Keeper of the Light

“I didn’t want to move here, believe me,” he said. “I tried to talk Olivia out of taking the job, but she was sold on it.”

“Does she know about me?”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t even know about the summer I lived here. I started to tell her about you once, long ago, but Olivia’s one of those people who wants to leave the past in the past.” Olivia’s own past had been so weighty, so painful, that it had absorbed nearly all their energy in the early days of their relationship. He’d had to undo all that had been done to her, and after that she wanted to put the past behind her. She knew only that he’d had a very serious relationship long before he met her. She wanted to know no more than that.

He walked to the back wall of the studio to study the breathtaking stained glass. “Your work is beautiful, Annie. You’ve come a long way.”

“I’ve changed, Paul,” she said. “I’m not the woman you used to know. Please don’t have any illusions that you and I can have a relationship again.”

“Just friendship.”

“No. It’s impossible.” She lowered her voice, and he knew someone else must be in the studio. “There was too much between us for us to simply be friends.”

He was close enough to her now to see fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. He wanted to see her laugh, to hear her ringing giggle bounce off the glass.

“I’m working for the Gazette,” he said, “and freelancing. I’d like to do an article on you for Seascape Magazine.”

“No.”

“I’ve already spoken to the editor about it. Please, Annie. It would help me get my name known here.”

He started as a door creaked open behind him, and he turned to see a large, ponytailed man walk into the room from what must have been a darkroom. Annie stepped toward him. “Tom,” she said. “This is Paul Macelli. He’s a journalist who wants to do a story on me in Seascape.”

“Hello,” Paul said as he shook Tom’s hand. He would play her game. He would act as though they were strangers to one another if that was what she wanted.

“Well, you couldn’t pick a better person to write about,” Tom said. “She’s a real Jill-of-all-trades. Anything going on in the community, she’s a part of it, and you can see for yourself what a talented artist she is.” He talked on, telling him little details about her work that Paul began jotting down in a notebook, while Annie lowered herself behind the work table, looking up at both of them, her eyes resigned and unsmiling.

The interviews began. He let her talk about her son and daughter, about Alec. Those meetings fed the roots of his obsession. He sent the Seascape photographer to her studio and demanded he take dozens of pictures, far more than Paul would ever need for the article, so that he could keep them for himself. He could pretend the smile she showed the camera was meant for him, because he was seeing so little of it in real life. She wanted him again; he was certain of it. There was no other reason why she should be afraid of his being nearby. She had to want him.

He had no friends. A growing number of acquaintances, but no one to confide in, and he was bursting to talk. And there was Olivia, ready to listen.

Olivia. How had she tolerated him all those weeks, those months, when he was wrapped up in Annie, when he spoke of nothing else?

It had been a terrible sickness in him. From this distance he could see it for what it was: a pathetic obsession that was costing him his sleep, his self-respect, his marriage. A few days earlier, Gabe had called him at the hotel to tell him about the Gazette article in which Jonathan Cramer accused Olivia of mishandling Annie’s case. He’d thought about it all night and he knew Cramer was wrong. He only had to think back to the wreck of the Eastern Spirit to know how wrong he was. He would trust Olivia with his own life, with the lives of anyone he loved. Annie had stood a better chance of survival under Olivia’s care than she would have with any other physician in the state. He could see that now, from this distance, as surely as he could feel Olivia’s presence in this bookstore. He had been satisfied during those years he and Olivia lived up here. With Olivia, he had finally been a man in control of himself and his demons, and he’d been grateful to her for freeing him from his obsession.

For her trouble he’d repaid her with pain, with coldness, with cruelty. Now she was handling harassment by the paper he worked for, as though he was still hurting her even when he was not physically there.

He looked at his watch. She would still be up by the time he got back to the hotel if he left right now. He paid the bill and hurried out into the hot night air.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The phone rang at ten-thirty-five. Olivia was lathering her hair in the shower, and she stepped out quickly, drawing a towel around her as she raced into the bedroom to answer it before the machine picked it up.

It was Paul’s voice, not Alec’s, that greeted her, and for a split second, she was disappointed.

“Are you back?” she asked.

“No. I’m in a hotel in D.C. I’ll get back tomorrow.” He sounded tired. A little tense.

“How are you?” she asked.

He was quiet for a moment. Then she heard a slight laugh, or maybe a cough. “Physically, I’m fine. Emotionally, I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’ve been out of my mind.”

The shampoo was beginning to drizzle down Olivia’s back. “What are you talking about?” She stretched the phone cord down the hall to the linen closet, where she pulled out a towel and draped it around her neck.

“I talked to Gabe at the Gazette and he told me about the flak on Annie’s case. I’m sorry, Olivia. I didn’t think the Gazette was capable of yellow journalism. Maybe if I’d been there I could have prevented it somehow.”

She walked back into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. “You thought I was to blame too,” she said.

“For Annie dying? No, Liv, I know you too well to have seriously thought that. I did wonder how you could have done it, though. How you could work on her when I’d been so obnoxious about the way I felt about her, but I know