Keeper of the Light

someone else.”

“You’re a smart kid, Lace, but I think drinking throws your judgment off and you end up doing things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Guys will take advantage of you. You’re too young to…”

“I’m not doing anything, and even if I was, so what? Mom turned out okay.”

“She did start young, that’s true, but it was because she was searching for love. You know what her parents were like—she never felt loved by them. You know you’re loved, don’t you Lace? You don’t have to have sex to get guys to like you.”

“I’m not.”

Alec’s eyes were drawn to the wall above Lacey’s head where a long-haired musician, his leather pants stitched into a genital-hugging cup at the crotch, smirked at him. He looked back at his daughter. “I guess we should talk about birth control,” he said.

Lacey flushed, her cheeks the color of the welts on her neck. “Please shut up.”

“If you need birth control, you can get it. Do you want me to make a doctor’s appointment for you?”

“No.”

He looked down at the doll, touching the delicate little white teeth with the tip of his finger. “Well, maybe it’s not negotiable. If you’re getting involved with…boys, you probably should see a doctor whether you want birth control or not.”

She stared at him incredulously. “Mom would never have made me go.”

He felt his patience slipping. “Look, Lacey, if you want to act like an adult, then you’re going to have to face the responsibilities that come along…”

“Mom would never have gotten on my case like this, either,” she interrupted him. “She would have believed anything I said. She would have trusted me.”

He threw the doll down hard on the bed and stood up. “Well, I’m not Mom,” he said, unable to keep the anger out of his voice. “And she’s not here. You’re stuck with me because she thought a bunch of goddamned battered women needed her more than we did.”

Lacey flung her blanket aside and jumped to the floor, turning to glare at him across the bed. “Sometimes I think you wish Zachary Pointer had killed me instead of her,” she said. “I bet you lie awake at night and think, why couldn’t it have been Lacey? Why did it have to be Annie?”

He was too astonished to speak. He stared after her as she ran out of the room, her footsteps quick and sharp in the hallway, and the bathroom door slammed shut so loudly he winced.

He stood there for a few minutes more before beginning to make her bed. He folded the edge of the sheet neatly over the blanket, tucked the spread under her pillow, and sat the doll up against the headboard. Then he walked downstairs to the den, where he could spend the rest of the day lost in his work on the lighthouse.

CHAPTER THIRTY- TWO

They gave her the tourists in the emergency room over the next couple of days, because the locals—at least those coherent enough to be choosy—refused to see the doctor who had taken Annie O’Neill from them.

On the Tuesday after Jonathan’s vitriolic story appeared in the Gazette, Mike Shelley asked to see her. He was on the phone when she walked into his office, and he gestured for her to sit down. She watched the lines deepen in his forehead as he listened to his caller. Whatever he had to say to her wasn’t going to be good.

She had felt very much alone these past couple of days, despite a reserved sympathy from most of the ER staff. “We’re behind you,” Kathy Brash said to her. “We know what you went through that night,” Lynn Wilkes added, but their voices were whispers, as though they were afraid of being too public with their support. Jonathan had his allies as well—people who watched her every move, who waited for her to make another error in judgment.

She had heard nothing from Paul since he’d left for Washington, and nothing from Alec since the night she’d stood naked and willing in his arms. She cringed to remember that night. He’d been serious when he said they should avoid each other. For the past couple of nights she lay in bed, waiting for ten-thirty to come, hoping that the phone would ring. She’d finally drop off to sleep, waking up in the morning to the realization that he hadn’t called. Perhaps by now he blamed her too.

Mike hung up the phone and gave her a tired smile. “I need to show you something I received this morning,” he said. He pulled a sheaf of paper from a large envelope and pushed it across the desk to her. “A petition. Three hundred names, all asking for your resignation. Or, I guess, asking me to force you to resign.”

She looked down at the yellow lined paper. Across the top of the first sheet someone had typed: In light of her inadequate handling of the medical emergency which resulted in the death of valued community member Annie Chase O’Neill, the following people call for the immediate resignation of Olivia Simon, M.D.”

She let her eyes brush over the names, lifting the second sheet, the third, trying to determine if Alec’s signature was among the many, but she could not read that quickly, and the names began to blur in front of her. She looked up at Mike.

“I have no intention of asking you to leave, Olivia, but I thought you should know what we’re up against. I’m sorry this has gotten so out of hand.”

Mike had made his own statements to the press, and although he vehemently denied any cover-up, he was reserved and cautious in the words he used. Olivia understood. His position was political as well as medical, and he couldn’t afford to alienate the community. It didn’t matter what he said, anyway. People were hearing only what they wanted to hear. Even after all these months, they wanted a scapegoat, someone to blame for the loss of their beloved Saint Anne.

“Have you heard anything from her husband?” she asked. “Do you know where he stands?”

“Well, I don’t thinks he’s behind this petition. I just hope he’s not talking to a lawyer.”

“Mike, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. What you did may have been unwise from the standpoint of liability, but it took courage. I’m not at