A Deadly Cliche

so unless the chief wants to clog an artery before he starts giving Laurel here a bunch of stellar quotes, you’d better grab some from the kitchen.”

Olivia was about to walk away when Millay called her name again. “And some lab called. I pretended I was you and they told me that your blood test was positive.” She grinned. “You’re a little old to be getting knocked up, aren’t you?” She paused, seeing the stricken look on Olivia’s face.” Hey, I’m just messing with you. You’d have the smartest, best-looking, richest kid in town. You’d be single mother of the year! Olivia?”

It was all Olivia could do to wave off Millay’s ridiculous assumption and continue on toward the kitchen. She could feel every eye upon her as she walked away, yet the simple act of putting one foot in front of another was remarkably difficult.

The entire kitchen staff had arrived and had begun preparations for a busy Friday night. Olivia moved through the activity and chatter like a zombie. The milk was forgotten. Rawlings was forgotten. The throbbing in her arm came at her from a great distance.

In her office, she sank into her chair and struggled to breathe normally.

“My father is alive,” she told the room. She looked from the desk to the telephone to the computer. “My father is alive.”

The objects remained blissfully mute. There was no living thing to bear witness to the mixture of hope and agony surging through Olivia’s heart. For that, she was grateful.

She didn’t know when Haviland trotted into the office, but his presence allowed Olivia to function again. She looked up the Okracoke Ferry schedule and calculated how much time it would take to reach the port of departure. The last ferry left from Cedar Island at five. It was already after three and the drive would take over two hours. She couldn’t make it.

Olivia signaled for Haviland to follow her. She would go home, pack a bag, and make a few calls. Okracoke was less than fifty miles from Oyster Bay by boat. Confident that she could hire a vessel if she offered its captain enough cash, Olivia planned to be on the island before nightfall.

Someone in the kitchen spoke to her as she pushed open the door leading outside, but the words never reached her.

“My father’s alive,” she told the September afternoon and wondered how she could possibly process this momentous truth.

As it hit her full force, she did the only thing that made sense. She got inside the Range Rover and sobbed.

Chapter 17

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

—THOMAS GRAY

Olivia sat in front of the instrument panel next to the owner of the JoFaye, a sleek, hardtop super-yacht that cut through the waters east of Oyster Bay at thirty-seven knots. The man at the helm was accustomed to taking inlanders out on pleasure cruises up and down the Carolina coast. He’d had a good season and had managed to put away enough money to see his family through the winter, but when Olivia Limoges called and offered him enough cash to cover his monthly mortgage payment, he couldn’t refuse. One of her stipulations was that he ask no questions and tell no one of her visit to Okracoke.

“I value my privacy,” she’d said firmly. “If you illustrate discretion tonight, I will do my best to send business your way when the tourists return in the spring.”

JoFaye’s owner knew of Olivia’s influence and had no doubt that pleasing her would result in increased bookings. The yacht’s captain attempted small talk at the beginning of the short trip, but he was astute enough to see that she wasn’t interested in conversation. With a grim face, she kept her eyes on the horizon, holding her injured arm so that it didn’t bounce around too much whenever the boat crossed another vessel’s wake. The poodle also struggled to maintain his balance as the JoFaye’s powerful dual engines ran full throttle.

Olivia was too busy focusing on the pain in her arm to speculate on her upcoming reunion, but as the island became visible to starboard, she began to feel an increased sense of panic. The urge to tell the captain to turn his boat around was strong. After all, Olivia’s father had abandoned her. It would serve him right if she did the same to him as he lay dying. Perhaps he wasn’t even aware that his caretakers had contacted her and would be upset to suddenly find the woman his little girl had become standing at his bedside.

Olivia had fled from hardship before, but she wouldn’t now. Instead, she swallowed her anxiety and stood tall in the prow of the boat as the shore grew closer and the shapes of houses and trees became visible.

The captain headed for Silver Lake, an inlet south of Mary Ann’s Pond. He eased back on the throttle, motoring slowly past the ferry dock.

The sun had moved lower in the sky and part of the island had been cast in shadow. Only the white walls of the lighthouse seemed undiminished by the encroachment of evening and Olivia drew comfort at the sight of the old structure.

Earlier, Olivia had told the yacht’s captain that she needed to be dropped off at the dock closest to Hudson’s Raw Bar, being that she’d made no arrangements for transportation once she reached the island.

“Hudson’s is right in the village,” he’d told her. “They’ve got their own dock. I’ll just let you hold the wheel steady while I throw a line over and get us secured. My wife has a rug on hold over at The Island Ragpicker and they’re staying open late so I can pick it up. Think you can man the helm with your arm in a sling?”

Olivia had nodded.

Now, as the yacht’s motor decelerated from a deafening roar to a steady drone, the captain deftly maneuvered the JoFaye into an open slip, gave Olivia a few instructions, and leapt from the boat to the dock with feline agility. Securing the bowline, he told her to cut the engines as he lassoed the stern line to the dock’s iron cleat. He then set out a pair of disembarkation steps and offered his hand to assist Olivia down. She accepted reluctantly, but Haviland disregarded the steps altogether and jumped onto the dock with an anticipatory bark.

“Yes, Captain,” Olivia whispered to him. “Another adventure awaits us.”

Shouldering her overnight bag, Olivia hastily thanked the yacht’s captain, eager to be alone for a moment to gather courage. He said good-bye and hurried off, eager to complete his wife’s errand.

From her vantage point on the dock, Olivia could see the brown clapboard walls of the eatery and the second-story windows of the house that the Salters had converted into guest rooms.

Olivia stared at the windows, watching the waning light dance upon the panes. On the other side of one of those sheets of glass, behind the glimmering farewell of daylight, was her father. Her throat tightened and she looked away, taking in the tranquility of the village and the sleepy inlet. She stood like this for several minutes, drawing courage from the clang of mooring lines and the gentle rocking of sailboats at anchor.

Finally, she walked forward, her eyes returning again and again to the lighthouse. It was incredibly strange that her father had taken up residence so close to another lighthouse. He had deserted his home, his daughter, and the memories of his wife. And yet here he was, still tied to the ocean, working in a town interdependent on the sea, living in the lee of another lighthouse.

“Did you really escape?” Olivia wondered aloud. “Or did our voices float to you across the water? Mother’s and mine. Did you see our faces in the tidal pools? In the glassy water before you pulled the shrimp nets in?”

Olivia fell silent, knowing that she was describing how she’d been haunted by the ghosts of her past.

She gave Haviland a brave smile and then stepped into the restaurant.

The decor was casual to the point of neglect. There were scarred wooden picnic tables and chairs, mismatched barstools, old fishing nets slung across the rafters. A few customers were at the bar, getting an early start on a long night of drinking. A television set was tuned to ESPN, and a woman stood at the end of the bar, refilling catsup bottles and saltshakers.

Upon seeing Olivia, she wiped her hands on her apron and murmured something to the old man sitting closest to her.

“Can I help you?” she asked with guarded friendliness.

Olivia examined the woman. She was barely thirty, but toil and worry made her appear older. Her brown hair