torn ears. In the course of a week, Annie came across as many hurt animals as the average person encountered in a lifetime. She did not actively seek them out, yet they found her. He understood later that they were drawn to her because she was one of them. Her injuries were not physical. No, physically she was perfect. Her pain was hidden, and over the course of that summer he realized she had given him the task of making her whole.
He stood now in the thick black air, a prickly tension in him as he waited out the seconds between the light. Twenty years had passed since that first night. Twenty excellent years, until this last one. Until Christmas night, a little more than five months ago. He still came out here three, maybe four nights a week because more than any other place, it reminded him of Annie. Was it peace he felt here? Not exactly. Just close to her. As close as he could…
There was a rustling sound behind him. Alec turned his head, listening. Maybe it was one of the wild mustangs that roamed Kiss River? No. He could hear the steady footsteps of someone coming through the field of sea oats, up from the road. He stared in their direction, waiting for the light.
“Dad?”
The beacon caught his son’s black hair, red T-shirt. Clay must have followed him. He walked through the sand to stand at his father’s side. He was seventeen, and this past year had grown to Alec’s height. Alec still had not adjusted to standing eye-to-eye with his son.
“What are you doing out here?” Clay asked.
“Just watching the light.”
Clay didn’t respond, and the beacon swung around once, then twice, before he spoke again. “Is this where you come at night?” he asked, his voice hushed. Both he and Lacey had taken on this careful tone when they spoke to him.
“Reminds me of your mother out here,” Alec said.
Clay was quiet for another minute. “Why don’t you come home? We can rent a movie or something.”
It was Saturday night and Clay was two weeks away from his high school graduation. Surely he had things he’d rather do than spend the night watching movies with his father. In the next flash of light Alec thought he saw fear in Clay’s blue eyes. He rested his hand on his son’s shoulder.
“I’m all right, Clay. Go on now. You must have plans for tonight.”
Clay hesitated. “Well, I’ll be over at Terri’s.”
“Fine.”
Alec listened to the sound of Clay’s footsteps retreat across the field. He listened until he could hear nothing other than the waves breaking against the shore. Then he sat down on the beach, his elbows resting on bent knees, and stared out at a small yellow light on the black horizon.
“Remember, Annie, the night we saw the boat on fire?” He spoke out loud, but his voice was a whisper. So long ago—a decade, maybe more. They’d been sitting right where he sat now and probably they had made love, or were about to, when they spotted the ball of gold light on the horizon, shooting yellow tendrils into the sky and spreading shimmery waves of liquid gold into the water. The keeper’s house was locked tight and dark, Mary Poor asleep for the night, so Alec had driven out to the road to call the Coast Guard from a pay phone. They were already on the scene, he was told. Everyone was off the boat and safe. But by the time he’d returned to Annie she was weeping, having created her own scenario. There were children on board, she told him, old people too feeble to save themselves. He comforted her with the truth, but it was many minutes before she could let go of her own catastrophic vision. They watched the fire burn itself out, until the black smudge of smoke against the night sky was all that remained.
They’d made love on this beach as recently as last summer. The park was closed at dusk, but over the years they had never felt the chain across the road was meant for them. No one had ever disturbed them, not once, although until two years ago they’d known that Mary was sleeping close by.
They’d swim at night, too, when the water was calm enough. Alec was always first back to the beach because he liked to watch her lift up from the black water, a glittering specter in the stark white bursts of light. Her hair was darkened and tamed by the water, sleek and shiny over her shoulders and breasts. Once last year she’d stood in the water, wringing it from her hair and looking up at the beacon. She said something about the lighthouse, about its being as much a comfort to those on land as on sea. “It’s a touchstone,” she said. “It keeps you safe the same time it helps you chart your course.” He’d felt a lump in his throat, as though he knew what lay ahead, what he was going to lose. He’d thought it would be the lighthouse. He hadn’t known it would be Annie.
The lighthouse had been the only real source of friction between them. It stood close to the water, unlike its neighboring lighthouses at Currituck Beach to the north and Bodie Island to the south, which sat, secure, farther inland. Each year the ocean crept closer to the foundation of the Kiss River Light, and Alec joined the desperate battle for its preservation, while Annie distanced herself from that work.
“If it’s time for the sea to take it, we should just let it go.” Every time she’d say those words Alec would picture the graceful white brick lighthouse crumbling into the ocean and feel nearly overwhelmed with sadness.
He closed his eyes now as he sat on the beach, waiting for the next blast of light to shine red through his eyelids. If you stayed with the lighthouse long enough, your heartbeat slowed almost to the rhythm of the light, until it barely seemed to beat at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Olivia was obsessed with Annie Chase O’Neill. It was getting worse instead of better, and now as she sat in her living room watching Paul and the tanned young boy he’d hired carry boxes and furniture out to the rented U-Haul, she felt the obsession crystallize inside her.
She hadn’t wanted to be here when Paul moved his things out. She hadn’t expected him to do it this soon, this abruptly, but he’d called early this morning to say he had the truck, did she mind? She said no, because she wanted to see him. She would take any opportunity to see him, even though every meeting left her bruised. A little more than five months had passed since he walked out, yet she still ached at the sight of him. Even now that he’d met with a lawyer and signed a long-term lease on a cottage in South Nags Head, she still clung to the hope that he would take a good look at her and realize his mistake.
He stopped now in the arched doorway between the living room and dining room, pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of his khaki shorts to wipe his forehead.
“Are you sure about the dining room set?” he asked.
He’d taken his shirt off sometime in the last hour and his skin glistened. His dark blond hair was damp and pushed back from his forehead, and his glasses caught the light from the windows behind her head. She felt a futile
