Keeper of the Light

Mrs. Jasper smoothed her skirt over her legs and knelt down on the other side of Clint. She pulled a lacy handkerchief from her skirt pocket and pressed it to his nose. “There, dear,” Mrs. Jasper said. “Are you all right?”

“Yeth,” Clint answered, with his little lisp.

Olivia spotted the card he’d made for her a few yards away and ran over to pick it up. It was crushed almost beyond recognition, but she could still make out the birthday cake with its ten candles. Clint had colored it green.

“They’re such bullies,” Mrs. Jasper was saying to Clint, as Olivia knelt beside them again.

“Avery’ll beat ’em up.” Clint sat up, still holding the bloody handkerchief to his nose.

Olivia looked toward the corner of the playground where the older kids were playing dodgeball. Her brother Avery had the ball, and she watched as he threw it hard at one of the girls who jumped out of the way just in time. Yes, Avery would take great pleasure in beating up Tim Anderson. He would use any excuse at all for a fight.

Mrs. Jasper looked at Olivia. “Maybe Clint should go home for the rest of the day. Shall I call your mother?”

Olivia shook her head, aware that Mrs. Jasper knew the futility of calling Mrs. Simon. “I’ll walk him.” Olivia held out her hand to her brother and he locked his blue-stained fingers with hers. Blueberry season was long over, and the few dollars the Simon children had earned picking the berries had already been spent. Still, it would be weeks before the stain left their fingers.

She walked Clint home, hoping their mother had passed out on the sofa by now, because Olivia knew what she would say when she heard Clint had gotten beaten up again. She’d shake her head, her thin, uncombed hair sticking up in dark tufts from her head. “God must’ve screwed up the day he made you two, Livvie,” she’d say, as though Clint couldn’t understand how she was insulting him. “Gave you Clint’s brains on top of your own, so it’s up to you to take care of him.”

Their mother was on the sofa, her doughy face pressed into the soft cushions. The bottle lay on its side on the floor next to her. Olivia tucked Clint into his bed, one of three in the cramped bedroom she shared with her brothers. Clint was worn out from his ordeal and fell asleep quickly, the blood scabbed and scratchy-looking around his nose. Back in the living room, Olivia picked up the bottle from the floor next to the sofa and put it as high as she could reach in the kitchen cupboard so her mother would have to hunt for it when she woke up. Then she left the house, thinking she would have to make Clint a card, too, when she got back to school. She knew it was all either of them would get.

Olivia stopped sweeping the deck to listen. Someone was in the house. She peered through the sliding glass doors into the living room, but it was too dark to see. Had she forgotten to lock the front door after Alec left?

“Olivia?”

Paul. She let out her breath as he stepped onto the deck. She was annoyed he thought he could simply walk into this house at any time, but she was too relieved to see him to say anything that might put him on the defensive. “You startled me,” she said. If he had come over twenty minutes earlier he would have gotten quite a surprise himself. She thought of the peacock feather in the kitchen. She would have to keep him from seeing it.

“Sorry. I knocked, but you probably couldn’t hear me out here.” He sat down at the table and looked up at her. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “If you’re willing.”

“Of course I’m willing.” She rested the broom against the house and sat down across from him.

“Did you mean it when you said I could talk to you about Annie?”

She didn’t let the disappointment show in her face. “Yes.”

“I need to. You were right when you said there was no one else I could talk to. No one who cares about me as much as you do.” He tapped his fingers nervously on the table. “This isn’t easy, but ever since you stopped over and you were so…kind, I just thought maybe I should try telling you the truth.”

Olivia locked her hands together in her lap. “I thought I knew the truth.”

He shook his head. “You know most of it. You know I fell in love with someone I couldn’t have, and that I sort of got crazed in that process. But what you don’t know is…” He looked up at the wooden ceiling and took in a deep breath. “Oh, Liv.” He shook his head at her. “I’m so sorry. When we got married I couldn’t imagine doing anything like this. Anything that would hurt you.”

“You slept with her.”

Paul licked his lips. “It was just one time,” he said. “Right before Christmas. I felt as though I had to, as though…”

“More than you had to honor your vows to me?” She thought the pain in her chest might kill her. He’d made love to both of them. He’d compared them, and Annie had emerged victorious.

“I should have left you earlier,” he said. “I didn’t feel good about it, but I convinced myself that you were somehow to blame, with your late hours and…” He stopped talking and looked out into the darkness again.

“And what?”

“Just the kind of person you are. A little rigid, while Annie was so free-spirited and full of life and…”

“Stop it!” Olivia stood up. “You must think I have no feelings at all.”

He looked up at her and continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I just got swept up into it. She was such a good person.”

“Oh yes, she sounds wonderful. She was cheating on her husband, Paul. How good is that?”

“It was my idea, not hers. I pushed her. I mean, I didn’t rape her, she wanted to do it, but…”