Keeper of the Light

“If you had really wanted to dissuade me, all you had to do was tell me your former lover lived here. But you intentionally avoided mentioning that fact.”

“I was wrong, Liv. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. I’m sorry.” He looked down at his hand, at his wedding band. “Do you still want to go out to lunch?”

The question seemed so ludicrous she laughed. “No, I don’t want to go out to lunch.”

He set Sylvie on the floor and stood up. “Well.” He looked unsure of his next move. “Is it all right if I use your bathroom before I go?”

“Of course.”

He left the room, and it was a full minute before she realized he had to pass the nursery to reach the bathroom. She went rigid on the couch, listening, trying to remember if she had left the nursery door open or closed. She stood up slowly and walked into the hall, where she could clearly see that the door was wide open. She steeled herself and walked into the room.

Paul stood next to the crib, his hands on the rail. He looked over at her when she stepped into the room, and dropped his eyes to her stomach.

“Are you…?”

“Yes.”

“Is it mine?”

“Of course,” she said. “That night you stopped by in April. That night you pretended I was Annie.”

“Oh, my God.” He turned away from her, leaning heavily on the crib.

She didn’t want to watch him wallow in his guilt. She walked through the house and out to the back deck, intentionally sitting in one of the chairs rather than on the settee so he would not be able to sit next to her if he came out. She watched a windsurfer gliding across the sound. He was blond. Tan. She could not guess his age from this distance, but he was good. Maybe as good as Alec.

It was a while before Paul joined her on the deck. He turned one of the chairs around so he was facing her, and very close.

“You’re nearly five months?”

“Twenty-one weeks, yes.”

“How are you feeling? Is everything going all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m healthy. I had an amniocentesis done, and it’s a boy.”

“A boy.” He smiled, and she wished she’d kept that fact from him. She was irritated by the pleasure on his face.

“You should have told me,” he chided. “It would have made a difference. It would have brought me back to reality.”

“I wanted you to want me because I was me,” she said, “not because I was carrying your child.”

He nodded, reaching a tentative hand out to touch her belly. She gritted her teeth, turning her head away from him so she would not have to see the emotion in his face.

“Annie made a fool of me,” he said.

She snapped her head back to him, brushing his hand away. “You made a fool of yourself.”

“All right,” he conceded, “all right.” He sat back in the chair. “Is there any way we can work things out?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we try, for the sake of our son if for no other reason? You know as well as I do that we had something genuinely good for a long time.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “It’s over, Paul. I don’t want you anymore. That’s the bottom line.”

He looked out at the sound, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick. “But what about the baby? I want to be involved in his life.”

“Well, perhaps you should speak to that lawyer of yours about your options.”

He winced, his eyes reddening behind his glasses. Then he stood up, very slowly, as if some invisible force was holding him down. She said nothing to stop him as he walked across the deck to the house. In another moment, she heard the front door open, then close.

Out on the sound, the windsurfer skimmed gracefully across the surface of the water. Olivia watched him as she lowered her hands to her lap, as she pulled the ring from her finger, slipped it into her pocket. She watched him until it was time to leave for work.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Alec dug out the old box of photographs from the closet in the den and sat down on the living room sofa to sift through them. He had not looked at these old pictures in years, and he had intentionally avoided them since Annie’s death. The box was full of her. Looking through the pictures now, he could actually see in the lines of her face, or in the uncertainty of her smile, when she was going under, when she was giving in to her dark side. All those times she’d slipped into those seemingly inexplicable periods of withdrawal made sense to him now. I’m going to die as punishment for all the bad things I’ve done.

Two abortions. All the nights she’d visited Mary. Alec had been grateful to the old woman for the company she’d given Annie on those nights he’d had to work on the mainland.

Fishermen. Tourists. She would take them into that little bedroom, the one that would fill every few seconds with the light he had thought of as his and Annie’s.

Alec heard the back door slam. Lacey was home. Damn. He’d wanted this time for himself. He needed it. In a moment she appeared at the door of the living room.