch her breath. “She’s not much like my mother,” she said, “and that bothers him, I guess. I really loved my mother, but everybody talks about her like she was a goddess or something.”

Lacey looked up as Trudy and Jane walked out onto the porch. Their eyes bugged out when they caught sight of Mary’s cigarette. Mary nodded to them, and they seemed to understand she wanted time alone with her young visitor. They walked down to the end of the porch and sat in the rockers there.

“Well, anyway,” Lacey said, “so now my Dad’s gone back into this little cocoon he was in before he got to be friends with Olivia. He looks bad, and he thinks about the lighthouse all the time, and I can’t stand being around him. He gets so weird. And Paul. I don’t understand why Olivia would like him more than my father. He’s so dorky.”

Mary smiled. She was not sure what dorky meant, but she was certain the girl’s assessment was accurate.

“Excuse me for saying that. I guess he’s, like, a friend of yours since you’ve been talking to him about the lighthouse and all.”

“You can say whatever’s on your mind, child.”

Lacey lowered her feet to the porch and sat back in the chair, her head turned toward Mary. “Did I explain this well enough? Can you see what the problem is?”

Mary nodded slowly. “I can see the problem far better than you can,” she said.

Lacey gave her a puzzled stare. “Well,” she said, “my mother always said you were a very wise woman. So if she came to you with a problem like this, how would you help her?”

Mary took in a long breath of clean air and let it out in a sigh. “If I had truly been a wise woman, I would never have helped your mother at all,” she said. But then she leaned over to take the girl’s hand. “You go home, now, child, and don’t worry yourself over this. It’s a matter for grown-ups, and I promise you I’ll attend to it.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

Mary had a plan. Some might say it was cruel, but she could think of no other way to change the destructive legacy Annie had left behind her. Three people’s lives were in turmoil. Four, actually, if she counted Annie’s daughter. She would have to play the old, eccentric fool—a role she was not fond of, but which she knew how to employ when necessary. It would be necessary tomorrow, when she took the members of the committee on their tour of the keeper’s house. And it would be necessary now, when she called Alec O’Neill to make her demand.

She steeled herself for the phone call, using the private phone in Jane’s room so that no one would hear her and wonder what the hell was going on with old Mary. It rang three times before Alec answered it.

“Hello, Mary,” he said. “We’re all set for nine o’clock tomorrow. Is that still a good time for you?”

“Perfect,” Mary said. “Perfect. Now who did you say is coming along?”

“Myself, and Paul Macelli, and one of the women on the committee, Nola Dillard.”

“Ah, well, I won’t be able to do it then.”

“I…what?”

“I’ll take you and Mr. Macelli and his wife. The doctor.”