Keeper of the Light

“What do you mean, no rules?”

“No curfew, no restrictions. They made their own decisions about where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do.” He pushed his plate to the center of the table. “Even when they were little, we let them decide what to wear and what to eat. Annie was big on making them take responsibility for themselves, and they did a good job of it. But now Lacey sits at the table with a radio headset on. I want to say, take that radio off and listen to me, damn it.” He struck the table with his fist. “And don’t curse at me. Talk to me. But Annie would never have made those kinds of demands on her. I can’t figure out what Annie would have done if Lacey had acted up like this when she was alive.”

Olivia sat back in her chair. “Maybe it doesn’t matter what Annie would have done,” she said. “Do what Alec wants to do. Tell her she can’t listen to the radio at the table. Tell her…”

“I can’t. I’m afraid of losing her, too. I…” He shut his eyes for a second, and then stood up. “Excuse me.” He set his napkin on the table and walked into the house.

Olivia closed up the cartons and moved them to the tray, thinking just as he had done: what would Annie do now? Annie would never have let a distraught guest leave the room without following him to make sure he was all right. She left the food on the tray and walked into the kitchen. Alec was at the window, staring out at the sound. She rested her hand on his bare arm. “Alec?”

“I’m afraid of my daughter,” he said. The sound was reflected in his eyes, turning the pale blue a milky gray. “I’m afraid to look at her because every time I do I see Annie.” He glanced down at Olivia, and she lowered her hand self-consciously to her side. “She was with Annie that night at the shelter,” he said.

“I didn’t know that.”

“She was helping in the food line. She was right next to Annie when she was shot. She saw it happen.”

“That’s how she knew there was so little blood,” Olivia said. “I always wondered about that. How horrible for her, Alec.”

“I could have lost her, too. I’m so aware now of how quickly you can lose someone. If I get too close to her or to Clay and something happened to them…I couldn’t go through it again. And if I try to figure out a way to discipline her, I’m afraid she’ll hate me. She already seems to.” He lifted his hands to the counter, and looked once more at Olivia. “I completely forgot her birthday. One hell of a dad, right?”

She felt a sudden, wrenching twist of sympathy for Lacey. Most of her childhood birthdays had been forgotten, but at least she’d had Clint to share the hurt with. “Well,” she said. “I guess she’s learning that you’re human.”

Alec turned away from the window and leaned back against the counter. “What were you like at her age?” he asked.

“Oh.” She felt herself color. “You can’t use me as a comparison. I wasn’t particularly…normal.”

He laughed. “You want to explain that?”

“Just being a twin and all.” She knew it was the “and all” that told the story, that had made her unlike other girls her age. She wanted to tell him. She had the feeling he would understand, and her heartbeat quickened at the thought of sharing her past with him. She opened her mouth to speak, but just then he sighed and stretched, shaking away the last few minutes, and Olivia quickly pulled herself back to the present.

“I’d better go,” he said. “Let me get the book.” He walked back to the deck and returned with the copy of The Eastern Spirit she’d given him. She walked him to the door, a little shaken at how close she’d come to telling him things about herself no one knew. No one except Paul.

Exactly what would Alec say to Paul at the next lighthouse committee meeting?

“Alec,” she said, “I’d rather Paul didn’t know about us being friends.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t want to complicate things.” They were complicated enough as it was. “Can we just say that you and I met to talk about what happened in the emergency room that night? Let him think that’s all there was to it?”

He frowned. “I’m a terrible liar, Olivia. It’s not like we’re having an affair.”

“I’d just rather he didn’t view you as a rival. The two of you have to work together, remember?”

He nodded. “All right.”

After he left, Olivia loaded the dishwasher and began sweeping the deck. She had to keep busy or the memories would seep in. They would stay for days once they started, and already the memory of her tenth birthday was taking shape in her mind. That was when she finally came to the realization that her mother was incapable of keeping the days straight. She couldn’t stay sober long enough to cook a meal, much less to remember a birthday.

Clint had made Olivia a card in school during the morning of their tenth birthday, and when he brought it over to her on the playground at recess, some of the kids starting taunting him, as they always did when one of the “slow- learners” stopped by. One of the boys, Tim Anderson, grabbed the card from his hand.

“Look at what the retard brought Livvie,” he said, waving it in the air. A few other boys gathered around Tim to read the card as Clint stood nearby, his face open and trusting. Olivia ached for her brother. She knew what the card would look like: the p’s in happy would be backwards; birthday would be misspelled. He’d probably drawn a picture of a cake as he’d done the year before. It would look like the drawing of a five-year-old.

She tried to grab the card from Tim’s hand.

“Love,” Tim mocked. “He signed it love Clint. Is he your boyfriend, Livvie? He’s a retard.” With that the boys jumped on Clint, four of them, pinning him to the ground and pounding on him with their fists while Clint struggled helplessly to get free. Olivia watched the ineffectual flailing of his hands around the heads of his assailants. She beat at their backs with her fists, screaming for them to leave him alone. She kicked at their legs, their sides, until Mrs. Jasper came out of the building. She walked toward them briskly, clapping her hands, crying “Children! Stop it this instant!” Upon hearing her voice, Tim and his cohorts immediately scattered and Olivia dropped to the ground next to her brother. His nose was bleeding and his face was red and streaked with tears.