Keeper of the Light

“That’s fine.” She buckled her seat belt across the lap of her white cotton pants, and for a few seconds he was mesmerized by the delicacy of her hands, the whiteness of her fingers, and the smooth, rounded tips of her short nails. He remembered what she’d told him about holding Annie’s heart in her hand, and he could barely tear his eyes away as he started the Bronco and pulled it out onto the road.

“I haven’t been up this far,” she said when he took the right fork in the road, heading toward Duck.

“Really?” That seemed ridiculous. “It’s just a few miles from where you live, and you’ve been down here…how long?”

“Nearly a year,” she admitted. “I started working the day after we moved here. We had a new house to fix up, and there simply hasn’t been any time for us to explore the area.”

She spoke as though she and her husband were still together. Maybe in the week since he’d seen her things had changed. Maybe he’d moved back in.

They got a table on the deck outside the tiny restaurant. They were directly over the water, and a few fat geese looked up at them expectantly as he and Olivia took their seats.

They both ordered crab salad. Alec was relaxed, a different person than he’d been a week earlier. He remembered ordering their sandwiches in the deli, his body coiled and tense, ready to bolt. He’d been afraid to hear Olivia talk about the night Annie died, but it had helped him immeasurably to listen to her describe what happened, to hear her talk about feeling the same desperate need to keep Annie alive that he had felt.

He ordered wine, but Olivia did not, patting her stomach by way of explanation, and he remembered the baby.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. She looked healthy, except for the nearly translucent whiteness of her skin, which he assumed was natural for her.

“I’m all right,” she said. “A little tired. I worry about how the baby’s being affected by the stress I’m under.”

“You husband’s still gone?”

“Yes.” She looked down at her hands in her lap, probably playing with her ring as she had the week before. “I never imagined going through a pregnancy alone, much less raising a child by myself.” She smiled up at him. “I have nightmares that it might be twins. That’s all I’d need.”

“Are there twins in your family?”

“I’m one.”

“Really? Identical?” He tried to picture two of her.

“No. He was a boy.”

“Was?”

“He died a few years ago.” Olivia brushed her hand through the air, obviously whisking that topic away. “Anyway, I’d get this feeling every once in a while that there were two of them in here and it made me panicky. But I heard the heartbeat at my doctor’s appointment this week, and there was just one.”

They were quiet while their food was set in front of them. A ray of sunlight shimmered in Olivia’s dark, arrow- straight hair.

“How are things with your husband?” he asked when the waitress had left their table.

Olivia lifted her fork. “Not good,” she said. “He seems completely disinterested in me. I called to tell him I love him—as you suggested—and he said I shouldn’t bother, that he’s not worth it.” She tried to smile, but didn’t quite succeed.

“Maybe he feels guilty about the affair.”

He saw her start. “He didn’t have an affair. I told you it was more of a fantasy.”

“Sorry,” he said.

She took a bite of her crab salad, chewing and swallowing before she spoke again. “He worked with her, and then he became obsessed with her, talking about her all the time. He’d compare me to her, and I didn’t compare too well.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“She was married and not the least bit interested in him.

He admitted that it was completely one-sided.” She spoke forcefully, as if she were trying to convince herself as much as she was him. Maybe more. “Nevertheless,” she continued, “I didn’t measure up to his image of this woman, so when she…so even though he couldn’t have her, he still left me.”

Alec frowned. Her husband sounded like a jerk.

“She was all he’d talk about, and I put up with it. I thought I shouldn’t overreact, I should let him talk and get it out of his system, but he never did.”

“Did he leave so he could get closer to her? I mean, forgive me, Olivia, but maybe he wanted to have an affair with her and didn’t feel right about it while he was still with you. So he…”

Olivia shook her head. “She moved away before he moved out.”

“Where did she go? Could he still be in touch with her?”

She suddenly laughed, then covered her mouth with her hand. “No, I’m sure he isn’t.” She picked at the crab salad with her fork. “She’s in California.”

“California’s not on another planet. What makes you so sure he’s not still communicating with her?”

“He would have told me. He never hid his feelings from me, although at times I wished he had.” She looked