Keeper of the Light

She wrinkled her nose. “He got my age wrong.”

“Did he?”

“Don’t you remember? He said I was twelve. Twelve.” Her eyes grew huge. “I was thirteen and a half.”

Alec smiled at her indignation. “Well, I guess that sort of mistake happens all the time.”

Lacey began dipping her spoon in and out of the cereal again. So far none of the puffed rice had made it to her mouth. “So,” she said, “what did you and that doctor talk about last night?”

“The lighthouse.” Alec leaned back in his chair. “She’s going to help out with the speaking engagements. She has a lot of experience doing that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, she’s driving up to Norfolk with me this morning.”

Lacey rolled her eyes and stood up to carry her bowl to the sink.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?” Alec asked.

“I’ve lost my appetite.” She began running water into the bowl.

“Who’s Bobby?” Alec asked.

“A friend.” She kept her back to him as she put the bowl in the dishwasher.

“Well, why don’t you ask him over sometime so I could get to know him?”

Lacey turned around to frown at him. “Get a life, Dad.” She dried her hands on a paper towel and left the room.

Alec smiled as he pulled into Olivia’s driveway. She was sitting on her front deck in a pale, apricot-colored suit that looked out of place on the rustic wooden deck, but would be perfect for her interview in Norfolk. He was wearing a suit himself.

He got out of the Bronco and walked around to open the door for her, and he was relieved to see her ready smile after their tense words of the night before.

“You look beautiful,” he said as he took his seat behind the wheel once again. “Sophisticated.”

“You too,” she said. “First tie I’ve seen you in. Looks nice.”

Alec quizzed her about the lighthouse as they drove over the long bridge to the mainland, and they had crossed the state line into Virginia before either of them mentioned the night before.

“I’m sorry about the way I acted when we bumped into Lacey,” he said. “Are you still angry with me?”

“No. I know it was awkward for you.”

“I tried to call you to apologize, but you didn’t answer.” He had dialed her number several times, finally giving up at eleven o’clock.

“I’d unplugged my phone.”

Alec frowned at her. “So I couldn’t get through?”

“No, Alec.” She smiled. The peeling bridge of her nose made her look very young. “A reporter from the Gazette was trying to reach me and I just didn’t feel like talking to her.”

“What did she want to talk to you about?”

Olivia shrugged and looked out the window where a de-lapidated barn sat in the middle of a wide, jade-green field. “I have no idea,” she said.

They reached Norfolk a few minutes after noon, and they ate lunch at a restaurant near the radio station where Olivia would be interviewed. Olivia ate her own tuna salad sandwich as well as a couple of bites of his.

He grinned at her. “Are you one of those people who eats a lot when they’re nervous?”

“I’m eating for two, remember?” she said, then added a bit defensively, “And I’m not in the least nervous.”

He walked her to the door of the radio station, feeling guilty about leaving her to wait out the forty-five minutes before her interview alone. Then he drove to the public library, where the Mid-Atlantic Lighthouse Friends were meeting.

He had taken the easier assignment, he thought as he spoke to the appreciative audience of thirty or so fellow lighthouse fanatics. They could not have been more receptive, and by the time he had finished, several of the men and a couple of the women had written hefty checks for the lighthouse fund. He left after a short period of questions and answers, and once back in the Bronco, turned on the radio to catch the last ten minutes of Olivia’s interview. Olivia and her interviewer, Rob McCain, were laughing, and he knew it was going well.

“Obviously,” Olivia said, “the vagaries of nature are only a small part of what we’re dealing with. Any decisions made with regard to the lighthouse have political and technological and economic implications as well.”

Alec stopped for a red light, smiling, impressed.

“But the sea wall concept seemed to have so much support behind it,” Rob McCain said. “Was that support politically motivated?”

“No more than for any other solution,” Olivia said. “The interest in saving the Kiss River Lighthouse cuts across political boundaries, and so the need for funding is completely nonpartisan. We’ve received donations from schoolchildren and grandmothers and executives and politicians. Anyone who cares about saving a piece of our history.”

He liked that she was using the word we to describe the committee, despite the fact that he usually felt possessive about the little band of lighthouse zealots he’d put together. After today, Olivia most definitely belonged.

She stood on the sidewalk in front of the radio station, watching for the Bronco. The interview had gone exceedingly well. She’d done a little extra reading on her own beyond the information Alec had given her, and it had increased her comfort, her confidence.