Keeper of the Light

Something seized him as he pushed the cart past the meat aisle. A sort of panic. He could not focus his eyes on the list he’d written an hour earlier. He stared down at the steaks and chops and bloody roasts. He abruptly took his hands from the cart, did an about-face, and walked out of the store, picturing his ice cream melting through the seams of the carton, dripping into a pool on the floor.

He got in his car and drove the two blocks to the beach at Nags Head. It was still early, just seven-thirty in the evening, and the beach was nearly empty. A few fishermen stood close to the water and occasionally a couple walked past him, hand in hand. He sat down in the sand and waited for the tension to leave his body.

Alec had spoken to Olivia. At length. Obviously, though, she had not told him anything earth-shattering or he never would have treated Paul with such goodwill, such respect. God. He had spent so much of his time and energy hating that man. Half his life.

A young couple and their dog ran along the water’s edge, laughing. The woman’s long hair was a true brown, and yet in the fading sunlight Paul could almost kid himself into thinking it was red.

Boston College. There were a lot of students in that class. Alec had bought it. Paul shook his head. How could Alec believe that anyone could have been on the same campus with Annie Chase and not have known her?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Paul had been cast as the lead in Boston College’s freshman production of Angel Street. He had been an average student in high school, disdaining math and science in favor of literature and poetry and the endless melodrama of his own imagination. He’d also been president of the drama club, and he had a natural talent for which he was awarded a scholarship to B.C. His family would not have been able to afford to send him to a good school any other way, although his father’s Philadelphia fireworks business had done well during Paul’s high school years, and his mother had tucked away nearly every cent she’d earned as a maid. Still, there were six Macelli children—Paul and his five sisters—and they were all bright, all ambitious. They would all want to go to school.

His was the first role to be cast in Angel Street. He could tell, as Harry Saunders watched him read for the part of Jack Manningham, that no one else would have to bother reading. So he sat, relaxed and relieved, next to Harry in the front row of the auditorium, while other anxious freshmen read for their parts.

Annie Chase auditioned for the part of the flirtatious maid on a whim. She’d come with a girlfriend and had agreed to try out in order to give her friend courage. She skittered up the stairs when it was her turn, and her hair seemed to fill the stage. Harry, who’d been slouching in his seat, leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees.

“Go ahead, please,” he said, and she read a line or two in a throaty voice before she began to laugh. It was a giggle, really, a sound only Annie Chase could make, and its rippling, ringing tone was a surprise given the huskiness of her voice. Everyone in the theater turned to look at her, their own faces slowly breaking into grins. Paul smiled himself. He glanced at Harry, who was nearly laughing.

“Do you want to try that again, Miss Chase?”

“Sure.” She read again, this time making it nearly to the end of her soliloquy before the giggles got her, and although she seemed like a young girl clearly out of control, and although the reading itself had not been anything outstanding, Paul was not surprised when Harry cast her in the role. Neither was he displeased.

“She’ll grab the audience,” Harry said, speaking to Paul as though he were a colleague. “She’ll grab them and she won’t let go. We just have to get her—and that hair—under a little bit of control without taking the life out of her.”

Harry needn’t have worried about that. It was impossible to sap the life out of Annie Chase. She sparkled, she bubbled, she drew people to her like a minstrel on a busy street.

He fell in love on that stage at Boston College. Annie came late to rehearsals and no one seemed to mind. It was as if they were all waiting, holding their breath for her arrival, letting the smiles spread across their faces when she finally bounded onto the stage.

He had to kiss her. It was in the script, and for several nights before the first time, he lay awake imagining that kiss. He wished he didn’t have to do it in front of Harry Saunders and the rest of the cast. He wanted to kiss her in private.

When the afternoon of the kiss finally arrived, he made it quick and light.

“Again,” Harry said from the front row. “Longer this time, Macelli.”

He kissed her longer, trying to keep his wits about him, and when he pulled away from her she was grinning.

“You’re not supposed to smile, Annie,” Harry said. “You’re supposed to look seductive.”

She giggled. “Sorry.”

“You two better practice on your own till you get it right.” Harry gave Paul a knowing nod.

So they practiced. They met in his dorm room or hers, reading their lines, working up to the kiss and away from it, the rest of their lines anticlimactic. When they had finished rehearsing for the day, he would read her his poetry if they were in his room, or look at the jewelry she was making if they were in hers. She’d form gold and silver into intricate shapes for earrings and pendants and bracelets. He loved watching her work. She’d tie her hair back in a leather strap which was rarely up to the task, and her long red tresses would spill out bit by bit as she worked with the glittering metal.

Paul felt the addiction taking hold of him. He’d known her for just a few weeks, but she was constantly on his mind. He’d call her, ostensibly to read through their lines, but they wound up talking about other things, and he treasured every word he got from her, playing their conversations over and over again in his mind as he lay in bed.

Then the gifts began. On opening night, she surprised him with a gold bracelet she’d made for him. The following day, he found a basket of pine cones outside his door, and the day after that, she arrived in his room carrying a macrame belt.

“I stayed up all night making this for you,” she said.

She pulled the belt he was wearing out of the loops of his jeans and began fitting the new belt through. It was slightly too wide, and the pressure of her fingers as she worked with the belt made him hard in an instant. He